ALL STORY LIST | PARTS - PART 1 | PART 2 | PART 3
NOTE - A heartfelt story inspired by real events, following a transgender girl/woman from our Patreon community. It explores her struggles, identity, courage, and journey toward self-acceptance, highlighting the emotional challenges she faced and the strength she found while embracing her true self in a world that often misunderstood her.
There were three people who were at the center of my life, and they were all female. First and foremost was my mother. Freud said that all little boys are in love with their mothers, that they want to marry them, and want their fathers dead. As everyone knows, that's called the Oedipal Complex.
Resolution of the Oedipal Complex is supposed to come when a boy reaches a certain age, and he realizes he cannot marry his mother, and that he does not really want his father dead. The resolution comes when he decides not to kill his father, but to emulate him, and when he decides not to marry his mother, but to marry someone like her.
Somehow, I never reached that point of resolution. Maybe it's because my mom was a single parent, and there was no father in the picture to begin with. So there was no one to compete with for my mother's affection, no one I wanted dead. And no male role model, either.
For whatever reason, I stayed in love with my mother. But, again, maybe because I had no father to look to, no normal husband-wife relationship to emulate, my love for my mother was different. I felt so close to her that I felt almost as if we were one. I loved everything about her, her beauty, her femininity, her elegance, and I wanted to be just like her. Psychologists have a term for this type of love, too.
It's called a merger. When a person feels so close to another that they feel as if they are one with that person, that is merger. That is a feeling that many toddlers feel towards their mothers, because they are dependent on her for having all of their needs met from the physical, such as food (sometimes in the form of a breast), or having a dirty diaper changed, to the emotional having a mother cuddling the toddler in her arms, and cooing how much she loves him.
But as the toddler becomes a little boy, he realizes that he is in fact a separate person from his mother, and that he is not totally dependent on her for his needs. Resolution of merger is called separation and individuation. Those two things resolution of the Oedipal complex, and separation and individuation often are linked, and occur at around the same time.
Somehow, those two developmental milestones passed me by. So, at the age of 11, I was still completely attached to my mother, and still hopelessly in love with her. It's not that I thought about literally marrying her, but on the other hand, I never pictured a life where we would not be together, or, for that matter, where there would be another person in the picture.
It would always be just the two of us my beautiful mother, surrounded by all of her feminine finery, seated at her vanity, applying her makeup, while I hovered nearby, breathing in her feminine aura as if I were smelling an intoxicating perfume. It was almost as if I expected some kind of osmosis—as if by being near her, some of that femininity would literally permeate my skin, that I would become pretty and girlish, just like her.....
We never spoke of it. I never actually told her that I was in love with her or that I wanted to be just like her. But somehow, I just assumed she knew everything. She knew I was in love with her, more than was normal or healthy for a boy my age, and she knew I worshipped her femininity, more than was healthy or normal for a boy of ANY age.
I didn't know whether she thought it was ok or not, but looking back, I suspect that she chose to simply not think about it. Because while she was the center of my world, I was the center of hers, too, and she couldn't help but bask in the adoration that I showered upon her.
So, consciously or not, she never pushed me away from her, never encouraged me to engage in more masculine pursuits like sports, never encouraged me to find and play with boys. And who could blame her? Without a man in her life, I was the sole source of whatever love and affection she received. And my love was the most precious kind, because it was truly unconditional. Mother knew I would do anything for her.
So, we existed in our little bubble. Very, very few people were allowed in. The two exceptions were mother's sister Anne, and Anne's daughter Isabel. Anne was not just Mother's sister, she was her best friend. And, well, aside from my mother, Isabel was my best friend. Isabel and Anne lived right down the block from us. And I was as often at their house, hanging out with Isabel, as I was at my own. The funny thing was, at least in the early days, even though Isabel was a girl and I was a boy, it sometimes seemed the other way around. Isabel started out as a tomboy. And what was I what is the boy version of a tomboy a Jane Girl? Well, not exactly, because even at that young age we both knew that it was more socially acceptable for Isabel to be boyish than it was for me to be girlish. So, she could be open in her boyishness, but I was careful never to act too girly. I took note of and absorbed every bit of femininity around me, but i was always careful not to actually act on my feelings. As far as I knew, my secret was safe.
Isabel was a pretty girl, with such a pretty name. (How I wished I could have been named Isabel, instead of James! At least my mother, and almost everyone else, called me Jamie...) It just seemed like a waste to me that she did not take advantage of her luck at being a girl to indulge in all of the things that I wished I could have, but was not allowed to....If I were Isabel, I would have had my ears pierced, and I would have lots of pretty earrings (maybe even borrow some of my mother's fancy ones!) I would grow my hair long, and have all kinds of pretty bows and barrettes; my nails would always be painted a pretty color, and I would wear skirts and dresses all the time, and I would beg my mom to put some lipstick on my for special occasions....lol, umm, now, where was I??
Oh, yes, Isabel. Anyway, in spite of all of that, like I said, she was my best friend....we did everything together, but lots of times, we just hung out, not doing much of anything....
Auntie Anne spent as much time with Mother as I did with Isabel....She was almost as pretty as Mother, and almost as nice. Sometimes she liked to tease me a little bit, but I could tell it was all in fun. I think she knew I liked girly things, and sometimes she would make a little bit of fun of me for that. For example, she might come over to our house, and Mother would be at her vanity, trying on some new makeup.
I was usually very close by, maybe paging through one of her fashion magazines. Auntie Anne would come breezing in, giving us both air kisses. She would tell Mother she liked her new eye shadow, and would say to me, "Jamie, you see anything in there that interests you? Any cute outfits or new makeup styles?" I would blush furiously and Mother would have a slight smile crossing her lips.
I would start sputtering something like, "Of course not, I'm a boy!" And Auntie Anne would say, "Of course you are Honey, I know that!
But such a PRETTY boy!" And then she would giggle. And Mother would say, "Oh Annie, stop teasing him! You're just jealous because that daughter of yours would never be caught dead looking through Vogue!" And Annie would say, "True, true. Jamie, maybe you could be a positive influence on her and get her to be more in touch with her feminine side!" With that, she would tickle me a little, and I would relax, and imitate a girlish voice, and say, "Ok Auntie Anne, I will do my best!!"