When I was a boy, but I should have been a girl

Summary

The content reflects on the personal journey of Emma Holiday, who grapples with gender dysphoria from a young age and secretly harbors a female identity, which she nurtures as her "secret garden" until she is able to openly transition.

Abstract

Emma Holiday recounts her childhood experiences, where she felt compelled to hide her desire to be a girl, despite the strong and persistent nature of these feelings. Her narrative touches on the conflict between her internal sense of self and the external expectations placed upon her, as she was given traditionally male toys and corrected for showing feminine interests. Holiday describes her childhood as a time when she learned to conceal her true identity, which she cherished in private. She shares her dreams of living as a girl, which provided her with solace and hope, contrasting with the disappointment of waking up to the reality of her assigned gender. Holiday's story is one of resilience and self-discovery, as she moves from a place of secrecy and shame to one of acceptance and openness about her gender identity.

Opinions

The author believes that her gender dysphoria was an inherent part of her, which needed to be acknowledged and embraced, rather than suppressed.
She conveys that her feminine desires were a source of joy and happiness, representing her true self, which she felt was not seen or accepted by others.
Holiday suggests that her transition was a natural and necessary growth, likening it to a garden that needed to flourish.
She expresses that writing about her experiences serves as a form of therapy, helping her to process and accept her transition.
The author aims to reach out to other transgender individuals to share in the understanding of their experiences and to alleviate their sense of loneliness.
Holiday also intends to educate cisgender people, advocating for understanding, acceptance, and the recognition of transgender individuals as normal people deserving of respect and equality.

Ciphering through the fragments of my earliest memories

Looking back 60 years can be a challenge when trying to remember many things, except when the images and experiences are so forceful that they permanently are imprinted in your private biography library, the one only you get to see. It is there where the secret truths about you reside and are never shared with others. They stay along with the guilty pleasures and personal crimes that mark your soul for your viewing pleasure or guilt only. It is there that your skeletons hide next to your hidden joys.

That is where I hid the girl from the world.

My first thoughts about who I was and I that I didn’t feel “right” was after I was corrected repeatedly by my mother for wearing her makeup or playing with her nylons. I couldn’t understand what I did wrong. She never punished, but she always corrected me. I always got boys toy: GI Joes, Tonka trucks, water guns and the like. After a while she stopped correcting me and just ignored my sneaky invasions into her things. I am sure she just hoped my female interests would go away and I would outgrow them. Instead I hid them better, and they just got buried deeper from view, anyone’s view.

My female dreams and desires became my secret garden.

I would lay in bed and daydream about a life and world where I was a girl. I started with nighttime prayers and then started to wish that magic would would transform me. I would get to be a ballerina and wear a fluffy tutu. I would laugh and giggle with my best friend as she combed my long hair and braided it into a French braid. I would fall asleep hoping that my dreams would carry on where my thoughts left off as I lay in bed with my head on my pillow.

They usually didn’t and I would wake up in the morning sadly putting on my boys clothes …

My wishful dreams never went away. They were always filled with hope and joy and happiness. It was a place where I could create the friends and my family to be what I wished they would be. To be seen for who I was and not what they saw.

My world would be filled with the flowers that I knew I held inside of me.

I realize now that my gender dysphoria was just my garden telling me it was time to grow.

Emma Holiday

Thank you for reading my work.

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My writing has three specific goals:

1. Writing is my therapy. I have a very limited outlet for my thoughts so I write to find a way to process the most profound experience in my life. I need to understand and I need to accept myself to move forward.

2. Being transgender, for me, is a very lonely existence and if I can share some of the things that I feel and think as I go through the process of transitioning with others who are transgender and, in some way, lessen their pain and sense of loneliness, then all of this public exposure of my personal thoughts is not a waste.

3. I write to help cisgender people understand that all trans people want is to be simply understood, accepted and treated as a normal person. We are.

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