Fascinating/Identifying

Is it fascination or identification?

I would not say that I have been struggling with this conundrum "all my life". But there are several moments of comfort that I can recall. All these moments of comfort (actually not "all" but at least the ones I have in mind) are ones where I dressed in a "woman's" attire. Other than looking (objectively) pretty, there was also a sense of being in one's own skin. An exhilarating feeling of being extremely true to oneself.

However, these moments have been extremely private, if one discounts the "dressing up as the other gender" that almost every elder sibling subjects their guinea pigs to, in full-family view, often photographed and memorialized. Whenever I have chosen to do those things to myself, it was when no one was looking, no one was present and no one but me had the option to remember or record it.

If it is not in the public, is it not true? No record, so it didn't happen? But that is not even my concern.

Is it even a concern, I wonder? As a kid, I was always interested (that's an understatement) in my mother's saris, what jewelry she paired it with, which bindi she would finish the entire process with, like a cherry on a cake. I was, of course, interested in shopping for myself but the prospect of looking and selecting salwar-kameez and saris from a stack of fabric neatly lined on the shelves of a garment store would fill my eyes with wonder and my body with adrenaline.

I don't remember when exactly I started picturing myself in those pieces of clothing, but I always had this almost thief-like urge to open my mother's cupboard and just stare at the score of saris neatly hung on a rod.

It was not as if I did not enjoy wearing the "gents" (gosh I still laugh when I say this word) outfits. But there has always been a sense that I'd look so much better in my mother's and now, my sister's (she had a terrible sense of fashion back in the day) clothes than mine.

However, there is a huge gap where I remember not feeling that way. I began getting attracted to the boys in my school and thought that if they could somehow peek into my brain and found that I felt that way, they would discard any prospect of getting intimate with me, assuming there was one! And their verbal manifestations didn't help much. The term chakka was used. But in my head, I argued that isn't it better? Shouldn't they be more excited at the prospect of getting intimate with a 'man' who looks/feels like a 'woman', so at least superficially, their sub conscience is satisfied? Half of them were not getting it with a 'woman' anyway.

As of today, I'm at a stage where it is not only a fascination for women's clothing but a desire to wear something that is ''me''. I don't feel fully comfortable in presenting myself to people clothed in half of the things in my wardrobe. I'd rather roam around the house naked than don most of things in the closet. But well, can't really do that (all the time).

And then there's this ugly thing: the penis. I'm increasingly becoming uncomfortable with its sight. But that is a discussion for another time and another post.