I think all of us who have strong fetishes in our lives have read the studies about what causes these to develop as we enter puberty and beyond.
My childhood was unusual and even though I attended counselling to try to understand why I have the desires I have I was never completely convinced by the opinion provided by the psychiatrist.
While we generally can not accurately remember our lives prior to age four or five I was able to piece together those first few years in my early 20's based on photo albums I discovered after my parents passed away suddenly as well as discussions with my much older cousins and other relatives.
I am an only child and my parents were fairly old fashioned European parents where my mom was a stay at home mother and my dad worked long hours, travelled for business and did not get involved in child rearing matters. Through my entire childhood my mother and I were very close and it was often just her and I at home while my father travelled.
I recall even at a young age I was more attracted to girl's toys and dolls than the traditional boyish toys. I had long blond hair as a toddler and preschooler and in those early years I had vague recollections of being encouraged to explore my girlish interests and much of my clothing definitely had a more feminine look.
At age four or so I remember my mother changing my clothing to more boyish clothing when we visited relatives. I didn't ever question why I wore pink, my clothing had ruffles and at bedtime I wore nightgowns rather than PJ's.
One of my first discoveries when I was cleaning out my parents home after my father's sudden death and my mom abruptly deciding to move from our family home to a their summer home was a number of photo albums that I had never seen before. What I discovered was that my parents had a little girl prior to me and from what I could piece together she passed away at age three at about the same time that I was born. The other albums shocked me because what I saw were pictures of me dressed in feminine clothing well into my toddler and preschool years.
I learned from relatives that my mother had a terrible time after my sister's death and she compensated for this by dressing and treating me like a baby girl. My mother was extremely protective of me while I was growing up even into my teenage years. This will be the subject of many more postings in the future.
The other discovery I made was that even after I was potty trained at the normal age I was put in cloth diapers and plastic pants (this was the 1960's...pre disposibles) every evening until the next morning. This went on well into my school age years and the few times I questioned her on why she reassured me that it was normal for youngsters to be diapered and I also tended to have wetting accidents which was very true. My mom was always hyper sensitive to a messy home and clearly changing wet bedding was not something she wanted to deal with.
When I began to enter the age of remembrance (normally age four or five) I recall asking my mom why I wore girl's clothes sometimes and boy's other times and she would never really answer other than say she loved in cute dresses, playing and buying me dolls, etc. What I still have difficulty grasping is why I did not desire boy's toys and playing with the neighborhood boys. Most of my friends were little girls often a year or two younger than me and to be honest I enjoyed it.
The next posting will deal with my school age years and some of the incidents I ember vividly to this day.
