...A woman with a beard...

I recall a phrase from a favourite book of mine: 'Middlesex', by Jeffrey Eugenides. I read this book 7 years ago - and I found it fascinating. On page 1 (I think) he writes:

Beauty is sometimes freakish.  

Was I a 'girly' girl when I was young? Not really. Apart from the fact that I never played with dolls, I always preferred playing with boys' toys: cars, fire-brigades, spaceships, you call it...

I did have the encouragement of my family - i.e. to behave in a girly manner. 

When I was 11 a family friend took a picture of my face. Frankly, I did not like what I saw in this picture. My face was fat (I was overweight as a teenager), the hat looked silly on me. I certainly felt that the picture was not complete. I took a black marker and I drew a moustache and a beard. 

My mother saw it and she nearly had a heart attack. She was all about taking me to see a psychologist, but she never did. In the following days, after the 'talk' I 'changed' a little bit. I was good at pretending I was girly in my teens, possibly because that was my only way to make and maintain some friends. 

When I was 15, I started noticing some facial hair growing on my chin. I was bullied at school. I told my mum, who suddenly decided to see the elephant in the room and took me to see a specialist, a doctor. I also started hair-removal treatments, for which my family spent a little fortune.

What was discovered was: a) PCOS, b) malfunction of suprarenal glands. My hormones were all over the place. Too many androgens. Aha! That possibly explained why I was too manly. 

I took loads of medicines when I was a teenager. Medicins to alter my hormone levels. I had numerous tests in hospitals too. I was in and out of hospital.

The doctor's words were straight forward:

You should try and get pregnant early in life, if possible, as the older you get, the more you risk infertility problems. 

I NEVER EVER EVER took this issue seriously, to my family's surprise. There is something telling me that I knew, back then, that a child in my life would mean nothing to me anyway. 

I started feeling very manly in my early 30s. I decided that I liked men, but I do have an extremely manly everyday life. A manly profession, manly manners, everything manly! It looks like my attitude is that of a young man. 

And there is something weird there, don't blame paranornal but I feel that I have the 'soul' of a man, trapped inside a woman's body. Yes. This is how I define myself: a woman with a beard. A woman with a man's 'soul'.

In everyday life I play 'woman'. I rarely wear makeup, but I do make an efford to appear womanly. I wear ladies clothes, although I do have some preferences for the clothes I wear (subject of a future post). But people who really know me, love me for who I am. They don't ask me to change. These are the people I value most in life.