Dreams

Now here you go again

You say you want your freedom

Well who am I to keep you down

Its only right that you should

Play the way you feel it…

So singeth Stevie Nicks in the song, "Dreams", from one of my favourite all-time albums – "Rumours".

Robyn started a thread in the forums recently about recurring dreams. I posted a response about my recurring theme of a dream which I briefly mentioned I think in my first ever blog. The dreams I had as a very young child were so important to my self-discovery that I felt it appropriate to include the forum post in my blog. The dream, basically that I was, and had been born a girl was a pivotal moment in the realisation of my own identity. To have such an epiphany at so young an age went a long way towards the formation of my personality, and how I was later to deal with the ongoing internal struggle known as gender dysphoria. Indeed, for one’s life to "pivot" when it had really only just begun is significant, in fact remarkable to me; I never really felt male. I always knew my body wasn’t right, nor my role in society which in later years would be forced to manifest itself, one way or another.

Armed with the knowledge of who I really was helped me get through life for many years without some of the turmoil perhaps that some of us go through. I just accepted it as part of me. Perhaps it would have been better if, instead of some strange sense of security about my own identity, I had become totally screwed up about it, and sought professional help many years ago. I’m not saying I was ever happy about being female in a male body, just that I accepted it, and tried to bumble along without it "getting to me". It did get to me though; all along it got to me in certain ways, but never sufficiently apocalyptic for me to change things. I got down, I got unhappy about this and that, looking the way I did, having to behave in certain ways, and so I got drunk, or generally tried to find some escape from the niggly little things that never went away. I’ve spent most of my life "going along with things", playing in bands because people asked me to, having friends because they were the people who happened to be around me, doing things that everyone else was doing… Never proactive; never doing what I wanted to do, just bumbling along.

It’s that lack of positive direction that got me past 40 without, as a friend used to say, "doing something about myself". I regret being such a drifter, having such little purpose in life, though I am of course proud of what little achievements I have made, despite them being more or less stumbled upon, simply because I was just going along with other people at the time.

Some say gender dysphoria intensifies with age, maybe we just realise we are getting old and we don’t want to spend the rest of our life in this state of limbo, secretive, unable to express our true selves in public, I’m not sure. But like many others I’d had enough. It wasn’t a sudden epiphany like my early childhood dreams, more a gradual one. Stepping out of the hotel in Edinburgh with Cathy that first time I was ever dressed in public felt like kind of an epiphany, but perhaps it was more of a catalyst; the beginning of a chain reaction of events that would eventually lead me to change my body and live my life the way I always felt I was supposed to. The way my childhood dream had showed me how I truly felt abut myself, all those many years ago.

Here’s the forum post, for those who haven’t already read it:

"Running away from something but going nowhere", or "being chased and struggling to get away" sort of dreams are said to represent anxiety or entrapment, so it’s no wonder TG people living in the "wrong" gender have these sort of dreams.

I used to have sort of a recurring dream when I was young, in that it wasn’t the same dream, but I was always wearing the same skirt - short, green gingham. I can’t remember what I was wearing on top, so I suppose it might have been a dress. I think I started having these sort of dreams when I was 4 or 5 and they went on for 2 or 3 years, so long ago it’s hard to be sure. Apart from the gingham skirt, the recurring theme was that I was a girl, I’d always been a girl, everyone took that for granted, as they did with any other girl. They were normal dreams, not weird or nightmarish, I was just playing with the other kids in familiar surroundings like our back garden, school playground, just being myself. It felt so comfortable being myself, unlike in the real world, that I often tried to get back to sleep upon waking from this dream to get back to that place where everything felt right.

I think this dream was kind of a revelation to me even at such an early age; the way I felt when I woke from it, realising that if I got up I’d have to put on my boy clothes and be… a boy. Ugh. I knew for sure I wanted to be a girl, and felt that something had gone wrong, but innocently assumed that somehow when I grew up nature would put it right. So I just went along with it, being happier in my dreams than I was in real life.

The dreams showed me why I felt kind of awkward in real life. I was so young when I first had them that it was before I’d really given any thought to who I was, whether I was happy or not, whether I felt right as a boy or whatever. To me, this seems to reinforce, if not prove altogether, the theory that we are born TG. I was too young to give it any conscious thought, to even understand the implications, but my subconscious knew alright, my identity was there from the beginning, before I’d even had chance to think about it.

I must have grown out of the cute little gingham skirt in my dreams; the dreams eventually stopped and I no longer had a place where I could find refuge. I often had the "being chased dream" after that. I always felt like I was trying to run in treacle, desperate to get away but only able to run in slow motion. I never even thought that meant anything, but if it signifies that I felt trapped, then it all makes sense. I couldn’t get away from my own body, or my gender role. Or so I thought…

It may just be coincidence, but since I started to piece my jigsaw of a life together to make the picture on the front of the box, I haven’t had the "running away dream". I’m either female in my dreams now, or just not aware of what I’m wearing, perhaps it’s become irrelevant. The only times that I am vaguely male in my dreams is if I dream of a situation or a person that I haven’t yet come across since I transitioned, and that’s pretty rare.

I think I was generally a bit of a dreamy kid, one teacher even commented on my daydreaming in an early school report, but you can’t blame me can you; dreamland was the only place I really felt comfortable! However, I no longer need to find solace in my dreams, and feel I can cope with the real world just fine.

(Post ends)

It’s no wonder that people like us get involved with drink or drugs, trying to avoid reality and re-live their childhood dreamlike state. But you can’t escape from reality, you just have to change it to suit you.

More wise words from Stevie:

"Thunder only happens when its raining…"

So, control the weather, stop the rain, and you’ll no longer need to hide under that umbrella. If you don’t let it rain on you, the terrifying thunder will cease.

Sweet dreams everyone.

xx