Burn it to the ground and start again

Lots of things are natural it doesn’t mean that I would want them. Cholera is natural. Hell pregnancy is natural but it doesn’t mean everybody needs to get pregnant.

personally were I to have that personal issue I would give the hormone therapy a try. and if it sucked coming off it because I had to because of some side-effects that’s just the price you pay for trying to improve things.

my strong conviction is that natural does not equal good and that unnatural does not equal bad.

as for accidental pregnancy surely the best way to avoid not knowing is to test regularly if you’re sexually active. Which is actually also the same principal as STDs.

I mean one stick is generally less than a fiver and doing it every two or three weeks isn’t going to break the bank.

also you know you don’t get a lot of the lesbians getting pregnant accidentally.

Not really, because it can mess up your body when you have to start having them again, like it or not periods are a natural part of a womans life, the other thing is even if you have irregular periods you can still end up pregnant, you will just think it's normal until you wonder why your stomach is swollen and 6 months without a period is a long time even by your own standards.

Many people actually feel worse for having their hormones mucked around with, you get told it's the answer to everything, but it's really not.

I’m aware some people struggle with side-effects from birth control medication. That’s straightforward enough to understand. I had a friend who went on the implant. The first and most noticeable side-effects he had was a cup size went up one. But after a few months were some other  side-effects that  meant she felt she wanted to discontinue.

what I don’t understand is how stopping menstruation could be a bad thing for any woman who  doesn’t want to get pregnant. Surely this can only be a positive.

No Peter, suppressing menstruation can be as bad as having it and the pills don't suit everyone.

You might be right. As I say it’s impossible to know for sure. One thing I can say is most women can completely suppress a period simply by taking the right medication. It might be difficult to get a doctor to go along with that, but a slightly different variation of the birth control pill will completely suppress periods for most women.

The problem most young women seem to have compared to the boys who are the children of Conservative parents is it there are parents are obsessed with preventing them from losing their ‘virtue.’ That said Conservative parents really do not know how to handle lesbian daughters. They be like, ‘couldn’t you be a little bit more interested in the boys?’ And they know they can’t ban them from hanging around with the girls because that’s basically the same as banning them from having a social life.

I remember once going to a Christian summer camp is a kid. It had a super strict single sex only rule for tents. I’m walking back over the campsite at night I heard three girls singing ‘we are all lesbians in a tent together and we like it so very much.’ None of the usual conservative purity strategies work when it comes to lesbians.

And of course once you move away to university that’s the limit of their control anyway.

I suppose that’s another thing I would’ve changed I would definitely have moved away to university even if just into halls of residence in the same city.

I think you'd just have different problems if you were female, you'd have the hassle of periods too.

I know people will probably find this controversial, but I would give serious consideration to being born a woman. I can see lots of advantages.

The first and most obvious is I think I would find it easier to form romantic / sexual connections as a lesbian. Yes it's smaller dating pool but casual sex and being overtly forward is much more normalised than for heterosexual couples. Maybe not to the extent of gay men but I could just never imagen myself as a gay dude. Frankly being blunt and direct and in your face about what I want and what I'm offering would suit me much much more as a dating style.

I think it would be easier to form social connections as a woman. I have known a number of 'quirky' girls in my time with autistic like traits who I suspect were on the spectrum. One or two of them were apparently hypersexual and traded off their flirtatious and lewd behaviour to gain male and female attention as the 'party girl.' It was actually quite effective in helping them construct social groups that seemed to revolve around them. I've spent most of my life being labelled as creepy for talking about weird things and having generally poor social / nonverbal skills. I'd swap that for the social stigma that society tends to attach to (apparently) promiscuous women in a heartbeat.

Actually, it’s been my observation that a lot of these ‘promiscuous’ women are not actually that promiscuous. Or at least no more so than the men around them. They’re just not afraid to talk about sex or make it clear that they like and want sex.

I would have felt less pressured as a child to do team / ball sports / athletics which totally turned me off and I think I would have experienced less resistance to doing things I did like as a child like dance and gymnastics. Maybe even martial arts. My parents were always concerned martial arts might cultivate violent tendencies. They might have been less worried about this were I girl. This would have had knock on benefits for my health.

Statistically assuming I didn't have children I'd be likely to live longer and earn more as a woman.

As a girl I would have had the best of both worlds. Fancy dresses or casual t shirts. If I do male type activities like engineering / video gaming I’m a tom boy. If I do feminine ones like fashion, I’m just a girly girl.

The other thing I think I would do differently is push hard to go to a state school for my GCSEs / A levels (15-18).

As dreadful as my social skills may have been I think it would have gone better for me socially that way.

I think educationally I'd probably have gone to university on time instead of 3 years late if I'd been in school. Maybe. It would really depend on the school. I had the dyslexia diagnosis by then (13) so I would have got some special support.

Actually, that's the 3rd thing I would have changed. Get the autism diagnosis at 13 or before. So, I could go to school at 15 with a diagnosis of dyslexia, autism and them knowing I have an IQ of 123. That way I think I'd have got enough leeway and assistance to excel at school.

Aside from that I’m not sure what I would change. For all their flaws I couldn’t imagine growing up with a different family. A different neighbourhood of the same city maybe. It’s not just that it was a bit ‘rough.’ As a bit of an ethnic ghetto the kids in my area didn’t always seem to speak great English and tended to keep to themselves. I might have had more friends in the neighbourhood in another postcode.

But ultimately, we will never know for sure if these things would play out as we imagine. It’s all just speculation.

Honestly it depends how fundamental a do over do you mean by 'start again?' Is it like being born again but like a video game I get to create my charicter from scratch? Or do you just mean pick a difrent career or something?

I wouldn't change much, but I would have shunned meds with the benefit of hindsight.

I'm quite happy with my life now, if I had my time again then maybe I'd train to become a midwife. So many parts of early life are beyond ones control, so I'm not sure how it would be different, unless I had different parents etc, but then I wouldn't be me and I like me.

As in the Lyrics to the Johnny Cash song Hurt

"If I could start again
A million miles away
I would keep myself
I would find a way"

I just remember it being called PNEU

Pattaya was also a vacation resort for US military  officers. We were stationed in Bangkok,Thailan for 5 years, 1965-1970. Did you attend the ISB (international School of Bangkok)?

I’d go to live in a cottage in a remote Scottish Island, the further from the mainland and the more remote the better 

I have fond memories of Pattaya when it was still a small place in the early 1960s( 1961-1964). We'd stay in a beach hut like this, when my father had time off from working at the British embassy in Bangkok.

I spent 17 years living abroad - Ghana, Thailand, and El Salvador as a child and Saudi Arabia and Lebanon as an adult. Lving abroad was interesting and while I did like the food, I missed the conveniences of mordern American life. I've been stateside since 1999 and have no iintention of travelling abroad again.

I now escape and go on adventures using my imagination. I write children's books (but have yet to make any money doing this). 

I also belong to Steam which is an on-line gaming distribution platform. Right now I'm playing Galactic Civilizations III in which I'm exploring, colonizing, and in some cases, conquering my way across the galaxy. 

Love myself more 

Go to America.