Friends and Family Of a Transsexual
By Stephanie Castle
No one who has travelled the transexual route can deny that it is fraught with challenges, obstacles and a host of perplexing and agonising problems, not the least being the handling of interfamily and other close personal relationships.
I am leaving aside the matter of spousal relationships. Having had two divorces caused by circumstances unrelated to my transexualism, I can only say that little that has been helpful in any matter touching on the subject came out of either event. Marital break ups are beyond the scope of this article, and in my own case my transexualism did not enter the picture - it was a secret I had carried around with me all my life, buried as if in a concrete sepulchre.
I knew it was there - attached as if by an unseen umbilical cord to my mind, unheeded, unwanted and unwelcome, but always thrusting to get out and be acknowledged by me as my other self, the feminine me that I am now bringing into reality.
I was brought up in the best traditions of the British 'stiff upper lip'. One was expected to bear pain, discomfort and mental agony without complaint and always with a smile. It was this attitude which won battles and wars for the Empire, but invariably it also bred generations unable to express themselves, and to whom the honest venting of feelings was regarded as weak, effeminate and downright sissified. If I had been able to uncork my own deepest feelings at the appropriate times the course of my personal marital history might have been a lot different, possibly a lot better, and I might well have dealt with the challenge of my own transexualism much earlier in life.
The failure of the second marriage altered many things. I went through a period of deep soul searching from which developed a resolve to stop kidding myself. I am transexual. I had been aware of the condition without being able to understand it from about the age of four. My perplexity gave way to an understanding of it as a definable condition by the time I was nineteen, but my idea of pride, family honour and duty did everything possible to bury it, even though at times I was seething internally like a volcano with anxiety and pent up desire.
With the fresh circumstances of my new status as a soon to be single man I decided on a total change in my approach to my life. My feminine self was at long last let out of the closet of my mind and given increasing free rein.
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