I know, I know, but…

Well, I just took my medication, and things are “interesting” in the Chinese curse way.

I’m a bit down, if you weren’t able to tell that from the title. I feel good about this blog, and I’m glad to see that it’s gaining popularity. I do tend to note that it seems that when I post a story, people coming here jumps massively. Interesting that….

“What am I depressed about” you might ask? I’m depressed because of what I wasn’t able to do when I was young.

I have been reading a lot of American Cheerleader Magazine, as you might have guessed from the last several posts. I got my issue in the mail and I’m slowly devouring it from cover to cover. That led me to a story idea and I then wished to illustrate that story with pictures of real cheerleaders (college age). I found a lot of pictures I could use, and I’m grateful for that.

What happened next is where things get bad. My brain has a tendency to spiral away from my control if I don’t watch it very carefully. That’s what started happening. I saw the pictures, the smiles, the excitement to be there, the enthusiasm, and just the Joy in Life, and I missed having that.

Understand, my male self wasn’t an athlete, he was a dweeb. In fact, he was the school photographer for the Newspaper. He loved doing that. Still has his negatives from that time. It was a passion of his just like Karate. He tried Wrestling a couple times, he tried Aerobics in the afternoon, but he fell down each time. He wasn’t an athlete.

I wasn’t on the cheerleading team, I wasn’t athletic, I didn’t have good coordination. As part of that, I wasn’t accepted.

I think part of any TS person’s desire with cheerleading is the automatic acceptance that seems to go hand in hand with cheerleading. Forget for a minute the cute uniforms (that many would kill to be in). Forget the popularity that also seems to be part of the whole scene. There is an acceptance of the cheerleader in nearly every aspect of school life that transcends mere popularity. By being on the team, it is almost as all doors of the cheerleader’s life are opened automatically, and those doors stay open long after they close for others.

They are always perky. They are always excited. They are always happy. I know in the reality of things that isn’t the case, this is the perceived reality that I’m talking about here. When someone is always smiling, how can you be sad around her? When someone is always giving out 110%, who can give less around them?

Even years later it seems that those same girls are always doing what they did in college and high school, cheering everyone around them up and on. And because of that they are LIKED.

Now contrast that with the normal TS MtF kid. They typically are down because something is wrong, and they don’t know what it is. Or they might know, but they can’t do anything about it. Or they can do something about it, but they live in fear that they will be caught by their parents/siblings/friends. They want to be like those they see around them, even the problem girls, and they can’t. They want to be happy, but there is this big thing in their life which is always going “this is wrong”.

One of the best stories I have read that explains how it feels for TS kids is the story “Shoes”. Go read it and I’ll wait.

Done? Good. That’s what it is like for us, all the time. Like we are wearing our shoes on our hands, or the wrong feet. It’s uncomfortable, it’s hard, you can adjust to it, you can come to terms with it, but nothing makes it right.

Then you come to the time when you grow up and become middle-aged. Now you are at a point in your life when you CAN do something about it, but mostly it’s too late. All the things I wanted and could have been aren’t appropriate for a 40-something, but for a 20 something at best. Oh, I know there are groups out there of older cheerleaders, but that’s the odd duck. Plus, can you see ME in a uniform shaking my ass on the field in front of people? Not till I get a lot of surgery.

So all that brought me down.

And I know it’s unrealistic to say that cheerleaders are ALWAYS happy. I know they cry, but even when they are sad they still smile, and they cry beautifully. Is that artifice or is it truly their nature?

Anyhow….

Mini-Biography:  Joy is a transvestite who has been using her stories as a form of therapy. At this point she has no desire to undergo the full transition, but that might change some day. Read more about her story at My Story on this site.