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This was originally to be part of the "what I would have wanted to know"
page. This is however unique. there can be a serious cost to trying to be who
you are not.
What I wish I had known
Hello my name is Angela. I am still new to being open beyond myself and my wife
about my crossdressing. But I think I have something to share that may be an
encouragement. The biggest mistake I made as a crossdresser was suppressing my
femininity and keeping my feelings to myself, alone and afraid that I was
somehow a sick person. How did I suppress my feelings? I believe any time I have
an issue if I do not cope with it I am suppressing it. It's like having a
leaking roof and just ignoring it. I have a problem and don't cope with it so I
am suppressing it, and eventually the leak in the roof will destroy the roof and
the things within the house. When I have issues today I've learned that I need
to cope with them now and in a healthy way.
My problem with crossdressing was how I decided to cope with it. I hid it from
everyone, even my wife after I told her I was a CD and she had accepted me.
Today I believe there was a war going on in me. There was a masculine me and a
feminine me. The feminine me wanted to emulate women that I loved and respected
much like the masculine me wanted to emulate men I loved and respected. I wanted
to emulate women, but I was not homosexual, and I could not by myself come to
understand what that made me. A feminine man? In my ignorance and fear I
pondered homosexuality, thinking gay men seemed to have a respect for some of
the things I did. Did this mean that I was gay? The painful thing for me was
despite these similarities I did not find men attractive sexually, nor did I
ever fall in love with a man, nor did I wish to emulate any gay men. Thoughts
about these things made me feel quite uncomfortable and my heart continued to
tell me that gay just wasn't me. If this was what coming out as gay felt like
then I wanted nothing to do with it. Women are beautiful. That feeling and
thought of beauty is encrypted in the face and form of women, not men. When
would I start thinking men were attractive? What would become attractive about
them? Would I stop being attracted to women? So you can imagine I felt quite
defective and quite sick.
Alcoholism and addiction are quite complicated diseases and are beyond the scope
of what I can discuss in a few paragraphs, but I'll do my best without writing a
whole book on it. I used drugs and alcohol to a two-fold purpose. I used drugs
to find an escape from the feeling that I was wrong and sick. I wanted to feel
like I was okay, and that I wasn't wrong to crossdress and want to be pretty and
sexy and soft and beautiful. I learned that drugs could help free me from
feeling bad about myself - at least until the drugs wore off. Then my masculine
concepts would remind me that I wanted to be a man and love women and that women
wouldn't go for a boy in stockings and panties. I wanted to be a father someday!
What would my kids think? What would my family think? What would my friends
think? What would my Mom think? ...and on and on with horror upon horror. This
is what addiction does. It tries to make the addict feel bad so that they'll go
back out and use again. So it is two fold in that my feminine aspect would
desire drinks and drugs so I could play "she" and then when the "fling" was over
my masculine aspect would feel bad for having a crossdressing fling and decide
to use once again to feel better. (And addiction is filled with paradoxes like
this.) I thought I was a sex addict when in fact I was simply an addict.
Anything an addict can do more of is subject to becoming a problem.
I realize now that I gave up a lot of good things to my addiction out of fear,
guilt, and shame. Drugs started to destroy my body. My teeth, my waist line, I
broke my hand punching a wall once, I no doubt did damage to my mind, I starved
my spirit, and my organs will no doubt pay a price for my using. I hurt my
relationship with my wife, my family, and friends. But most of all and most
importantly I stopped giving. Substance abuse slowly robbed me of that ability.
Self-centered and self-destructive people don't get to experience the following
truth - give and you will receive. Today I love my body, my mind (even though it
is the mind of an addict), and my spirit and because of that I am able to love
others. And loving others has returns far greater than what I can give. But
first I had to learn to love myself.
Angela
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