Tales From Under the Maple Tree

Have you ever travelled to and from work, packed into an overcrowded subway train, day in and day out, wondering why you have been doing this for twenty-seven years with only the occasional holiday to relieve
the tedium of your existence?

Well I had - it had become a recurring theme that I had become burnt out on, working as a fairly Senior Manager  within a major tech company. Oh sure, the money was good and I loved my wife and two children dearly, so it wasn't all bad, it was just that the monotony of my daily existence was driving me mad - that and the travelling - there must be
more to life than this.

Little did I know then, that I was about to find out.

I had been born Jeremy Blanchette and was now in my mid-forties, overweight, overstressed, and established on a career that I would find it hard to escape from (unless that decision was taken for me in the form of downsizing, which was currently a very real, looming threat).

I was in a stress filled, sexless marriage, with two sons age twelve and fifteen, and had few personal aspirations apart from an early retirement followed by a
long period of self-indulgence.

In short, my life was one I desperately dreamed of escaping. Additionally, I had always had a thought, a feeling tucked away in the deep recesses of my mind, that never goes way. A niggling that I should have been someone else, even as young as when I was twelve or thirteen years old, and I found an unusual way to cope with my dilemma.

For as long as I can remember I had always had this fantasy that my life would have been infinitely better, had I been born female. I don't know why, I was a normal heterosexual male, and not unhappy with it, it's just that somehow I had convinced myself that I would have been happier if I had been born a girl.

It started around the time I entered puberty. I used to get beat up a lot for being perceived as not masculine enough. I was a small, frail, timid boy with no ability to stand up for myself.

I used to dream of awaking one day to find my current life as a boy had been a bad dream and I was actually a beautiful young girl with a bright future ahead of her, a girl who was admired, loved, respected, and not picked on by anyone. I knew this was never going to happen so I used to spend my time fantasizing about what I might have been like if the fates had been kinder.

I would admire the female acquaintances around me, usually the girls at my school, and I'd imagine what it would have been like if I had been one of them. I'd center my thoughts on one single girl and then try to imagine I was her, and dream about living out her life.

All the things, even those no doubt mundane to her, such as wearing dresses, brushing her hair, playing dolls, having to sit to pee, and other dull daily girly things, all of those unreachable things, seemed so exciting.

I had countless hours of pleasure, lost in my dreams, living a fantasy life that I had convinced myself would have been infinitely better than the lot I had unfortunately been delt.

I convinced myself that it was unfair how much better girl's had it, with all the beautiful styles of clothes, the infinite choices of dresses, skirts, pants, blouses, all the many amazing types of shoes, hair styles, bows, ribbons, rings, bracelets, nail styles and colors, the pretty earrings, the hosiery, the ability to change your appearance with make-up, all the wonderful things forbidden for boys to enjoy.

As I grew older my thoughts matured to imagine what it would have been like to be a young female adult attending college and blossoming into the kind of woman she would become. And then my fantasies turned to disappointment at not getting to experience life as a homemaker, a submissive, supportive, traditional stay-at-home wife with modestly sized breasts, moderately attractive features, and a loving husband who took care of all my needs, as I also passionately took care of his. I'd even spend a modest amount of time imagining what it would have been like to have my perfect hunk of a husband passionately penetrating my warm, moist love canal two or three times a week, or more, whenever he needed, in order to express his love and admiration for me while using me to release the pent up stresses of his upper level corporate job.