Bruce Jenner After 7 Yrs of Marriage He Realized it was Just Not Cross-dressing?
Finnaly Bruce Jenner is reached something he was looking for 30 years or more
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| Bruce Jenner at 10 and He already Knew! |
Bruce Jenner’s earliest memories of feeling like he wanted to try something new came at about age 8 or 9. He remembers sneaking into his mother’s or sisters’ closet to dress up in their clothes while they were out.
“I marked the closet so when I put it back I could put it all back, everything back in the exact same spot so I wouldn’t get caught,” Jenner told ABC’s Diane Sawyer in an exclusive interview that aired Friday in a special edition of ABC News’ “20/20.”
“And, at the time, I didn’t know why I was doing it besides it just made me feel good,” he added.
During the interview with Sawyer, Jenner referred to himself using male pronouns and ABC News has chosen to follow his lead, though he also referred to himself as “Bruce” and “her.”
“I like her,” Jenner said. “I look at it this way—Bruce always telling a lie. He’s lived a lie his whole life about who he is. And I can’t do that any longer.”
For the first time in nearly 50 years, Jenner returned to the place where he grew up, Tarrytown, New York, with Diane Sawyer and recounted early memories of putting on dresses and wearing a scarf to hide his short hair.
“You have no idea, no idea, you don’t know what’s up ... and there’s no place to get any information,” Jenner said of growing up during the Eisenhower era before the birth of the Internet.
Jenner remembers envying the boys and girls who were comfortable in their own skin, while feeling like he was “stuck here in the middle.”
The former Olympian described himself as a lonely boy then who is “still a lonely big boy” now.
"I don’t socialize a lot, OK? I’m not like an outgoing person. I don’t socialize a lot. ... I’ve never fit in,” he said. “When you deal with this issue, you don’t fit in.”
In high school, Jenner was a star athlete -- MVP of the basketball, football and track teams. He went on to marry college sweetheart Chrystie Scott in 1972.
Jenner told Sawyer that Chrystie was probably “the first one to know” that he was transgender and struggling with gender identity, though Jenner “didn’t go heavily into it back then” when explaining his feelings.
“I said ‘These are my issues. This is what I deal with,” Jenner said. “And they I think I do a little cross dressing, I do a little of this, a little of that, you know, ‘it’s going to be fine, we’ll work all that stuff out.’”
Jenner made the 1972 Olympic team in the decathlon, but came in 10th place. Jenner returned to the 1976 Olympic Games in Montreal and won the gold medal for the decathlon, giving him the title of the world’s greatest athlete.
After two children and seven years together, Jenner and Chrystie divorced. The Olympian then married songwriter and TV actress Linda Thompson, who had been Elvis Presley’s girlfriend.
The former Olympian fell into a deep depression and lived alone in a house in Malibu.
In the late 1980s, Jenner sought a therapist for the first time, and started taking hormones.
By the early 1990s,
Jenner remembers having breasts that were “a good solid 36B.
”He also altered his face, getting surgery on his nose and electrolysis to remove his beard.
He continued to work as a motivational speaker and while the main event was arguably his addresses to the crowds,
the travel that came wiengagements meant something else as well.
“I would walk off the stage and I would feel like a liar. I’d say ‘You’ve just got no guts…’”
Jenner said. “And then I’d literally go up into the hotel room, change [into women’s] clothes,
and walk aroAround this time, Jenner decided to finally tell someone in his family what he was going through.
“I couldn’t believe it,” Jenner’s older sister Pam Mettler said.
“I didn’t understand really what he was saying.”
“When I drove home from that dinner that night, I cried the whole way.
I could hardly see the road for the tears,” Mettler said.
“I guess the tears were for me – but they were for him mostly, the pain that he experienced as a child.”
But the two didn’t speak about it again for more than 30 years.
Bruce Jenner “I had the story”
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