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Ashlie’s Story

IT’S never easy when you’re uncomfortable in your own skin, when you feel trapped inside a body that doesn’t reflect who you are inside. After seventeen years, I’ve come to realise that feeling all too well.

My journey began at the young age of five years old. I had just started school, everything was new and exciting. Apart from of course the skirt my mum forced me to wear everyday. I used to take it off and run around in the see-through under-shorts I wore underneath the skirt. I was always being scolded by my mum for not wearing it, but it just didn’t feel right.

Throughout my primary school years, I made friends with mostly boys. I felt comfortable around them, I always have. We would play marbles, get into teams and have a ”war”, I just ran amuck in my t-shirt and shorts without a care in the world. Back then I was just one of the guys, if only it could have stayed that way.

The first time I got up the courage to cut my hair short was when I was ten. At around eight years old I used to complain about my long hair. I remember my dad threatening to cut it all off, I would cry and tell him that I didn’t want my hair cut, but inside that’s all that I wanted. I guess I was just too afraid to do it. So there I was sitting at the hair dressers telling her that I wanted it shaved short around the sides and back and cut short on top. Walking home that day I felt free, I felt more myself. My dad said he didn’t recognise me when I walked up the driveway, he thought I was just some boy.

I’ve cut my hair that way ever since.

Intermediate was a very tough realisation time for me. When I was young I used to use the boy’s toilets and no one would care. But it seemed now if I even set foot in the wrong toilets I would be teased and ridiculed. The gender division was pretty clear and I didn’t like it. Sometimes in physical education they would split the class up into two teams, one team girls, the other boys. I forged notes to get out of physical education and quickly isolated myself from everyone. I felt very confused and trapped.

It was hard enough figuring out who I was, let alone being beaten up and bullied. It was around that time that I was also starting to realise that I really liked girls. Sure, I had some little crushes on girls in primary school, but nothing this intense. And that scared the living hell out of me.

After that I forced myself to believe I was just a butch lesbian, that I was a girl. I knew that people still wouldn’t think I was normal, but at least this way I would be a little less abnormal. It worked for a little while, but deep down I knew I couldn’t hide the truth from myself forever.

I left high school in my second year, to be home schooled. I just wasn’t coping. Gender specific uniforms, teasing, bullying, It was just like intermediate all over again. Not something I particularly wanted to relive. I was also having a hard time with puberty. My body was changing me into a young woman and not into a young man like I wanted to be. I would stare at the men on television and hate them for having the body I so desperately wanted. I cannot describe how horrible and wrong the whole thing made me feel.

Now after twelve years I finally accept it. I am a guy, I always have been, and always will be. Throughout my whole life, my family have said to me that I should have been a boy, they were absolutely right. And now I want to do something about it, I want to make it happen.

First I have to let it all out; I don’t want to keep it a secret anymore. Once it’s out in the open I won’t have anything left to hide, I can start my transition. One day my body will reflect who I am inside and I will feel comfortable in my own skin. And when that day comes, I’m and going to be one happy man!

Ashlie (2007) My Story, Torque, Vol 7(2).