XY or XL?

The other night I was talking with my friend, the guy who moved back to Glasgow. He told me about the various tests that can be done to see if your XX or XY. This kinda got me thinking again. I wonder if there is some kind of biological indicator for me to say that there's something 'wrong'.

I took a test once, when I was a student, it was a psychology test to determine the type of brain I had, male type or female type. Funnily enough, it told me I have a male type brain.

As I'm catching up with friends' youtube videos and hearing them describe the changes that their seeing, early on in their transition, within the first 6 to 8 weeks I'd say, I'm realising that alot of those changes have already happened to me. I'm hairy in places females wouldn't normally be (the backs of my hands and fingers for example), in my teens I had the uncomfortable feeling in my throat and a cracked voice before it dropped (I'd call this my voice breaking but others have disagreed), the muscles in my arms and shoulders bulked up a bit and I noticed veins and tendons becoming more prominent in my forearms, an insatiable hunger (*I* ate all the pies) and other wee things like that.

I'm actually kinda hoping that there is something there that a test will pick up on. Something scientific, something that I can say is proof that I should have been born male, that it's not just all in my head.

Attitudes towards mental health in the UK, Scotland anyway, are somewhat dated. We don't have the same kind of 'therapy culture' that the states does. I have never spoken to a therapist, it's never been suggested to me, I've never had any kind of mental health issues diagnosed, I've never had anyone pick up on my depression. I can remember one time in particular, trying to tell my mum I felt depressed, and she just sort of shrugged it off. I don't believe it was in a callous manner, but just because she really cannot understand it, she has no concept of these things. Another occassion that comes to mind in my teens, I had tried to tell her that I felt lonely, being single, and was depressed by that. Again, she didn't engage me in the conversation, she didn't know what to say.

I think this is part of the reason why I'm reluctant to come out to my parents. I've never been able to talk about things like this with them in the past. It's always been forced and awkward. As I've mentioned before, my coming out to my parents was quite traumatic. Since then, I think I could count on one hand the number of times my being gay has been mentioned. They have never met any girlfriends, they no nothing about my sex life, not that parents need to know everything, but they know absolutely nothing. They've never asked and I don't particularly want to volunteer the information.

I don't really know where this post is going. It's just a bit of brain leakage I think. It's been a busy couple of weeks and I'm not very articulate today. As my school report card always used to say "must try harder".