Born in the Wrong Body — Martin Brant

When she looked in the mirror she saw a man. During puberty her body had changed in a way that broke her heart. When the other girls were talking about pending dates and trying out for the drill team, she was sitting alone in her room on Saturday nights and her father expected her to join the basketball team. When the other girls at school were trying different colors of lipstick and admiring their developing breasts in the mirror, she was shaving her chin and looking at a male organ that had gotten larger and darker.

She couldn't understand why she didn't fit in. Through puberty and her early teenage years, she never felt an urge to act or look masculine. She just wanted to be herself, which meant a perpetual struggle to be accepted, failing no matter how hard she tried to fit in. She identified with the girls, but didn't look like them. She looked like the boys, but couldn't understand why they liked to play baseball, hit each other on the arm, or yell catcalls at the girls. But by the time she finished high school, she had a plan.

After college, two years into her new career and a long regimen of hormone therapy, she finally looked like a woman. Her breasts had developed and her hips had taken on soft round curves. She wore heels and flowing dresses and carried a purse. Mind, body and soul, she was completely female, except for the final operation: genital reassignment surgery. She didn't know that she would fall in love with a wonderful man before that day came, nor was she ready for the challenge of telling him her secret.