A Message to My Younger Self
I found this photo on the internet and I’m pretty sure it’s been created using AI. It hit home hard because it’s a very clear representation of how I felt as as a heartfelt, formative and confused young teenager.
Before sexual maturity and while I was still pre-adolescent, I was a child who could love very intensely. I fell in love so many times with so many girls. Not with the girly girls, but like the girl in this photo, almost always tomboys. Girls in sneakers and jeans who would climb trees with me, hang out in tree houses, and if I was really lucky, they might hold my hand occasionally. This would often lead to Dr’s and Nurses games too, taking inquisitive peeks at the unpeekable.
All this time, I had a deep feeling that I was also a girl.
I desperately wanted to wear a pretty dress, shiny black patent shoes, have my hair in ribbons, and be loved while being ‘that way’. This never happened of course, not even remotely. And so it became a shadowy obsession. I knew deep in my heart that I would never be accepted this way, and so the obsession grew.
This picture represents an alternative reality for me, one that could never be, certainly as a Gen X’er. Especially not in the world that I grew up in. Today perhaps it’s more possible, and I celebrate that freedom for the younger people in our communities.
As I reached sexual maturity, then this image in my fantasy mind evolved and became more sexual in nature.
I was no longer a young child in a dress, and she was no longer a tomboy girl. We were mature adults, and “Rocky Horror” became the next step for me, a place where I could dress as the filthy, slutty version of me, in stockings and corsets. And the girls did the same too. It became an overwhelmingly erotic and exilirating experience for me, as well as an unleashing, offering a freedom I had never felt previously. God bless Rocky Horror.
Part of me feels deep melancholy and sadness for this version of me, the one in the picture (Not Rocky Horror me, she was fucking fabulous). The boy in the picture who wanted to be a girl, who could never become that girl and could never feel love, affection, freedom, the touch of another. Perhaps most of all, what he longed for most, was the loving gaze of another who knew who he was. It was simply impossible.
I can’t dwell on the past, but I do have to acknowledge that it did shape some of the patterns of my present and recent past. And I hope that in the future, I can work toward resolving the pain, suffering, and yes, the shame that set me on a path for a very difficult and challenging romantic and sexual adulthood.
So my final thought for the GenZ’rs out there, the youngsters.
I encourage you to embrace who you really are. Whether surgery and medication is the right choice for you is your decision, but above all, I think the best advice I can give is ‘just do you’. It’s a message I try to live by, and wish I could report that I am successful. In reality, I do my best every day, usually miss the mark, but maybe that is good enough.
Personally, if I could go back to that teen version of me, I wouldn’t change my body. I would however, change my clothes and the way that I existed, played, loved, and experienced the world around me, surrounding myself by a tribe of people who didn’t just accept me but who celebrated me. And hopefully, a handful of people would adore me for being this courageous, authentic, honest, and yes, adorable version of me.
Just do you, just be you, and the world will change around you to accept and embrace your authentic self. And for me, I am sending a huge loving embrace back in time to that version of me, and telling her, it’s going to be OK.
JennyX
Real crossdressers doing them: read their stories in the 2025 Community Survey. Or if you need a push: how Jenny overcame the fear.
I live for all things feminine—stockings, heels, scarlet nails, and above all, the intoxicating touch of another woman. A translesbian muse and unapologetic hedonist, I share my most divine and wicked misadventures in words and now as a podcaster too. All gurls welcome. You are gorgeous. Just like me. xxx
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