MY OWN STORY

Ever since I remember when I was really young, even before school, I've tried. Tried to fit in, tried to figure out what people wanted of me, why they made those faces at me or looked at me in that funny way as if I'd just spoken in Venusian, why I was different. Since I was five years old I remember wishing I was a boy. I remember keeping it secret because I said it once to a dinner lady and everyone laughed at me.

It was summer and all the boys had taken off their tops to play football on the field, and I joined in and took my top off too. I was about six years old. The dinner lady called me over and told me off very severely and made me put my top back on. I argued, ''But all the other boys have theirs off!'' and she answered, "But you're not a boy.'' I said, ''I will be one day,'' and everyone laughed at me. From then on I just tried my best to be a girl, since before I'd held some hope that there was some way I'd be able to become the boy I felt I was; but now that hope was gone in the way they laughed.

I sought out girls to play with so I could copy them, but I never understood the way they thought or felt and was never interested in the things they liked. I always thought they were silly and wished I could play with the boys. When the girls and boys played together I was always on the boys' side, when they argued I couldn't see the point the girls were making but agreed totally with the boys. But I pretended not to, I just mimicked what the girls said and put on a façade. I wanted to be accepted, so I just gave up on being myself to stop the bullying. And I never told anyone about wanting to be a boy again.

I lived in the middle of the countryside and the only people I played with were my sisters and brother. That is to say, I either played on my own, or with my brother. Occasionally I played with the sister closest to me in age but she frustrated me and our games never lasted long. She wanted to comb Barbie's hair - I wanted to build a tree house. She wanted to have a doll's tea party on the lawn, I wanted to dig up worms and bugs. Sometimes we used to get on, when she let me take the lead and we went for bike rides to check out abandoned storehouses and barns, or collect conkers. My brother was six years older than me, so there wasn't a lot we could play together, and he always had his friends around and was more interested in them. So usually I played on my own - I built machines in my dad's workshop, climbed to the top of trees, tinkered with my bike or rode off alone to explore the countryside, or wrote stories. But sometimes when my brother had no friends around we used to play swapping and collecting football cards together or making airfix model aeroplanes. We used to play Mecchano and Lego together.

But when I was about seven I got a pair of jeans handed down to me by my brother. It was my first pair of trousers - before then I'd always had handed down skirts and dresses made by my mum for my oldest sister. When I put them on it was like putting on a Superman costume - the feeling of power and strength and 'rightness' was overwhelming. I didn't want to ever wear anything else again and whenever rich relatives used to visit I used to persuade them to buy me some jeans. It didn't matter that they bought me girls' jeans with embroidery all over them - it was a compromise. I could feel more right in trousers, while everyone else was happy because I was ''being a girl''.

When I was eight a kid in my class got bubblegum stuck in her hair right near the top and she'd had to have all her long hair cut off, so I took some bubblegum and put it in my own hair and when my mum saw I was taken to have my hair all cut off. It was great! So when I went to school the next day I had an idea. I put on my plain jeans that had been my brother's and pretended that I was a boy, I said I was my own twin brother. I said my name was Adam and I made sure I wore them all week long. In that week everything changed. I went from being Sarah, the weird and sad girl that nobody liked and everyone teased, to being Adam, the lad, one of the boys. I was really happy and completely in my element. The next week the jeans were dirty and I had to go as a girl again. I explained to the kids all kinds of fantastic reasons why my ''brother'' and I were never at school at the same time. I said our mother was ill and one of us had to stay at home all the time to look after her, and we took it in turns to come to school. We were all only young and naïve and the other kids believed it as far as I knew - they wanted to believe it because they all liked Adam. I lied my way out of countless sticky situations and kept the dual identity going for several months. One day when I was at school as Sarah, a girl gave me two love letters for Adam. They were full of slushy stuff about him being the best boy in the school and how these two girls were completely ''in love'' with him. In the letters they asked how come such a great boy could be twins with such an awkward and geeky girl.

About a week after I got those love-letters my parents' divorce was finalised and I had to move to Wyberton to live with my mum and step dad, and go to a new school. I scouted out the new school for any role-playing potential but the kids there were from the town and they were a bit more clued up, and older now as well, too old to fall for that kind of lies.

At this time my dad started really pushing Christian beliefs on me. So I put aside my male identity, thinking of it as a lie, a fantasy, and decided to stoically try to cope and get to grips with the reality that I was supposed to be female. I did my best to copy the girls I knew and figure out what I was supposed to think and behave like. No matter how hard I tried it never worked and everyone still said I was ''weird'' and ''not like other girls''.

When I came home from school I had a bit of escapism though. I got into heavy metal a lot, because it was a place where I could still be a boy even though I had long hair (sadly it had grown back and my mum wouldn't agree to cut it again). I put on my torn up jeans and black T shirts and listened to Iron Maiden. I fantasised about being a rock star in a band and all the girls chasing me. I dreamed about girls no longer being these strange things that I had to try and copy, but just naked sex objects serving me with beer and food. Sometimes I felt guilty about the fantasies; all the Jehovah's Witness stuff my dad had beaten into me told me I was sinning. I felt that God wouldn't understand about me being a boy inside and he'd just think I was a lesbian. So I used to purge and relapse and purge again. I'd get a fit of guilt where I'd have to ''atone'' for my escapism by putting on a dress and make-up and going out like it and letting boys flirt with me, even though I hated it. It never lasted long though; within an hour I was always back in the bathroom scrubbing off the make up, pulling out the hair pins, then back up in my room tearing off the dress  and defiantly shouting and crying at God saying, ''Fuck you! Why did you put me in this body?'' This purging and relapsing happened constantly throughout my early teens, when my breasts began to grow I hid them and wouldn't ask my mum for a bra. When my periods started I was heartbroken - the dream of turning into a boy when I grew up that I'd clung to, was over - I was growing up into a woman. I became extremely withdrawn at school and at home and days went by when I never spoke a word to anyone, especially at the age when all the boys' voices were breaking.

As all the other kids started taking an interest in the opposite sex it was sort of silently agreed that I wasn't part of all that. I didn't care for boys and didn't dare to go for girls. I started thinking, ''maybe I'm just gay'', but I knew deep down that it was more than that, and knew that although I liked the idea of touching a woman, I didn't want her touching me in those places at all. I just avoided the whole area altogether and didn't think about it until my friends pressured me so much about it that I pretended to fancy a boy in my class just to shut them up. I even tried dating one or two boys that my friends fixed me up with but it never worked because I just wasn't interested. When I was 16 or 17 the pressure from everyone got so much, friends and family all saying constantly ''why haven't you got a boyfriend?'' and ''are you a lesbian?'' I ''put on'' my female character role and went through the motions, fancying a boy, going out with him, all because it mattered so much to me at the time to just be accepted. I was just experimenting with the idea of being female, thinking I'd have to get used to it because it was my only choice and I was stuck with this body. I thought that going out with a boy and letting him have sex with me would 'fix' me. But even during sex I was acting a part, I wasn't even there really.

I was still carrying strong Christian beliefs with me and when I was 17 I dated this boy and I was trying to make it last as long as possible - by hiding my real self and pretending to be a normal female. He fell in love with the act I was putting on and said he wanted to marry me! I said I would because I believed in the permanence and sanctity of marriage and knew that it would be the only way I'd stay in female role all my life. I knew that if I didn't get married I'd just end up being gay or celibate. I knew if I didn't have a reason like marriage then I wouldn't be able to keep up the hard work of trying to be female. But it didn't work, and after 8 months we split up - in actual fact I punched him in the face and he called me a freak and walked out.

For two years after that I was very happily celibate. I hung out with my male friends and became one of the lads. I just drunk and took drugs to drown out the voices inside telling me I was male. My best friends Michael and Steve said I had a male soul and they thought of me as one of the lads. On one hand it was the most happy thing anyone said to me, but on the other hand it depressed me completely because I thought there'd be no way I could possibly live my life ''as God intended''. I was frightened to face up to a life of all the hard work and pretending and role playing to be female. I attempted suicide by heroin overdose when I was 18. I would have been successful if my friend hadn't found me and taken me to hospital soon after I passed out.

When I met Seamus I felt something weird happened. I just got a feeling about him, I can't explain it. I just knew that he was looking at me and he never treated me like a girl, just as myself. He wasn't like a guy either, just very androgynous. He was happy to let me ''be the man'' and didn't mention or push me or rush me into sex. It was like he was in love with my real self, and even though I knew he wouldn't have been with me if not for my female body, I thought it was the best deal I'd get.

Sadly though I was still screwed up and I thought I had to carry on this quest to join the female race to make people accept me. I felt guilty about my masculine soul and wanted to get rid of it because everyone said I was supposed to be female. I thought it was sinful and selfish to just be myself, so I kept on trying. When I got married and got pregnant I thought, ''Now everyone will have to accept me'' and I thought it was bound to finally fix me. I threw myself headlong into the stereotype housewife role. I made a promise to God that I wouldn't ''be male'' any more and I'd just get on with being what he created me as once and for all. I copied all the women I knew and dressed like in the magazines and totally took orders from my sisters about how to dress. I spent hundreds of pounds on the housewife image and lifestyle. Decorating the house, pretending to be so enthusiastic about it when deep down I didn't really care what colour the walls were. And gradually people started to accept me. They said things like, ''See now you're grown out of all that silly Tomboy stuff,'' and ''You've come a long way now,'' and complimenting me on my appearance.

Like what my best friends said about me it made me feel ambivalent. Happy that I'd finally cracked it - I could be female. Sad though, because I knew it was a lie and felt empty and sad that the only way I could get people to like me was to be something totally different to my true self. I had to watch myself constantly. Body language, voice inflections, thought patterns, conversations, I copied them all meticulously from the women I knew. I'd get dressed in the morning and look in the mirror and 'assume' the character before I went out and saw other people. I was 22.

One day I looked in the mirror when I was all dressed up. My reflection said to me, ''You've done it - look at you, no one would suspect you're anything but the perfect housewife, so respectable.'' Then I started shaking and I broke down and cried at my reflection, ''You're nothing but a fraud! You don't exist!'' Seamus was at work and I was supposed to be visiting a friend that day. I called her and said I was ill, and had my first cross-dressing relapse in about three years. I scrubbed off the make-up far more violently than necessary - I didn't just take it off, it was as though I was trying to scrub the scar of it off my skin, off my soul. I put on one of Seamus' shirts and a Guinness tie and a pair of his trousers and boxers and I went downstairs and took several beers out of the fridge. I put Eurosport on the TV and sat there all evening drinking and eating snack food and watching sport and action movies, allowing myself to sympathise with and put myself in the position of the lead male character for the first time in years. I felt so happy then, so normal, like I belonged there, in that role. It was like a brief return to the womb - I can't explain it. But the next day the mask went straight back on.

This built up and built up until one day a couple of years ago I was watching a Jerry Springer at a friend's house on transsexuals. My friends were laughing at them and saying all the usual ignorant stuff, but I felt like those people were kindred spirits. When I got home I looked up everything I could on the Internet about transsexuals, especially if it happened the 'other' way, from female to male. I found that it did, and read lots of biographies of trans men, crying as I read them and felt so close to them, understanding and identifying with them so much. So I found the nearest support group and went to the first session I could get to. After two sessions I knew damn well that I have been and always will be male. Within six months I'd had my hair cut, thrown away or given away all my female clothes, bought a load of male clothes and changed my name officially. I let everyone know that I was no longer to be treated or referred to as female and explained to them about being transsexual. Some accepted it, some didn't; some stayed friends and some didn't. But since then (August 2001) I've been living and dealing exclusively with people in male role.

I've declined some family wedding and christening invitations because I refuse to go in a dress or as a woman, and my appearance is not yet masculine enough for me to wear a suit without just looking stupid.

When I sometimes get forced to question if I'm doing the right thing, I try to rationalise it and say to myself, ''If I just dress up female for one more day, just to 'decide'' - but when it comes to it, I can't even stomach the idea of putting on a bra any more, or women's underwear, clothing - I even tried to put make up on again once, but I'd only brushed a tiny bit of eye shadow on my eye before I started to feel physically sick. I just couldn't make myself do it, I ended up just crying and throwing it away.

The difference between how I felt in female role, frightened, bewildered, insane, depressed - and how I feel in male role now - content, at home, confident, every time I recall it, makes it even more clear to me that I am male and should always have had a male body.

The fact that people in general are responding to me much more warmly now and accepting me as a normal person now that they perceive me as a young lad, in contrast to how I never really truly fitted in as a female, also makes a clear point to me. While I was in my worst fake phase and being as feminine as I knew possibly how to, I volunteered for church work and mother and toddler groups. I got along with the women but mostly because I kept my mouth shut. But whenever there was a party or a gathering, I was the last to know and was never invited. I was never one of the girls. But I've always found it completely natural and easy to slip into my place as one of the boys.

At the moment I'm in the process of physically changing sex, and every little milestone or mark that I reach, every little bit more male that my appearance becomes, makes me incredibly happy. I'm still getting used to the public treating me as male, but don't get me wrong, it's preferable in EVERY way!

When eventually the process is more or less completed physically I'll add a transition diary to this site. Until then however I'll leave it to your imagination, because things are changing so fast I can't be bothered to keep updating!!

Samuel Baker 2002

NB: "old name" has been changed

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