In the Shadows of Lotte:A Journey Through Shame and Self-Discovery(Part Two)

This is Part Two of In the Shadows of Lotte: A Journey Through Shame and Self-Discovery, following on from Part One, which I published in October 2025. 

 

The following took place in July 2020. 

  

It was my wife’s suggestion that I rent a storage unit. The idea was simple enough: reclaim some wardrobe space and finally clear out the attic. But deep down, I knew it was more than that. The clutter in our home had become a silent testimony to something I wasn’t willing to face. I had reached a point where I couldn’t continue like this, not with the endless piles of clothes, shoes, and accessories slowly taking over my life.

I’d been struggling to put away my everyday clothes for months. They sat in a heap at the edge of the bed, a constant reminder of my inability to keep things in order. Every day I promised myself I would tidy up, but the promise was always broken. It was easier to leave the mess where it was than to confront what it represented: my need for escape, my need for release, and my compulsion to buy.

When I finally took the step and called around for storage quotes, I told myself it was a practical solution.

"Just clear the attic. It’ll be fine."

But the truth was, I was avoiding the inevitable reckoning with my addiction. I convinced myself that renting a storage unit would solve the problem, that if I could move the clutter somewhere else, perhaps I could move the guilt with it. Deep down, though, I knew I couldn’t outrun it forever.

I found a unit that suited my budget and gathered boxes, some salvaged from work, others ordered from Amazon. I was bracing myself for the task ahead, but no amount of preparation could have prepared me for what was about to unfold.

It was on a Saturday morning that I finally began emptying my wardrobe.

My wife, ever patient and supportive, offered to help, but I hesitated. There was no way to do this without her seeing how much I had accumulated, and how much I had hidden. Not just the physical stockpile, but the emotional one too. She would see everything: the secrecy, the compulsion, the countless attempts to fill a void I barely understood myself.

As I started unloading the wardrobe, I realised how closely it mirrored my emotional state: cluttered, suffocating, and out of control. I knew it was bad, but seeing everything spread across the bed made it undeniable. The weight wasn’t just in the clothes themselves; it was in every decision that had brought them into my life.

There were dresses, more than I could count. Thirty? Forty? It felt endless.

Each one stood as a monument to a fleeting hope that this purchase might somehow quiet the restlessness inside me. Some were sparkly, others plain. Some fitted, others loose. Halternecks, skater dresses, bodycons, minis, and full-length gowns.

I had dresses for every occasion that would never come.

Each one had been bought in a moment of compulsion, driven by a voice inside me that refused to be ignored.

And then there were the heels: strappy, peep-toe, block-heeled, stiletto, four-inch, five-inch. And the boots: ankle-length, knee-high, thigh-high.

Almost all of them black patent leather.

Its mirror-like shine had captivated me since my first year of secondary school, when I first discovered its strange, irresistible pull. Ten pairs of heels. One pair of ankle boots. Two pairs of knee-high boots. Two pairs of thigh-highs.

I had convinced myself they would make me feel something. Something other than what I was: a man who felt out of place, trying to buy his way out of his own skin.

As I stood looking at everything spread before me, another truth emerged.

None of it had ever been enough.

Every purchase had brought a brief rush of relief, only for the feeling to fade and leave me searching again. Another dress. Another pair of heels. Another wig. Always believing the next purchase would finally satisfy whatever it was I was chasing.

It never did.

What I hadn’t anticipated was the weight that settled over me as I looked at the pile, at the life I had assembled piece by piece. As I packed everything into boxes, I realised these possessions had become far more than clothes and accessories. They were physical evidence of years spent hiding, searching, and hoping that something external might finally make me feel complete.

My wife sat quietly on her side of the bed as I continued.

She didn’t say much.

She didn’t need to.

The silence between us spoke louder than either of us could have managed. I wasn’t simply clearing out a wardrobe. I was confronting the life I had built in secret.

The task became something far greater than sorting clothes into boxes.

It was a reckoning.

With every item I packed away, it felt as though I was handling pieces of a life I still didn’t fully understand. Part of me wanted to shut the wardrobe doors and pretend none of it existed. Another part knew that was no longer possible. Whatever this was, whatever this longing had become, it had grown too large to ignore.

As I continued unpacking, I noticed something else.

The wardrobe smelled.

The air was thick, stale, and heavy. It wasn’t simply the smell of clothes. A musty odour clung stubbornly to the fabric, rising from every hanger I lifted.

It was the unmistakable scent of neglect.

The wardrobe had become so crammed that air could barely circulate. Clothes that had once been fresh now carried the weight of years spent hidden away. As I handled each piece, I realised they had been suffocated by the clutter I had allowed to consume my life.

It felt symbolic.

The wardrobe, and perhaps my life, had been sealed shut for years, untouched by fresh air or change.

The smell lingered, refusing to be ignored.

Perhaps that was the most unsettling discovery of all.

Even the possessions I had clung to for comfort had absorbed the consequences of my secrecy. They had become silent witnesses to years of confusion, concealment, and neglect.

Every now and then I would pull out something that wasn’t everyday clothing. PVC. Vinyl. The sort of fabrics more often associated with alternative fashion than an ordinary wardrobe. Usually dresses and skirts: short, sleek, glossy, and undeniably eye-catching.

It all traced back to the fascination I’d developed with black patent leather in my first year of secondary school. Over time, that fascination widened to include almost anything glossy or reflective: PVC, vinyl, latex, spandex, lamé, and metallic fabrics.

It wasn’t simply the materials themselves that captivated me. It was the way they caught the light and moulded to the body, accentuating every curve and movement.

Long before I understood my gender, something about those fabrics spoke to me.

When my wife saw them, especially the PVC and vinyl dresses and skirts, my stomach tightened.

I wasn’t ashamed of the clothes themselves.

I was ashamed of what I believed they said about me.

My mind immediately reached for the labels I’d grown up with: transvestite. Odd. Unnatural. Someone to be ridiculed rather than understood.

I was terrified she would see only a man wearing women’s clothes, rather than someone desperately trying to understand why those clothes felt so deeply connected to something within them.

As I searched her face, I felt as though I had exposed the part of myself I had spent a lifetime protecting.

Yet buried among the glossy dresses was something that told a different story.

Soft cardigans in shades of purple, black, and cream.

Fine knits.

Delicate fabrics.

Clothes that didn’t shout.

They whispered.

For years I had been captivated by the gleam of patent leather and the sleek finish of PVC and vinyl, but these garments spoke to an entirely different need. They offered comfort instead of spectacle. Warmth instead of intensity.

Looking back now, I can see they hinted at something I wasn’t yet ready to acknowledge.

My longing had never really been about shiny fabrics.

Those had simply been the doorway.

What I was really searching for was something quieter.

A femininity that felt natural rather than dramatic. Gentle rather than performative. Something that didn’t need to announce itself to the world because, finally, it felt like home.

It seemed to take an age just to empty the wardrobe, but that was only the beginning.

There was still the attic.

Box after box came down. More heels. More boots. More dresses. More skirts. More soft knitwear in gentle pastel shades that had somehow found their way into my life. By the time everything had been carried downstairs and spread across the bed, there was easily two or three times as much as had fitted into the wardrobe.

By the end of that Saturday, the house had filled with boxes. Everything I had unloaded from the wardrobe, and everything I had brought down from the attic, was eventually taken to a rented storage unit, to free up space in the house and bring some order back for my wife and family.

The sheer volume was hard to take in.

Standing there, surrounded by it all, I couldn’t escape what it represented. The money I’d spent. The hours I’d spent searching online. The countless parcels that had arrived at the house. I couldn’t help thinking about how much of that time, money, and emotional energy had been poured into me instead of my wife and children. That realisation carried a weight far heavier than any box I lifted.

Perhaps the hardest truth of all was that so much of it had never even been worn.

I’d imagined wearing every dress, every pair of heels, every cardigan. I’d pictured how they might make me feel. Yet when the moment came, I almost always found a reason to put it off. Tomorrow. Next weekend. When I had the house to myself. When I felt more confident.

Tomorrow rarely came.

Looking back, I think I know why.

It wasn’t the clothes I was avoiding.

It was my reflection.

In my mind’s eye, I could imagine the woman I longed to be. I’d see a dress online and picture it on the version of myself that existed somewhere deep inside my imagination. But when I finally stood in front of the mirror, all I could see was the person I was trying so desperately to escape. Every masculine feature seemed magnified. Every trace of femininity I hoped to find was overshadowed by the face staring back at me.

So the cycle continued.

I would stop dressing because I couldn’t bear the disappointment. Then, before long, I’d see another dress, another pair of boots, another cardigan, and convince myself that perhaps this one would be different. Perhaps this purchase would finally bring me closer to the person I imagined myself to be.

Of course, it never did.

The clothes were never the problem.

Nor were they the solution.

They were simply the hope I kept buying because I still didn’t understand what I was truly searching for.

This chapter ends here, but the story continues in Part Three.

 
Thanks for reading, 

Lotte x