A warm welcome to Christian joining us today to share his post for our 5 year celebration weekend

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How M/M Books Helped Me Realize I am Transgender

In the beginning of 2017 I REALLY wanted to start reading more books. I had tons of books piling up on my Goodreads list but no time to read, especially with going to school part-time. So I started listening to everything I could on audiobook. I am so lucky that I have a job doing reports all day and can listen to books during that time (when I don’t have meetings or projects that involve other people lol).

My whole life up to that point had been shying away from anything homosexual (anything in the LGBT+ spectrum). Being brought up in a strict Christian household in the 80s and 90s, I was taught at an early age that homosexuality was wrong. I knew I had crushes on girls when I was younger, but I ended up pushing those feelings aside. I always stayed away from gay men and felt uncomfortable around anything homosexual in nature. Whether in real life, in the movies, on TV, etc… I always thought that I was supposed to be a man or supposed to be with a woman (At that time I didn’t even know I could actually be a gay man) but I couldn’t bring myself to immerse myself or experiment with things. I thought that God had made me this way as a test of my own faith towards him. That if I could get through my life as a hetero, cis person, that I would be rewarded at the end of my life.

Well… back to the books! I loved to listen to zombie apocalypse books, I read those a lot. But after I read a few with hetero love and romance, I wanted more and didn’t know what or why. Fifty Shades of Grey was an awesome series, no matter what anyone says. I tried reading some more hetero erotica with some substance (The Black Dagger Brotherhood series by J.R. Ward is AWESOME) and loved the books I listened to. But something was still missing and I couldn’t figure it out.

This was about the time that I house sat for a friend for about a week. Being alone, with no one around I started poking around the internet. Checking out anything LGBT related. Articles, pictures, some free porn here and there. Something sparked in me. I don’t know how or why I chose these books but the first M/M books I ever bought and listened to (I don’t know the order) were the Middle of Somewhere series by Roan Parrish, Borrowing Blue by Lucy Lennox, and the Broken Pieces series by Riley Hart. These books (plus some others I can’t remember) broke all of my walls down. These books taught me that love doesn’t matter the gender, love doesn’t care. That the people in these books fought at odds to get to where they were at in life and deserved a happy life without people judging them and telling them all the time that their love is wrong. They taught me that there are so many young people in the world who are scared to be who they are because of what their parents/family would do. That just isn’t right. So my whole view of the world changed then.

Within the next few weeks I came out as Pansexual. Everyone was pretty supportive of me when I did that. Which was wonderful. But I had also been reading up on what transgender really was (as I was going through the whole LGBT spectrum at the time trying to find out who I really was). I knew that sometimes women had penises. And friends in the past had been really crude when talking about them. But I had never really heard of a man that was born in a woman’s body, or the things that transgender people have gone through. I realized I had been so close minded and it hurt.

I also realized that I myself was transgender. Female to Male. I started reading up on people’s stories and was so shocked when there was this whole other set of people that felt the exact same feelings that I did. And better yet… there were ways to become who I truly was meant to be!! I was so happy but it has been a really difficult time after coming out to all of my family and friends (I did it on facebook). Most of them don’t really think I am serious about it since I haven’t started hormones yet or legally changed my name. To all honesty I will probably have to up and move when I start. My boyfriend won’t want to be with me anymore. But this is me. I literally get panic attacks when I think about wearing women’s clothes to work. I yearn for the day when I get to start my life on hormones. And no one is going to take this away from me or tell me I can’t.

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