[Tommi]

Originally Posted by Dutch Leonard

Over the years, not knowing where I belonged or fit in, I wondered if the transgender thing was for me. Sometimes I felt like I stood on the shore and watched others sail away into manhood, into real lives. I never felt like I was in the wrong body, I just couldn't put into words what it was I was. If someone needs to be a man to be happy, to stay alive, I support that. That is their life to live.

Knowing what I do now, and finding people who get it, I am ok. Not everyone gets it but finding this community has brought me home. If someone thinks I am not butch enough or too butch, she can keep looking.

Hi Dutch,

Glad to see you are being true to you. Here is another community that gets it.. http://www.butchvoices.com/.

No one ever pressured me, probably because I would have just written them off. I have had all the labels that go with being gay, trans, homo, queer, butch, stone, top, etc etc, and , well I cut the labels out of my clothes. People usually see through their own filters and just take what they want.

Since my pre-kindergarten years I identified as a boy. Some transition happened in my brain, and that bio-female body seemed to just morph away. I didn't have words for it, I just felt and saw things through what I now know was being transgender. When I was about 3, I began the journey as Tommi, per my dear Gramma who nicknamed me.

When I was a young adult, I was introduced to testosterone by a butch friend. Back then, doctor's thought I was nuts, so, I "experimented" with it from other sources. Not under doctor's care, no lab tests, we were street druggies I guess. Went to Tijuanna and got it from a doctor/pharmacist down there. I had some pretty nasty stuff going on from it (not monitored dose). Any scratch would bleed profusely. I got sick and was hospitalized twice. I quit taking it after about 6 months, as my liver stuff went out of control. I just went forward as I had before, and am comfortable in my won skin. I have identified as male my whole life I suppose, so I guess I could never be pressured. I am sensitive, romantic, and cry when sad, even when happy, and like the rest of us, just doing this one day at a time.

Check out Butch Voices ~ and ^ 5...