Free from Gender Control
I believe that I will not have to worry about suicide from now and ever, I am honestly so proud to be a woman that it is almost enlightening to be free of the chains of being required to be a man.
As a young man, a boy, I may have never shown signs to you directly because I was doing my hardest to escape the desire to be a woman, to be everything that others wanted. It was really hard, and on my own, I was doing the best I could to hide it. I was scared of how others would interpret it and if I told anyone, that I would be picked on, teased, or even harmed growing up. The fear of coming out and telling people prevented me from doing so for such a very long time. I spent a lot of time imitating other boys and being manly and growing up as I was taught by my father and others. I know it didn’t appear that way because I didn’t seem to act like it, or didn’t express it, but I don’t really have a solid answer other than I was suppressing every waking desire. I wanted so bad to be a cheerleader and a model, I wanted to put on make-up and I wanted to wear all the girl clothes. I wanted to be a girl in every possible way, but at that time I didn’t know how to tell anyone.
I remember a few different times that I attempted to express myself a bit and try to come out as I got into the teenage years and my father or friends at the time would tell me to stop being a sissy, or this is man work, or you need to grow up and be a man. In school, I was picked on for being girly, or sissy like and had to learn to adjust my behavior or I was going to get picked on even more. I did, and I kept doing it until I couldn’t do it anymore when I finally came out. The inner desire after all these years finally screamed so loud that I had to make a decision in my life to come out. I was scared, even then to come out, I was worried that if I did that I would lose my wife, my kids, my family and be outcasted as so many other Transgender people have been.
While I know it is so hard to explain, to understand the desire, the passion, and the motivation to be a female vs being a guy it is hard to process but for me, it was more than a desire, it was everything, it was a moment that if I didn’t do this I couldn’t go on living a lie of my gender my inner self, being me.
There are so many things, so many situations that I tried to tell someone, but each and every time I was expected to be quiet and listen, behave and be a man or boy. I just followed as I was instructed not to know what to do inside, so I did what I was told and learned to pretend all these years. You have to understand that while not everything was pretended, I still enjoyed a lot of my life and the things I have done, but if I could have made different choices about expressing my gender in all of it I would have, I would have redone my whole life as a woman if I could. I wouldn’t ever take back my wife or children, but the gender situation still applies and I don’t know how that would have changed things back then.
My Name Choice:
So like picking my name was something I had back at the age of 12 or 13. I knew that I wanted to be a girl before then but never settled on a name. Of course, I like Japanese culture and Chinese culture so I was influenced by this I believe. The name basically stuck with me ever since and I felt that was who I was and always would be. Throughout the years I never found another name that I liked more than Naomi. So finally when I was able to get my name changed I was proudly able to pick Naomi as my first name. As for my middle name, that took some time and I didn’t really know until about 2 years ago when I first came out. I started picking middle names that would go well with Naomi and Kurz. I wanted to keep my last name because I am proud of our family. So I started thinking hard about it and over time I ended up with La’fae with the apostrophe. Well apparently you can’t have the apostrophe in your social or driver license so I ended up removing it. However, when Separated -La- means the in Spanish, and -Fae- means fairy in fantasy games that I have played. So in translation, the middle name means -The Fairy- Doesn’t really mesh well with any language but for me it made sense. I loved it and that the name I have picked.
This was a letter to a friend/family member and I thought it turned out so beautiful that I would share it. I felt that it was cute and emotional that you all would enjoy it too.
