Like many a crossdresser I've spent my whole life asking this question:- Why me? Does my dressing make me a freak? Can I just stop?
I know that I did not choose this, I've had these feelings from an early age. I have an early memory from about 5 years old where I was a narrator in a school play held within the church next to my primary school. The reason has faded from my memory, but I had to wear green tights for this role, my mother asked her friend who had a daughter my age to borrow a pair. I remember walking up the aisle of a packed church in these tights feeling fantastic, but I also remember sniggering and comments from older boys in the audience. This created conflicting feelings of both embarrassment and satisfaction in my appearance. At around this time my parents divorced, without going into detail I was unhappy in my childhood when my mother and me moved in with a bastard (pardon my language) of a stepfather. More and more I descended into my own world, I lived in a world of books and fantasy, my school called in my mother in a couple of occasions to try and deal with my daydreaming as my work was suffering, I would sit alone during school holidays lost in my own thoughts.
About the age of seven or eight a pseudo-Penny emerged,my life was so unhappy that I imagined myself as a girl, thinking that would my life be different as a female?
I started to try on occasional clothing, I remember once making a dress by poking arm holes and a head hole in a bin bag, wearing this with a belt pretending that it was my own dress. My mother and stepfather would go out in the evening leaving me home alone (looking back now leaving me alone makes me so angry), when they thought me asleep I would wait till the door shut and run into my mums room and try on a dress, my heart racing and scared out of my wits as expecting them to return to catch me in the act.
People often think crossdressing is a sexual fetish, but I was doing all this before I even knew about sex, as I child I knew that I had to do this but also knew that this had to be hidden and not disclosed.
As I grew older, dressing became more elaborate, I added undergarments, tights, lipstick. During my late teens I started acquiring clothing, stuff I knew my mum was throwing out would be intercepted and hoarded, but in fear of being caught I would collect them together and walk miles away from home to dump them far away from me.
This was cyclic:- collect and dispose.
I lived in constant fear of being discovered but with this need to express this part of me.
During my twenties, I developed a social life, I suddenly had friends, I worked with people my own age, I went clubbing a few nights a week. I dated women and for the first time began to embrace and enjoy my male side. At this time my dressing wasn't as forefront in my mind, but I would berate myself and feel guilty when I succumbed back to it.
I met a wonderful woman who became my wife, and the mother of my child, and in my mind I tried to box Penny away, my childhood friend and confidant, but she would always come back stronger, each time I would find it harder and harder to keep hiding her away and the guilt grew.
The pressure became too much, after experiencing a wonderful evening out in drag at a Rocky Horror Show with my wife,I knew I couldn't put Penny away any longer and I told her my deepest secret. This was difficult for both of us and going to counselling helped us both to understand that this was a gender issue of mine, that I wasn't gay and wanted to stay married as a male, but I asked if she could also accept Penny.
So there is the why, I have a deep desire to present fully as a female but only on occasions. Do I fully understand it? No,but I have come to terms with it.
So this is where I am now, my wife accepts me for who I am and we live with a simple set of rules:-
1. I don't dress in front of my wife.
2. I tell my wife before I crossdress.
3. I have my own stuff.
4.I don't touch my wife's stuff.
We have both come a long way, we shopped together for my first dress of my own. For Christmas my wife bought me some simple bangles which I love as this was the first time someone had ever bought a gift for Penny. She recently was throwing out some clothes and said I could go through them to see if I wanted anything. I've also been out to a local crossdresser group as Penny with my wife aware of where I was and we both talked about the evening and how it went.
But selfishly I know I want more, I want to share this part of myself with my wife, I'd like to introduce her to Penny, for both of them to be friends.
I also want to learn from my wife, I want to learn how to be a good female: to teach me makeup, what clothes I should wear, and how to behave like a woman when I'm Penny.
My biggest fear is that Penny is a parody of a woman, merely a drag act, when I want her to be a tribute to femininity, I want to blend in and not stand out, I want to complete this side of myself.
Yet I know my wife struggles with my dual nature, she wants me to be masculine, and i also want to be a good husband and father.
When Penny comes out I feel complete, like the last wedge you need in a game of Trivial Pursuit, I've learned when denying that part of me I fail to function and that bottling this up does
me harm, it's finding the balance which is the hardest part.
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