Growing up as Transgender
I’m a computer engineer so by nature I construct and fabricate ideas into material things. Pulling information together to create a cohesive solution is what I do best. For years, however, I never put together some of the seemingly disparate components of my own life in relation to understanding who I was really was and am. As a child growing up, I was constantly reminded by my parents that I was a boy and not a girl. Toys which I played with of my sister’s were taken away. Doll houses I played with mysteriously disappeared, stuffed animals were thrown away and the pages from the girl’s section of the Sears Christmas Wishbook with the items I had circled and longed for were ripped out. I never voiced that I was a girl but I felt I was somehow not like the other boys. I didn't have a word for who I felt I was back at that age. When I was given a train set, I became immersed in the possibilities of creating my own world through a model railroad empire. It was a fantasy world of my