Tryla's Story

[Received Oct 1999] [Update April 2004]

I looked like a normal little baby girl. I had a normal looking vagina. Shortly after I was born I had a double hernia. When they fixed the hernias they discovered that I had undecended testis in place of ovaries. They also saw that I had no uterus. They removed one of the testis & placed the other one in my abdomen to be removed at a later time.

I then had surgery again when I was 13 years old. I was told that I was born with no uterus and had to have my ovaries removed because of cancer reasons. Before the surgery I was poked & probed what seemed like a million times by what seemed like a million people. I hated it. I felt like some kind of side show freak. After the surgery I had monthly visits to the doctor. I was put on birth control pills for the hormones. My doctor visits eventually slowed down to every three months, then every six months, and finally once a year. My pills changed as I grew. My hormones were often unbalanced & I was a very emotional teenager.

Every time I went to the doctor he ask me about my social life & wanted to know if I was sexually active yet. Obviously with all this going on & sex being planted in my brain, I started having sex at the very young age of 14 years and 11 months old. My family fell on some hardships when everything we owned was lost in a flood just a short year later. I think everything combined made me go out of control. I got pretty wild. I was having sex with older men and running around late at night and getting drunk. Then I got married when I was 16 years old. I think I was just trying to run away from my unstable life. I was married for 5 years and then divorced. I got married again at the age of 22 to a man who abused me and cheated on me. That marriage lasted almost 5 years. I was then going to join the Army. I wanted money for college.

This is when I found out the truth. I had my Army physical and they obtained my medical records from when I was a baby, records I had never seen. They then proceeded to call me a hermaphrodite. I think I went into shock. I didn't fully understand. They told me that I had testis in place of ovaries. I felt terrible. I then buried the secret deep inside myself and tried to forget about it. Needless to say I didn't join the Army. It wasn't until about one year ago I wanted to start trying to understand what was wrong with me. A decision provoked by reading things in my Biology class in college. I obtained copies of my childhood medical records. I then seen the bucal smear they did on my and it said I was 46XY.

It really freaked my out! I thought, oh my God, I'm a man in a womans body. I had the ultimate sex change done by Dr. Mother Nature. I then started questioning my sexual identity. I ask myself why am I married now for a third time. I Love my husband, don't get me wrong. But maybe I'm just fooling myself. Maybe God wanted me to be a boy but the devil or someone intervened and messed things up. I read that the King James Bible says that People like me should be cast out because we are un pure. I also read that the original Jewish Talmud says that Adam was a hermaphrodite until Eve was taken out of him. I really don't know what to think. But this knowledge has made me remember back to when I was a child. I would play doctor, (naked). I would play it with other girls, not boys. I also used to always read & look at my ex-husbands Playboy magazines. I always said I was just reading the jokes but I also looked at the girls. I have always been fascinated by Lesbians. WHY? I have never had a lesbian experience, but is that just because of the social ramifications I would have to deal with?

I didn't think I had any emotional baggage because I knew from the age of 13 that I couldn't have children. I'm really just trying to make sense of everything. Why do I dream about lesbian sex at night more than I dream about heterosexual sex? Has this new knowledge just got me confused. Would it have been better if I had never found out the truth? Am I just thinking too much & being to analytical? I just found out today that the reason my nipples look the way they do is because they are under developed. I thought they were normal, just different. I know that I never want anyone to see me naked from the waist down because of my lack or sparseness of pubic hair. I never had to shave my armpits but I thought it was just because I was lucky.

My one & only sister who is 7 years younger than me also has AIS.

Tryla sent an update in April 2004, as follows:

The above bio was written about 5 years ago. Since then I feel that I have adjusted very well to the idea of being CAIS. In the last 5 years I joined the AISSG-USA and was not only a member but also served as the President. I was the subject of 2 AIS articles. One in COSMO and one is REDBOOK. I have also fully accepted that I am a lesbian. I have divorced my third husband whom I remain friends with. I realized the reason I could never make it work with a man is because I am a lesbian. I am now a single mother of my 2 beautiful children that I adopted from Kazakhstan. I am in a relationship with a woman. I really feel like I have come full circle with my life.

Tryla