"Growing up throughout your life as a correct gender is … taken for granted. As (girls) grow up, they get their life experiences. They get to go to prom as the date that gets picked up. They get to have kids, have parties and do each other's hair. I've always wanted to do that stuff. I never could. "You can't do that as a guy."
Erika is now 28. It took her 26 years to figure out why she felt so different, why she was so depressed and angry and so frustrated with life. It took 26 years, a growing sense of desperation and a random Internet post for her to begin to understand herself. "
The random internet post led her to Liz:
"Liz Kandziolka, 30, was also born a boy. She declines to give her birth name, the one belonging to her as a boy.
"I'd rather just leave it in the past where it belongs," she says.
Erika concurs: "That old person is gone."
But as a young man, seeking both direction and a marketable career, Liz joined the military. In retrospect, she says that was a way of trying to "hyper-masculinize" herself. Liz was stationed at Mountain Home Air Force Base and deployed to the United Arab Emirates.
Liz: "A group of online friends pointed me towards transgender. 'Look it up,' (they said). So I did. I was reading through it: Click. That's exactly what I'm feeling. Everything. Right there."
A woman can serve in the military, but a transgender woman cannot. "They still consider it a mental disorder," says Liz. It would be an angry and frustrating five years until she was discharged as a man, before Liz could begin living as a woman."As we know the basis of our life is so simple under the "gender binary" and so difficult when we add our layers of life. The bottom line from Liz and Erika says it all:
Liz: "We just want to like what we like and be who we want to be, regardless of what anyone else thinks. …
Read the entire story here.
As a side note for all of you who recoil at the idea of an internet contact...I also met my serious partner through a "random internet contact".
