Early Years
Experimenting
Manhood
Trouble Brewing
A New Perspective
Moving West
Getting Help
World Upside Down
Back On The Path
Logistical Nightmare
All Out In The Open
High Gear
Transition - What's The Point?
Today
My Bio: Two Lives, One Lifetime
Media Bio: A printable Media Bio is available.
My Book: A far more complete version of my Bio can be found in my book: Wrapped In Blue: A Journey of Discovery
My Story
It's hard to condense 40 some odd years of life into a page worth, or even a chapter worth, of words. But for the sake of providing "context" for the rest of the journey, I will try...
I was born in Chicago in 1959 (you can do the math to figure out how old I am, if you'd like). My father was attending the university of Chicago to earn his PhD in biophysics, and my mom had been a nurse in the army. I was the first child, the "oldest son", followed a year and a half later by a sister and a couple of years after that by a brother.
My early years were generally happy years, as far as I can remember.
One of the questions that I often get asked is, "When did you know about your gender issue?" The answer is that I knew something was wrong from an early age (5 or 6 years old), but at that point I really had no idea what it was. In fact, at that young age I don't remember it so much a "problem" as a sense of confusion. As young children I don't think our own sense of our gender or our understanding of the expectations for us based on our sex are really formed enough to exactly pinpoint the problem at that early age. In fact, for many of us, as we try to express ourselves in a way that feels natural and "right" to us and we're constantly corrected by family or playmates that our behavior isn't consistent with the fact that we're a boy or a girl; that's when we start to realize that something might be wrong. When we're young, society is fairly tolerant of innocent cross-gender behavior assuming that we just don't know better (yet). That changes as we get older. Note: If you really want to watch a movie that demonstrates this very well, rent Ma Vie En Rose (My Life In Pink).
From the moment that a doctor examines a baby's genitals and declares that child to be male or female, NOTHING plays a more significant role in that child's life than our sex. Whether we realize it or not, that one seemingly obvious proclamation defines the expectations, the roles, the socialization, the opportunities, and the general "map" for each of our lives. Culturally, socially, spiritually...our sex opens any number of doors for us, while at the same time closing any number of others. Since it has such an incredibly profound affect on the course of every one of our lives, it begs the question....what happens if the doctor is wrong???
(For a more detailed discussion, read
The Difference Between Sex and Gender)...
.
In our earliest years there's really no reliable way to tell that there may be a problem. It's not like there is a blood test you can take to verify that your sense of your gender is correct, and there are certainly no obvious external signs. An internalized dissonance between a person's sex and sense of gender is a self-diagnosed situation, which of course is the root of the debate as to whether it's real, or whether this is a choice. Some level of self-awareness about ourselves and our environment is necessarily part of this equation, and that requires some level of maturity.
Babies are permitted to be fairly genderless for the first few years of their lives. As we get a little older, though, we start to find that we get pushback when we wander too near the gender boundaries assigned to us based on our physical sex. Boys who indicate an early preference for dolls, or who want to wear dresses tend to be "corrected". This correction can range from raised eyebrows and mild concern, to harsh physical and emotional punishments. I recently got a call from a friend whose 4 year old son wanted a "Bratz" doll for Christmas, and there was some sense of alarm over this unusual (and innocent) request. Generally, kids outgrow this natural curiosity in fairly short order, and seem to give it far more importance on it than it deserves. Just because a boy shows some interest in a doll does not indicate that we've got a future transsexual or drag queen on our hands.
In my own childhood, there was very little indication that something was wrong. I had very little interest in dolls or other typically feminine pursuits, and enjoyed playing football with the other boys. We played army, and wrestled...just as young boys are expected to do (and proving that just because someone doesn't show an early interest in girly things doesn't mean they WON'T grow up to be transsexual). However, there were some experiences that stand out. I remember playing "house" with one of the girls on our street, and we were both the mom. Her mother became concerned as we put creams on each other's hands and faces, wondering if my own mom knew about our playing. The inference was subtle, but effective.
So the answer to the question "When did I know?" is difficult to pinpoint. It is clear to me that I knew that something was wrong from a very early age. However, putting a source to the confusion, or a name to it, was not to happen for several years.
The picture began to come into focus as I neared puberty. Puberty is a
difficult time under the best of circumstances. It is a time of physical and
emotional upheaval brought about by gender specific hormonal changes. We need
to remember that it is a time of significant social upheaval directly tied to
our gender, as well. It is the time when a boy becomes a "man" in many
societies. It is a time that a girl begins her period, defining her as
a "woman".
The situation I faced was becoming aware that life that was steering me in a direction different from the one that I had expected, and felt entitled to live. I began to realize that rights of passage that we bestow upon girls in our society were not to be forthcoming to me. In addition, the things that we expect from our boys WERE expected from me, and my body started to change to fit the role. It was all very confusing and alarming.
Instead of beginning to shave my legs, the hair on my body started to become thicker and darker. Instead of growing breasts, my penis started to mature. My sweet soprano voice deepened, first to a hoarse rasp and eventually to a medium baritone. I started to understand that the person that I knew myself to be on the inside did not match the maturing body that encased it on the outside, that the changes that were happening were permanent and irreversible, and I got scared.
I tried to communicate my confusion, only to find my innocent (and admittedly vague) questioning did not convey the frustration that I was feeling. "When do I get to start shaving my legs?" I would ask. "Boys don't share their legs, stupid." was the reply. "When do I get to have my ears pierced?" "Uhhh, never!?".
Perhaps the most significant event occurred at Halloween time when I was 13. Halloween is a time of significant freedom for anyone with a sense of gender "adventure" to be able to experiment without being questioned. I asked my mom if I could go out that year as a girl for trick-or-treating. "NO!" was the loud and firm response. "That is absolutely inappropriate!"
I was shattered. Of course, how could I expect my mom to know that my question was deeper than simply dressing up for a holiday I was probably too old to celebrate, anyway? Perhaps she had had a long day, or was cranky at something totally unrelated when I happened to ask her. Perhaps if I had asked her some other time, the answer may have been different. But it wasn't. It was a firm and final "No", and the thing that shook me wasn't just the fact that she said no, it was my perception of the stern nature of her response. Today, she has no recollection of this little encounter. Little did either of us realize it, but that one simple event would have implications that would reverberate throughout the rest of my life.
I went trick-or-treating that Halloween dressed as a bum - with a long tattered coat, a smudged dirty face, and a half-full whiskey bottle of apple juice. To this day I chafe at the double standard at work here: that a boy dressing as a girl is somehow wrong, but dressing as an alcoholic bum is okay....
In the weeks that followed, I made some fairly serious decisions about my life. I knew that I needed to explore this unwelcome intruder in my psyche, and I knew that I had to do it in private. So I began a secret, covert double-life that was to weave in and out of my existence over the next 25 years.
I had become all too aware of this budding feminine energy, this whole other female persona, inside of me. In fact, I began to envision myself as two different and distinct personalities in the same body. One was male. There was no arguing that he was there. He had a physical presence. He had been socialized and trained since birth. But there was another one in there too, and she was female. Or, she was something that at least was more aligned with being female than being male. I really couldn't explain it, and today I see things a little differently - as simply two different sides to the same personality. But at the time, I envisioned two of us in this one body struggling for control. And, my feminine self grew frustrated at not having opportunities to express her needs, and at being suppressed and rejected all the time. She demanded some sense of relief.
In order to relieve this tension....this pressure that was building and seemed to have no opportunity for release...I decided to secretly begin exploring this "other" side of my personality that I had denied for so long.
One avenue of outlet was my own imagination. Most school days, the walk from Santa Barbara Junior High School to our home up on the hills overlooking the coast took me almost an hour to navigate. During my walks I'd imagine myself living a life very different than the one I was apparently destined to lead. I imagined myself as part of a scientific experiment that had discovered a way to transfer a person's spirit into a different body. and my psyche - the essence of who I was - was put into a woman's body. I continued this daydream day after day.
Other exploration was much riskier. The house that we were living in at the time had two bedrooms. The three of us kids shared one of them, and my parents shared the other. A shared bathroom connected the two, and I would awake at 2 or 3 in the morning to go into that bathroom to begin experimenting with my mom's cosmetics. The experience was one of wonder, of exhilaration. I would tinker with her eye shadows, lipsticks and mascaras like an artist painting on a canvas, finding this simple outlet for my pent-up feminine energy to be incredibly empowering and exciting. But the joy I felt in my early-morning adventures was soon replaced by guilt at having to hide, fear at being discovered, frustration at the fact that I could not share my situation with anyone, and confusion at what all this meant. Looking back on it, it was to become a very lonely time.
Perhaps the most significant decision I made was based on the realization that I could not allow anyone to learn about my situation. It was vitally important to me to live up to the expectations that I perceived that my parents had for me, and the thought of disappointing them, losing their trust and confidence, and making them mad, was more than I could accept. I couldn't begin to imagine my parents' reactions if they somehow learned of my "other" self, and I decided early on to do everything in my power to make sure that didn't happen. So I decided that if I had to be a guy, I would be the best "guy" I could be. I would build the defenses necessary to hide this female presence from even the most prying eyes. And in the process, I would mold myself to become who and what society expects from men.
I must admit to being somewhat of an over-achiever is most of the things I do, and being "manly" was no exception. Once I set my mind to it, it became a single focus for me. I think my efforts were as much to convince myself that this thinking was pure folly and would eventually go away as it was to keep prying eyes from knowing what was going on in my little head. And, perhaps I realized that this was my most effective way to build the walls and the exterior that could best hide my little "secret".
Many transsexuals spend a good portion of their lives hoping that this uninvited dilemma will eventually go away all by itself. Many of us think..."Maybe it's a phase." "Maybe if I do manly things, it will somehow go away." So although the typical stereotype for transsexuals seems to be effeminate homosexual boys and men, my experience in the community is exactly the opposite. Many of us exhibit a good deal of hyper-masculine behavior to battle our demons. Some join the armed forces. Some brawl, or drink heavily. We do all kinds of "manly" stuff to keep people from surmising what is going on. It's not until our attempts to will this away have failed...time after time...one by one...that real panic sets in, and we come to realize what we need to do.
As I turned 15 years old I did two things that had a profound affect on my life. First, I joined our junior high school wrestling team. My reasoning for this confused me for many years, as I had never even seen a wrestling match at that time. But I suppose I found it to be the most "macho" thing that I could do. In those early years I wasn't all that good - husky, somewhat clumsy, and out of shape - and I remember losing as many matches as I won. But as years progressed and I trained and learned I was to find that my squat legs, thick upper torso, and mental toughness were well suited to this sport. Through hard work, long hours or training, and relentless persistence my chubby, pubescent body slowly morphed into a much more solid physique. As crazy as this might sound, as time went on I came to feel that the "Dave" part of me was purposefully sculpting this body to be as male as possible to convince myself that the "Donna" part in me could never really exist.
That year I also found that my interest in girls suddenly began to blossom. I suppose that I felt a sense of relief that my gender confusions hadn't clouded my sexuality, as girls quickly began to appeal to me in a new and wonderful way. I got my first girlfriend at 14, and began to experience all the exhilaration and trauma that such relationships tend to inflict on awkward young lovers. As awkward as I felt I did know one thing...that I loved girls. I loved the way they felt, the way they smelled, the way they moved, the things they wore...I loved it all. And the most confusing part for me is that it wasn't necessarily a sexual thing. It was more a sense of awe.
Throughout my high school years I seemed the typical boy next door. I was a linebacker for the football team in the fall. I wrestled during the winter, and I spent the rest of the year training...running, lifting weights, drilling. I was a good student. Although I did have friends, I was never much of a social butterfly, certainly not one of the "in" kids. I have come to feel that it may be because I was in the process of building "walls" to keep people away and prevent them from getting too close.
During these years I fought to control and resist the urges to explore my feminine side, and in general I was pretty successful. I found that these urges would well up from time to time, like a wave, on a fairly regular cycle, to demand attention. I cross-dressed on very rare occasions, as the guilt and fear and shame of it all seemed to outweigh the temporary relief it would provide. I'd find a variety of ways to wait out the inevitable rise in the tensions, waiting the weeks that it would take for the Donna part of me to finally go back to exile deep inside my brain.
I did, however, try to learn everything I could about this condition. The world in the 1970's was very different than the wired one we enjoy today, where a universe of information on anything is available at the click of a mouse. There was no internet to help in my research, and the books on gender issues, and on transsexuals in specific were few and far between. The few books that I could find were authored by doctors and clinicians, and were written from a treatment perspective; that's not what I was looking for. I needed to find human stories - real-life explanations - to help me in my own journey. Sadly, there were none to be found.
One of the things we tend to do in life is label things. It gives us the ability to group similar "stuff" and put a name to it. As I searched for clues about the cause of my affliction, I first needed to find the right term for it. One of the first terms that I learned was "homosexual". But when I learned that homosexual is a sexuality thing, that homosexuals are attracted to people of their own sex, I knew that wasn't me.
Drag Queens are typically flamboyant homosexual men who dress as woman, mostly for entertainment. I knew I wasn't one of these.
I learned about the terms "transvestite" and "crossdresser" (it took me quite a while to learn that the two are used as synonyms). Cross-dressers are typically genetic heterosexual men who enjoy dressing as female from time to time, but have no desire to physically and permanently alter their sex. I didn't think I was one of these, as my needs seemed much deeper than that.
Finally, I learned about a group of people who self-identify with the gender opposite of the one assigned at birth. These people feel that they have the brain of one gender, and the physical body of the other. They often seek to permanently alter their bodies to match the person they know themselves to be on the inside. I learned about Christine Jorgensen, and Renee Richards. I learned that these people are transsexual, and the more I read about this, the more I knew that I had found my label.
Through high school, I continually improved as an athlete. By the time I was a senior I was a captain on the wrestling team, having given up on football in my junior year after breaking my nose during a tackling drill. My once "husky" frame had developed into a muscular, buff physique. My sister's friends lusted after me, and I think I frustrated them all by paying very little attention to any of it. It's not that I wasn't interested in girls, or in sex, nearly so much as the fact that I made my life as full as I could to avoid having intimate relationships...with anyone. I think part of the real tragedy of this condition is that we often spend so much time trying to build walls to keep our secret inside, that we insulate ourselves from the level of intimacy and emotional accessibility that most people seem to take for granted.
I seemed to be able to keep my gender frustrations in check with periodic "pressure releases". The best way to describe it is that it felt like a pressure cooker, and as time passed the pressure to express my female side increased steadily. Resisting it and holding it back took quite a bit of energy, and I think the fact that I even needed to deal with it at all contributed to quite the emotional "stew". Finally doing something to allow that pressure to vent seemed to help, although the after-effects of it (guilt, shame, frustration) seemed to be constant nagging companions.
I rarely cross-dressed, as I found it to be kind of like putting on a costume and ultimately generally unfulfilling. And, I can't over-emphasize how important it was to me to live up to the expectations that I felt my parents had for me. The thought of being caught, and of losing their respect and trust, was more than I could bear. That agenda of making my parents proud involved far more than my gender issues, and was certainly a cornerstone of my existence for many, many years. Anything that could threaten it became something to be avoided.
However, I did find opportunities to visit the trunk full of my mom's old clothes in the attic from time to time. At a time when other young boys are preoccupied with finding a Playboy magazine to drool over, I snuck into the basement to read my mom's old Women's magazines - entranced by the articles on cooking, and hairstyles, and beauty. Again - these activities were not sexual in nature. Certainly, there was a sense of excitement and exhilaration, but our society loves to cheapen simple, innocent things by trying to assign some kind of sexual motivation to them. I know better.
As I entered college my family moved to Nova Scotia, in Canada. My dad was had accepted a special faculty position at a university in Halifax, so I decided to complete my first couple of years of college there - tuition for faculty kids was less than a thousand dollars - until I decided what I wanted to do with my life. As I entered manhood, I really started to blossom.
On the relationship front I succumbed to my first long-term relationship. I fell in love for the first time, and has a girlfriend for almost two years. My favorite memories of our time together was watching "submarine races" in my dad's car, going to movies together, talking, and generally enjoying being around each other. Although this was my first real physical relationship, it never became consummated and I remember that to be as much of a relief as a frustration.
On the job front I was working at a local hotel and always seemed to have some money in my pocket. On the studies front I was excelling. And on the wrestling front, it all finally seemed to click.
Wrestling was perfect for me. It fed my need to be part of a team, but at the same time it is basically an individual sport so it was just me and whoever I faced on the mat. I remember all the posturing at weigh-in - trying to psyche out your opponent by flexing muscles and looking tough. So funny. In a ironic way, that one thing encapsulates my perception of being a guy. Sadly for some, the match isn't won at weigh in. It's won on the mat. The mental game gives way to the physical one that happens for all the world to see, and the person counting lights on the ceiling isn't necessarily the strongest, or the smartest, or the toughest. Wrestling combines all these things, and as I became more successful I became more confident - the two things feed each other.
I had an intensely competitive nature. If I did something, I had to do it well. I had to win. I was willing to dedicate incredible focus and energy to being successful, and I think that's what differentiates those who will eventually rise above the rest in most things. I remember running stairs at the ice rink - all the way up to the top row, then over, then all the way down again - all the way around. I used to sit in the shower room in a plastic suit, with all the hot water on it was like a sauna, as I worked to cut weight. Wrestlers are unique creatures, and I found that I fit in well.
Physically, I had never been stronger. I was bench-pressing well over 300 pounds. My fully-pumped biceps had grown to be nearly 22 inches in diameter (men seem to have some inherent need to measure things, and I was no different). I could do 200 sit-ups and barely break a sweat. I think many of the skills that made me a successful wrestler would later contribute to helping me negotiate my transition. Wrestling is about discipline, and about focus, and about intense physical and emotional exertion, and I found that all are necessary attributes for those considering a frontal assault on the gender barrier.
During that year I became the CIAA Freestyle Wrestling Champion in the 158 lb. weigh-class. I was the champion of all the Maritime Provinces...Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Newfoundland, and Prince Edward Island. I was invited to wrestle at the national collegiate championships at the Olympic village in Montreal, and ultimately finished in the top 10 in the country. I wrestled internationally against members of the Pan-American Games teams. It was a time that I remember fondly.
As I finished my last year in Canada, I decided that I wanted to return to upstate New York. Since my early years growing up outside of Buffalo, I considered the area home and returning there held some strange allure to me. I thought I might enjoy a career in broadcasting, and the most notable school in the area that had a television/radio program was Syracuse University. I started there in 1979. Within 2 months, I met a woman and fell in love. And within 6 weeks of graduating in 1981, we were married.
I had never been in love before. REALLY head-over-heels think-about-you-all-the-time disgustingly in love. It was the most amazing feeling. By the time we got married I had banished any thought of ever facing my gender issues to the dungeons of my mind...intent on spending a life of building a family and living happily ever after. I convinced myself that I had always been able to more-or-less control these feelings, so why should I doubt that would not continue? Although some may find it inexcusable, the thought of confessing my "problem" to her at the time never even crossed my mind.
Was I being deceitful? I don't think so. Even if I were to have shared something at that point in my life I have no idea what I would have confessed. I was far too immature and deeply in love to even begin to imagine that this anomaly could ever be more than that. Would I have done things differently way back then knowing what I know now? Perhaps, but realistically probably not. Some would consider this selfish, and to those people I'd say it's easy to sit and judge from the bleachers. But this discussion is more complicated than I have room for here, so it will have to wait until another day.
The first few years of our marriage were spent doing things that young newlyweds do. I realized that there was far more money to be made in programming computers than in running a television camera, and I soon found I that knack for it. It seemed to stimulate both my logical and creative needs, and within a couple of months I accepted a position as an entry-level COBOL programmer. Within just a couple of years I had become a consultant, and was making more money than I had ever imagined making. We bought a house in upstate New York. We traveled. We bought a nice car. It was a very happy and fulfilling time.
Four years after we got married we decided it was time to start a family, and it wasn't long before we got pregnant. Our son was born in 1985. Being a parent was a role I very much looked forward to, and I took an active role in taking care of our newborn bundle of joy. All things considered, I think my wife and I both felt that we were on top of the world.
Shortly after our son was born, one of those "waves" that seemed to roll my way every so often started to build. I wish I could explain how it feels. Frustration and anger and sadness and exhilaration and fear and disappointment and curiosity and pressure, pressure, PRESSURE!!! It is not a healthy thing.
Usually I could outlast these episodes. Or, a simple outlet for the feminine energy that seemed to be the source of the discomfort would help to keep it in check. But this time, it did not go away. It built and built to the point where I became very unpleasant to be around. And for the first time in my life, I decided to stop running and hiding and repressing it, and look for help in exploring and expressing and defining it.
It's like a person who has a lump of indeterminate origin somewhere on their body. Waiting for it to shrink up and go away, and telling yourself that it's nothing, can only go so far. Eventually, you'll get so worried and upset that you will actively seek a doctor who can analyze it and diagnose it and provide a plan of action should it prove to be malignant. That is the way I approached this situation.
Sadly, there really wasn't much in the way of information on what to do. Each of us was an island in our own isolated world. There was no internet. There was no email. Resources who specialized in working with gender issues were few and far between, and were not all that easy to find. Much of the work with transsexuals was done at gender clinics sponsored by prominent universities like John's Hopkins and Stanford. I did some research and found the telephone number for the gender clinic at Stanford, and called to inquire about psychologists who specialized in working with gender issues.
At the time we were living in upstate NY, and I was told that the closest resource for me lived in New Jersey. I contacted him, secretly got my own Post Office box so I could begin communicating with others, began saving money on the sly, and eventually had enough to afford a full day with him. So one day I left the home in the morning as though going to work, just like every other day. Except on this day I drove to the airport, flew to LaGuardia, took a cab into New Jersey, and spent the day with the psychologist.
I can't even begin to describe how I was feeling. I was hopeful, I was excited, yet at the same time I was scared to death. I desperately needed some answers, while at the same time I felt as though I were cheating on my wife or something, as there would surely be hell to pay if any of this were ever discovered.
My goal was simple - to get some type of validation for my self-diagnosis of being a transsexual. Either answer would have been ok. But, as with the "lump" scenario, I felt the need for someone who had experience in these issues to provide an educated diagnosis as opposed to my "I am one because I think this is how one feels" diagnosis.
We spent the entire day together. It was a very difficult and emotionally draining experience. He asked me all kinds of questions. At the beginning, many of them had to do with sexuality and I had a hard time understanding why these questions were somehow pertinent and why everything kept coming back to it. I explained that I loved my wife, I had never been with a man, I had never even considered being with a man, and that my female self had no clue whether she'd be interested in men or women. My interest in things most considered "feminine" wasn't erotic, it wasn't fetishistic, I couldn't pinpoint it to any one thing. It was as though a terrible mistake had been made, and there were two of us living here in this one body. And, regardless of any inferences he might make because of his sexuality probing, I considered my authentic self to be a feminine one. That's why I had risked so much to come and spend a day meeting with him.
By the middle of the day, he explained that he had done extensive research on past-life regression, and believed that there were many things to be learned under hypnosis. So, we did a hypnosis session. Then, it was back to more difficult questioning and probing.
By late afternoon, I was spent. I had a long trip home ahead of me, as well as a wife waiting for me who had no clue of my clandestine trip. The psychologist sat to face me, and with a serious look on his face told me that he concurred with my self-diagnosis. He told me he believe that I was truly transsexual, and that he'd do anything he could to help. He told me that being transsexual was a difficult life, no matter what happened from here.
He went on to warn that this was not something that would go away. He indicated that not all transsexuals would feel compelled to follow treatment all the way to a complete sex-change surgery and that the only way for me to determine where I needed to be was to begin regular treatment which posed several significant challenged. He explained that, before I did anything, the difficult question I needed to answer for myself was whether or not I was ready to lose my family, friends, career, manhood, and all that had value in life. Certainly, there were no guarantees I would lose these things, but to admit to being transsexual would put all of that in jeopardy, and I needed to take a long deep look inside myself to answer that question.. The only one who could decide the next steps was me.
After several weeks of thinking about what he said, I decided that I wasn't ready to lose my wife and year-old son to these forces within me. I also decided that I couldn't go on living with this secret, as my guilt at having to hide it from her was as bad or worse than the building pressure itself. I decided to disclose it to my wife, knowing that once I had done this my desire to continue to fight it may become a moot point. I realized very clearly that these words, once said, could never be un-said, and that they'd change the foundation of the entire relationship. I was terrified, but at the same time, I had to do what I had to do.
How does one bring up something like this? Is there ever a right time? It had been there, on the tip of my tongue, a few times but somehow it never found its way out. I always seemed to let the moment pass. Then, one night as we lay bed, I somehow found the courage to speak up and I told her. I remember the exact words I used, as they articulated it the best I could: I explained that I had "a very strong female side to my personality" that was making life very difficult for me, and I wanted her to know about it.
The first words out of her mouth were, "Are you telling me that you're gay?" "No," I answered. "That has nothing to do with it." She cried softly. She didn't get angry. I think she got more sad than anything. In the ensuing days she indicated that this had no part in our lives together and that I needed to do whatever it took to fight it. And that was that.
After a few weeks, life went back to almost normal. Our "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" years had begun. She never asked or spoke about my gender stuff, hoping that it had faded away or somehow been "cured", and I didn't talk about it either, content with the fact that I had at least found the courage to finally tell her. The thing that did change was her attitude. In the past, my requests to allow me to shave my legs, or dress as a girl on Halloween, were viewed as fun. Now they were viewed as a threat, so I knew better than to even ask.
Over the next ten years, my gender issue would flare up from time to time, like an earthquake letting off some pressure just before the "big one". I began to meet people who helped me to understand myself more, the nature of this situation, and the complicated relationship between our sense of our gender and the rest of who we are. At this point in my life I was a husband and a father; I enjoyed those roles and did my best to do them well. However, there was always something missing - something empty in me that went unfulfilled. Although I rarely, if ever, cross-dressed I did find other outlets for my feminine self.
The most important of these efforts happened when I stumbled across a makeup studio in Rochester that was owned and operated by a pair of twins. I had arranged to meet with someone from the local Cross-Dresser support group, who gave me a copy of their newsletter that included a list of accepting local businesses. She indicated that a few of their members had visited this particular studio, and it came highly recommended. I made an appointment to visit. It was a ritual that I would do every couple or three months over the next several years.
At my first appointment I met Deborah, one of the twins who operated the salon. I had never met anyone quite like her, although I can't put my finger on any specific thing that made her unique. She just had a different sense about her. She was pretty. She was intelligent. She was articulate. She had an uncommon sense of empathy to the point that, when her father was diagnosed with cancer and went through chemotherapy several years later both she and her sister shaved off all their hair as a symbolic gesture of support - it made national news. And perhaps the most interesting thing about her is that she was a very spiritual person. At our first appointment I told her about my true self, and she explained the spiritual nature of Yin and Yang to me.
The concept of Yin and Yang was developed by ancient Chinese scholars. It argues that there are two natural, complementary and contradictory forces in our universe. YIN represents the FEMALE; softness, darkness, moisture, nighttime, negative, even numbers and docile aspects of things. YANG represents the MALE; hardness, dryness, positive, brightness, daytime, odd numbers and dominant aspects. Yin and Yang are the male and female forces that control all changes in the universe, exist in everything, and are continually in the state of flux. The key concept is that they are always looking for the balance point. When one moves, the other responds.
Chinese martial forms are based on this philosophy of Yin & Yang. It teaches that within strength is found weakness; within hardness softness exists, and where there is activity, non-activity is also present.
She explained that all people contain different aspects of Yin and Yang, or male and female, and she was honored that I chose to confide in her. She accepted both my male and female selves immediately and it is through her handiwork that I got my first true glimpses and tastes of the possibilities down the road.
I found our discussions to be fascinating. They opened my eyes to an entirely new perspective of my situation. They helped me to view it not as something abnormal and “bad”, with purely sexual overtones, but as something natural, and ageless, and spiritual.
Deborah also helped me to learn about make-up. She helped me to express the feminine side of me. I would sneak out of work, go to her studio, and she would work her make-up magic on me. I used to sit in the mirror and stare in awe at what she would do, and how it would make me feel. The time to wash it off and return to work came all too quickly. It was as if the make-up allowed Donna a brief sense of self-expression and freedom, but washing it off closed that dungeon door again until the next time.
Deborah offered to have me bring some clothes to change into during our sessions. Apparently, several of the cross-dressers who were clients kept clothes and wigs and personal items there. I declined her offer, as I really had no use for wearing the clothes. I got the validation I needed from just doing the makeup. Besides, I was far too interested in learning what she was doing in hopes of learning to do it myself.
Perhaps most important, though, is the fact that she accepted me. She did not judge me. We had fun together, and I think she took as much a sense of satisfaction in what we were accomplishing as I did. She made me feel comfortable and calm. I enjoyed our talks, and through my visits to her I really did begin the process of visualizing what was to become Donna.
At one point, we bought a wig. We spent a session cutting it, and styling it. And when she applied the make-up to go with the wig, I sat transfixed at what I saw. The reflection staring back at me was closer to who I really felt myself to be than anything I had ever seen before. It was a very powerful vision.
This simple expression of my feminine self kept things on a very even keel for many years, and I owe Deborah my most heartfelt thanks. I cannot imagine what life is like for others, who do not find a sympathetic “Deborah” in their lives, especially at the beginning.
These simple outlets seemed to do the trick, and I hoped that the relative calm I had found would last. It was not to be....
It was 1996. At that point my son was 11, and my marriage was in
its 15th year. Life had pretty much gone back to normal for us. My career as
a computer consultant continued to prosper, and we had the money to buy the
toys we wanted. Houses. Cars. We eventually decided to move to Scottsdale,
Arizona, in anticipation of an early retirement and happy "golden" years.
Earlier, I mentioned how difficult a time puberty is for many people. I think a similarly difficult time arrives in mid-life, for a variety of reasons. First, often our lives are nearly half-over and as we consider our accomplishments, and our own mortality, there can often be some serious questioning. In addition, just as we found our bodies changing during puberty, we find our bodies changing again in mid-life. Permanent, unmistakable physical changes are happening that cannot be stopped, or reversed. Psychologists often talk and write about this "mid-life crisis", and I think the many of the same factors that cause people at mid-life to question their careers, their marriages, or the general directions of their lives also cause transsexuals to take a long, hard, serious look at the need to reconcile their gender issues before it's too late (for an excellent article on this, please visit Dr. Ann Vitale's website).
Besides the physical difficulties involved, I think part of the difficulty that many of us face as we consider a mid-life transition is the seemingly impossible prospect of unraveling ourselves from the life we had spent 20 or 30 or 40 or more years building. I picture it like a being at the center of a golf ball, tightly bound and constricted by a lifetime of entanglements that once seemed comforting, but now become almost suffocating. We have made a circle of friends. We are often husbands or wives, mothers or fathers. We have worked hard to create a successful career. We are sisters or brothers, sons and daughters. Each is a role that has any number of responsibilities and expectations, and we often feel the weight of trying to live up to our "obligations". The prospect of losing ALL of that for the sake of testing the gender waters is a very very scary one, to say the least.
But even if someone WANTED to do it, how does one disconnect gracefully from all of that? To me, that in and of itself provides as many logistical and emotional barriers (real and imagined) as the gender transition itself does!
Well, much of that was unknowingly solved by our move to Arizona. Suddenly, my circle of friends and relatives was 1,000 miles away. I was in the process of starting fresh there. This cocoon of expectations and obligations that I had created over the 15 years of living in upstate NY suddenly started to shed itself. I didn't realize it at the time, but our move to Arizona had given me more freedom than I ever imagined.
I have been accused (by my ex-) of moving us there for the sole purpose of transitioning. At the time, transition thoughts had not even entered my mind. However, as I look back and marvel at how this all came together, the move to Arizona becomes to pivot point. People sometimes ask me if I would have transitioned if I had stayed in Rochester. I honestly don't know. I don't know if the pressures of having to maintain that facade would have helped keep things bottled up. What I do know is that moving to Arizona provided a clear playing field, and the pressures of living that lie were suddenly dramatically reduced.
Our first year in Arizona was a magical one. There's something strangely energizing about starting something new - a new relationship, a new job, a new home. We went through all of the excitement of starting a new life, just as we had done as newlyweds 16 years before. Making friends. Buying furniture. Making plans. Learning about our area. The sun was always shining. The weather was always nice. It was a great year. Gender issues were the farthest thing from my mind.
The year was 1997. It had been about a year since we had moved to Arizona, and slowly but surely the pressures started to build again. Now, however, I had no outlets - my entire support network was back in Rochester. I began to feel trapped, stifled, suffocated. I began to feel frustrated, angry. Time was suddenly NOT on my side, as I started to feel the weight of middle life as a man...the hair on my head was thinning (my father and brother were already totally "folicly challenged"). I started to feel pressure of having to make some real decisions, or face the rest of my life living with the regret and frustration of unfulfilled promise and unlived potential.
As always, I turned inwards. When the side of me that was Donna struggled for control of this body, I'd go on a diet in hopes to undo all the muscle building that Dave would do. I'd become introverted. I'd run and sweat and do whatever I could to make my body seem more "feminine". My wife used to say that she hated when I went on diets because it made me no fun to be around, but in reality the diet isn't what was doing it...my struggle to suppress Donna was. Of course, this was a connection she could never make.
It's rare that we can pinpoint one specific event as pivotal in our lives. I can do that. This one happened in 1997, and the pot finally boiled over.
One day, my son, my wife, my in-laws, and I were walking together at a local mall. I wasn't particular angry or upset with anything, and it was a typical day of shopping with the family. As we strolled along the mall, my son said or did something I didn't like, I said something to him, and he said something snide back to me. He was ahead of me, and I put my hand on his shoulder almost in a joking way, and he brusquely flicked it off. That's all it took. With one fast motion I pivoted and punched him, my fist connecting with his solar plexus dead on, and knocking him flying backwards and to the ground. Everyone stood with their jaws open, shocked at what had just happened, but I don't think anyone was as surprised as I was. It was just horrible.
How could I explain this? How could I explain that I had just punched my son for nothing in particular? As I considered it all in the days that followed, it became obvious that I needed to do something. It had become clear to me that my pressures could not allow me to be a good husband, or father, or person until I had some answers. I needed help, and I needed it now.
A critical point needs to be made here. Many of us internalize our gender issues for a variety of reasons, thinking that we're doing the right thing by holding our demons back and maintaining our old lives. We do it for lots of reasons: for our wives and kids, for our friends and family, for the sake of our careers, and also simply because most of us are just too terrified of the potential consequences of NOT holding it all back. We find all kinds of ways to justify it - I'm too old, I'm too big, I'm too manly, I'm too scared - I can never possibly live the kind of life I imagine for myself. We convince ourselves that it's not real, that it's a mirage, and our culture applies constant pressure to reinforce that - to make us doubt ourselves, to make us feel that we're sick or perverted, to make us reject things that we know to be true. We've all been there. I think the thing so many of us fail to realize is that we're not really doing anybody any favors by holding it all back and we're often not nearly as successful as we think we are: we come across as angry and bitter, frustrated and hard. Our internalized issues seep out in any number of ways - drinking, outbursts of anger, self-punishment, psychological trauma. We're doing our best to keep the wheels on our old lives because we're terrified of the potential consequences of exposing the thing we've spent our entire lives trying to hide. But in the end I think we really need to ask ourselves just how successful we're being, and whether trying to live life with this secret is really doing anyone any favors. That was my realization.
Once you reach this point, the obvious question is: What to do? I started to do some research. And to my surprise, a world of help was suddenly at my fingertips! The internet! A world that I had never imagined was right there, and I'd spend hours doing research on things that just blew my mind.
I found some real-life transition stories that pumped me higher than a weather balloon. I read Becky Allison's story. I read Melanie Anne Phillips's story. These women faced the same issues that I did! They had been husbands. They had been fathers. They had built successful careers. They were intelligent and articulate, strong and resourceful. They had somehow found the courage to face their gender issues. And they had built successful and fulfilling lives on the other side of the gender wall. It was inspiring, and exciting, and exhilarating to realize that, at this point in my life, there still WAS hope!!
Courage is contagious. Success breeds success. These were ordinary people...doctors, software developers, engineers...doing incredibly extraordinary things. And to top it off, they were sharing it with others! Their stories helped to provide a roadmap in my mind, whereas in the past all I had seen was an empty and frightening wilderness. Suddenly, there were surgeries to feminize the face and the body to help us fit into society better than ever before. There were psychologists in every state who specialized in working with our community. There were support groups, and an entire community of people dedicated to helping little sisters and brothers find their own way along this perilous path. I decided that that the time to stop running, to stop hiding, and to face my fears had arrived..
It's one thing to realize you need some help, and another thing to know where able to find it. Whereas my initial efforts, some 10+ years earlier, to find the closest psychologist who had experience working with transsexuals yielded someone 500 miles away, resources in 1997 were far more plentiful. AOL had an entire online Forum dedicated to transgendered needs. It didn't take long to find a list of therapists around the country and around the world that work with transgendered patients. It amazed me to see that resources now seemed to exist almost everywhere, so distance was no longer a viable excuse. Help was only phone or an email call away.
The decision to make that first call was not a difficult one. I had come to the realization that I just couldn't hold the old life together anymore until I had some answers. That was my quest. Answers. I wasn't looking to transition, or to have surgery, or anything like that at the outset. In fact, I think those who enter this process with preconceived notions of the ultimate answer aren't doing themselves justice and could be in for a rude awakening. I had an entire lifetime of pent-up anger, frustration, confusion, fear and guilt to unload, and it was apparent to me that I needed to get past these hurdles to the meat of the issue. Answers. I needed some. And, I realized that the only person who could provide them was me. I just needed some help along the way.
I realized, though, that by starting this process I was playing with fire. I was opening Pandora's Box, and I might never be able to get it closed again. But the thinker in me rationalized that I was in control of my own destiny, and I could make rational decisions to back away any time I wanted. There were no two ways about it - this was big. And although I had all kinds of thoughts going through my head, I felt an odd sense of peace knowing that I had tried everything else, had expended everything I had, in an effort to keep from having to do this. Yet, here I was.
There were two or three psychologists in Phoenix. I found the one that was closest to where I worked Scottsdale, and decided to call her. I was at work, and I barricaded myself into a meeting room and nervously dialed her number. As the phone rang, I suddenly realized I had no idea what to say - How do I put this in words? Well, suddenly there was a voice on the other end of the line. I told her I had found her name and phone number at Becky Allison's website, and to my relief she seemed to know what to do from there. We made an appointment.
As I hung up, I was numb. Suddenly, brand new possibilities appeared on my horizon. I had no idea where they would lead. As I considered this, though, I made several decisions. First, I made a vow to take things slow. Although I did feel a time imperative, I knew that I could not afford to make a mistake, for my own sake as well as for the sake of my wife and son. I did not want to go into this process like a firefighter through a burning building, or a horse with blinders on. I wanted to make sure I was fully aware of what was happening, what I was doing, and why. It was to prove to be a wise plan.
(For the sake of simplicity, I'll refer to my psychologist as Dr. S) My first appointment with Dr. S was in March of 1997. I went to see her straight from work, so for all outward indications I appear to be a guy. She had a very calming demeanor, and although I was certainly nervous she soon calmed me and helped me feel at ease. She asked me if I had a femme name, and I told her it was Donna. From that moment on, she referred to me as Donna.
I can't explain the excitement of being called that name in those early days. It represented validation of a part of me that had longed for any sort of acknowledgement for many, many years. Although Dr. S would not see any outward indication of Donna for a long time to come, the simple fact that she could see past the masculine exterior to the real me was very powerful.
Coming out of that first meeting we decided to meet every couple of weeks for a few months. She suggested that I had read a book titled "True Selves" by Dr. Mildred Brown and Chloe Rounsley, and we could discuss that over the next few sessions. For anyone looking for a book on this subject, this is THE book to read. It provides the most comprehensive, insightful, clear and compassionate view of transsexuality that you can get. For transsexuals, it helps to put things into perspective. For friends, families, coworkers, or helping professionals, it helps to understand what is going on, and how best to help us. (At this point there are a half dozen copies of this book drifting around my family!)
She also recommended that I take the Minnesota Multi-Phasic Personality Inventory (MMPI) test. The test asked a ton of questions about things you like and don't like, things you think about, how you feel about things. It's designed to identify if there are other issues involved: depression, schizophrenia, etc. I'm told that my results came back as fine, and put me well within the typical female range.
There is an internationally accepted protocol for treating transsexuals that is followed by the professional care community (psychologists, doctors, surgeons) around the world. It was developed by the Harry Benjamin Institute (HBIGDA), and is called the Standards of Care (SOC). Some people love it, as it provides a treatment "roadmap" for helping transsexuals, and provides a sense of "legitimacy". Others hate it, as it places gatekeepers into the process to make decisions on what is best for us. Both sides have valid concerns and arguments. The goal is to establish a process that minimizes the opportunity for people to make tragic mistakes, and to ensure that people can live successfully if they make these permanent changes.
The SOC requires that a patient being treated for gender dysphoria (the clinical name for Gender Identity Disorder - GID) must meet with a psychologist for at least 3 months to rule out alternative diagnoses prior to being considered for hormone treatment. At that time, if the psychologist feels it to be appropriate he/she can recommend that a patient meet with a doctor to begin a carefully monitored hormone replacement regimen that's appropriate for their new gender. These regimens can differ from doctor to doctor, so the best thing a patient can do is be informed about the process and the effects when meeting with a physician. I wouldn't be giving the whole picture if I didn't mention that some people circumvent this process by ordering hormones from Mexico, or overseas, but I had no interest in self-medication as an option and I don't advocate this for anyone.
My sessions with Dr. S were very helpful. I was relieved at having an outlet for my feminine self to "breathe". Our sessions consisted of me arriving during my lunch break from work and talking for the better part of the hour. I would talk about things that scared me, my family, my dreams, my concerns, my expectations, and just about life in general. It certainly wasn't limited to gender, as I think that treatment for this necessarily involves a more holistic view of "self", and although gender is certainly integral in that (and thus the source of such severe discomfort) it cannot be examined alone.
I should also say that Dr. S had the perfect "style" for me. She never challenged me. She never pushed me to prove things to her that I was not ready to do. Instead, she just let me talk...sometimes making perceptive observations or comments here and there. It may sound strange, but talking about things that I never dared share before helped me more than I can explain. Sometimes, just hearing myself say things that had been bouncing around in my head suddenly seemed to put things in perspective. I never felt threatened when I went to see her. After being so clenched for so long, it was very good for me.
After meeting with Dr. S for 3 months, she indicated that she would recommend me for hormone therapy if I felt that I was ready and it was something I wanted to do. Although the prospect of that next step thrilled me, the decision wasn't such an easy one. I still hadn't told my wife (or anyone, for that matter) what I was doing. I justified that to myself by rationalizing that I didn't want to tell her anything until I had something concrete to say. However, beginning hormones added an entire new set of issues to maintaining this increasingly complicated secret life that I had embarked upon: Physical issues. Money issues. Emotional issues.
Most include an estrogen (oral, injection, patch, or any combination), an anti-androgen to suppress the production of testosterone (such as Spironolactone), and often a progestin as well.
Beginning hormones is an important step for a number of reasons:
At one of my appointments my psychologist recommended a couple of different doctors to me, one who was a general practitioner, and another who was an endocrinologist. She indicated that the GP probably had the better "bedside manner", which was important to me, so that's who I chose to visit. For the sake of simplicity, I'll refer to this doctor as Dr. F.
My first meeting with Dr. F was more to discuss specifics of the regimen than to actually begin it. I wasn't really nervous, although I think I'd have a hard time explaining how I felt in words. My first impression of Dr. F was that he was a very capable no-nonsense, all-business, just-the-facts ma'am type of doctor (as I went through his program, though, I began to see his softer side, to the point that nowadays he just hugs me and gushes when he sees me). He spent quite a bit of time with me, explaining that he needed to feel comfortable accepting new patients into his transsexual program - he was well aware of all the emotional and pressures involved.
Dr. F explained that his hormone regimen was a pretty intense one, and he stressed that this would be a long-term commitment. It included an oral estrogen (2x250mg Primarin tablets daily) to increase estrogen levels , Spironolactone to suppress production of testosterone, and progesterone to provide additional breast development. In addition, it involved bi-weekly intra-muscular injections of estradiol (2cc). He indicated that he'd only continue the treatments so long as he received regular updates from Dr. S that things were progressing. And, he indicated that he wanted to meet with me personally every three of four months to see how things were going. After our meeting, he indicated that he'd be glad to accept me into his program, and suggested that I schedule an appointment when I wanted to get started.
I felt I was ready to take the next step. So two weeks later, in July, 1997, I took it.
As I stood in the examination room, my pants around my ankles, my butt cheek exposed and ready for my first estradiol shot, I can't describe how I was feeling. The fact that this was really happening...really REALLY happening, absolutely blew me away. Up to that time, I had always had a perception that transition was something that other people do - it doesn't happen for everyday, regular, ordinary people like me. But here I was, on a path to find answers to perplexing questions, and I was about to do something big - something HUGE. I was terrified, thrilled, hopeful and happy all at the same time. And, as the nurse put on a little band-aid afterwards and I drove myself back to work, I even felt a little proud.
In those early days I wanted to make sure there was no paper trail that could track what I was doing, so I paid for it all in cash...upwards of $180+/month. Going to his office every 2 weeks for my shots became another regular ritual. As with Dr. S, I would go there during lunch or before work. They didn't see any outward indication of Donna, either. I'd go there, they'd weigh me, take my blood pressure, give me a shot in the butt, and I'd be on my merry way.
The immediate after-effects of the shots were amazing. By the time I got to my car I would swear that I could feel it making me a little light-headed. By the time I got to work I was convinced that I could feel my breasts getting puffier and more tender. Whether they were or not wasn't really all that important. My mind could feel what was happening, and that was incredible powerful. After each visit I started counting down the days until my next one.
One affect of the hormones is to start a sort of second puberty. One article on puberty in young girls reads as follows: "The first sign of puberty in girls , which occurs at an average age of 10 1/2 years, is breast development (thelarche). This begins with breast budding, or the formation of small lumps or nodules under one or both nipples". The same is true for transsexuals once we begin HRT.
A few weeks after I started, my boobs started to get sore. Eventually, they got so sore that even lying on them hurt (in a good way, of course!). I could feel the nodules growing in my breasts, and spent 5 minutes analyzing them in the mirror every morning. Some days I would swear that I could actually see them becoming fuller. Other days I couldn't seem to see anything. One day I put on a t-shirt, and saw two little titties poking through the fabric, and suddenly the realization of it all hit home. I was growing boobs!!!
Needless to say, my joy at what was happening became tempered with the realization that my new "friends" added an entirely new set of concerns into the picture. How to keep others from noticing? I became terribly self-conscious that everybody would see them, although I my logical mind rationalized that such a concern was pretty silly. I mean, how many people look at a guy and sees pudgy "man-boobs" and comes to the immediate conclusion that this person must be a transsexual taking estrogen?!! I mean, really!! I remember my dad telling me that "Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they're NOT after you". In any event, I was pretty paranoid.
I eventually bought sports bras and wore them under my baggy shirts to try to keep things down. I was always worried that a strap was showing, or that the outline was visible through the shirt, or that someone would come up and pat me on the back and notice it. Thankfully, none of those fears were ever realized.
Now, the question you may have is, "How did you hide all of this from your wife?" That is certainly a valid question, as my wife was one of the most aware and "in-tune" people I have ever met. Truth be told, she HATED it when I snored, so I started to sleep in a spare bedroom from time to time to give her a little peace and quiet. Eventually I just moved in there full time. I mean, we had been married at that point for 16 years. And once she learned what was happening (a few months later), she didn't want anything to do with me and locked me out of our bedroom, anyways.
As exhilarating and exciting as all these physical changes were, the mental changes were even MORE profound. Suddenly, colors became brighter. My sense of taste became much more sensitive and acute. My appreciation for pleasant aromas, or soft touches, became much more heightened. I slowly became aware that estrogen significantly enhances sensuality. Women don't just see things, or taste things....they feel them much more deeply than men do. I sometimes say that I now feel that men go through lives wearing a sensual and emotional "condom" that reduces sensitivity.
Emotionally, I was suddenly flooded with feelings and sensations that I had never felt before, and frankly, was not prepared to handle. My fear became terror. Funny things sometimes made me laugh uncontrollably (to the amusement of those watching the tears roll down my face). I sometimes felt incredibly sorry for myself. I found my sensitivity to temperature become much more acute, and I'd find myself shivering uncontrollably in only mildly cool weather. And for the first time in nearly 30 years....I cried.
My inability to cry had actually concerned me. I had experienced some pretty sad things over the years, and although I had felt the emotion well up inside me, I couldn't seem to let it out. I recently saw a Friends episode where Chandler couldn't cry. Joey told him he was "dead inside", and Monica called him a "robot". That's how I felt. I had built such a thick layer of emotional defenses (as boys are supposed to do in our culture) that I couldn't cry even if I wanted to.
One night I went to the movies by myself to see Alien Resurrection (the last of the Aliens series). It wasn't a sad movie. Near the end, Ridley torches all the baby alien eggs, and the mother gets very unhappy about it, but otherwise it's certainly not a tear jerker by any stretch. Well, I got out to my car after the movie was over, and on my drive home I was suddenly engulfed by a tidal wave of sadness that seemed to come out of nowhere. My face contorted all up, and suddenly, I started to cry! Then, I started to sob! It got so bad that I had to pull off the road for fear of crashing into something! It absolutely astounded me that something like this could well up out of nowhere and reduce me to a sobbing mess! I was thrilled!
Six months after I started hormones, I came to a crossroads. The emotional flood was proving difficult for me to handle. My body was now showing unmistakable signs of what was happening. At this point my wife and son and the entire outside world didn't know about what was happening with me. I spent quite a bit of time thinking about the repercussions of it all; how I couldn't afford to make a mistake here for my sake or the sake of my wife and son. I needed to be able to make decisions with a clear head, free from any feeling of estrogen-intoxication. I sometimes felt like things were happening so fast...that things were spinning out of control, when in reality things were same-same as the day before, and the day before that.
After quite a bit of emotional turmoil, I decided to take a little while to clear my system and my head, and re-evaluate it all. It was time to move forward with renewed sense of purpose now that I had some idea of what to expect, or to make the difficult decision that I couldn't continue. So after all that had happened.....I stopped taking my hormones.
It's not that I was turning back. It's not that I necessarily felt that the path I was following was wrong. It's not that I had doubts in who or what I was.
The source of my issue was my need to be sure. I needed to be sure that the things I was thinking and the things I was doing were not a result of some sort of current that was carrying me faster than I was ready to travel. I felt (and continue to feel) that far too many of us rush through our transitions as though with blinders on, almost as if they are afraid that if they stop from time to time to regain their bearings that their transition "force" will fade and they will be lost in mid-stream. The fact that the value of the transition is in the journey, and not the destination, seems to get lost in the rush to get through it all somehow....
I know that transition is not a straight line. There are huge leaps forward. There are steps backwards. There are pauses. It is almost like a transition is a living, breathing thing. It needs nourishment (validation). It grows. It learns. And it needs to rest from time to time. Or it will die.
At that time, at the end of 1997, I didn't have the benefit of this hindsight to apply to my situation. All I knew was that I was flooded with more input than my mind could handle, and I needed to slow that down. So I did. I took nearly two months away from that magical elixir, cleansing my mind and building my strength for the difficulties that I KNEW lurked in my future. I talked with my psychologist about it, and she fully supported me. It was a very healthy thing for me to do. So in January 1998, I was ready again. I felt far more prepared to assail the gender barrier than I did 6 months before. I felt as though I had had a long night of sleep...waking rested and calm and at peace. I started my hormones again, confident in my resolve and ready to face whatever lay on the horizon.
For some reason, the last scene of "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid" often came to mind: the scene where the two of them are in that little building reloading their guns, making plans for the future, unaware that the entire Libyan army is waiting for them to open the door and take a step outside.
The most difficult issue facing me at that point was the fact that I had not disclosed the situation to my wife. The thought of hurting her, and losing her for the sake of my own self-discovery issues, was more than I could bear. I used to get sick to my stomach just thinking about it. I felt like such a pathetic coward. How and when to do it, though?
All of that became a moot point in July.
Of course, all these hormones and all these visits to the psych cost money. There was no way I could spend that kind of money undetected. So, I had decided to write myself a check from a stock account that we had, confident that the money would not be missed. I used that money to fund my treatments.
One Saturday I returned home from shopping with my son, and my wife approached me.
"Why did you write yourself a check for $3,000?" she asked, holding up a copy of the check I had written to myself. Apparently, the cancelled check had been returned for our records, and she found it when she opened the mail.
At first, a sense of panic ran through my veins. But in just a second a sense of relief took its place, like the resolve of a thief who really wants to be caught. The time to face the music had come.
I explained what I had done. I reminded her about the gender issues I had told her about some 10 years before, and the fact that the feelings had not gone away. I explained that I had been talking to a psychologist who specializes in gender issues in hopes of finding some answers.
I could see her struggling to keep calm and understand. She made a statement: "I assume you're looking for help to fight this, not to become a woman." I told her that I didn't know where it would lead, and that's why I needed to do it. It was a possibility.
That's all it took. Over the next ten minutes I heard the word "divorce" about a dozen times, and "take your crap and get the hell out", and "you're all fu#$ed up"......it was a very lively tirade.
I once read a passage about disclosing this issue to a spouse, explaining that the experience is often very liberating for the transsexual who has just left the proverbial closet. The spouse, however, is filled with anger and bitterness and shame, and goes into the closet we have just vacated. The transsexual has found newfound strength to discuss the issue and find support. The spouse doesn't want anyone to know, and barricades herself behind a wall of denial. That is what happened to us.
I was soon to find myself at two protagonists in a very odd relationship triangle, as both husband and temptress. It got very unpleasant very fast.
Now that the cat was out of the bag (so to speak), I suddenly felt free to start expressing Donna more and more and more. I started shaving my legs. I think the way I acted changed, too, and that infuriated my wife. She would tell me that the way I was walking, or the way I held my hand, or the way I bent down to pick something up, made me look gay (I'm using gentle language here). Donna started coming out more and more, and I did very little to stop it. The tension around our house, however, was so thick you could cut it with a knife.
For anyone who considers transitioning, it all seems so overwhelming at the beginning. There is soooooo much to do. We have physical, behavioral, and psychological challenges that would make even the hardiest of us balk. It seems absolutely impossible that we would be able to undo 20 or 30 or 40 years of male conditioning and "training", testosterone poisoning in our bodies and our minds, and psychological shackles forged during our "male" lives.
Physical Changes
Behavioral Changes
Phychological Changes
It is a logistical nightmare. No wonder transition is so difficult!
I'm not the smartest person in the world, but I knew that I couldn't tackle all of these things at the same time. It was far too overwhelming to consider as a whole. Instead, I felt the need to prioritize, and to develop a plan. It reminds me of that riddle. Q: How do you eat a whale? A: One bite at a time.
The first thing to consider: Where to start?
I was in no hurry. The fact that I was able to express Donna little by little helped me tremendously although it certainly made home life difficult. My wife had started to shun and ridicule me, and that really was ok, as my energies and priorities where elsewhere at the time.
I started to do things little things that helped my blossoming feminine persona feel comfortable. For example, I started to shave my legs and underarms. In the past I had trimmed the hairy things in hopes that they wouldn't look so much like a forest, but on my birthday I shaved them smooth, and they have been smooth ever since. I made an appointment at the salon across the street from where I worked, and had my arms waxed. Little by little, I started doing little things that I felt I could get away with, and not risk triggering World War III at home.
Feminity Training
One of the things that I felt I could do early on without upsetting the apple cart too much was to get some femininity training. Girls in our society get this training during their entire lives, whether they realize it or not, just as boys get "guy" training. Why do girls walk a certain way, or gesture a certain way, or move with a sense of elegance and grace? Inborn? Perhaps to a certain point, but much of it is learned. It's something they learn as they grow up taking ballet lessons, and gymnastics, and dance, and all the other things that the boys in our society just don't do. The end result is moving in a certain way, and that's how I wanted to learn to be able to move.
Do most guys know how to get into a car with a skirt on? Do they know how to walk in high heels? Do they know how to manage a set of car keys, a purse, a cell phone, and any variety of other things in their hands? Do they know the feminine etiquette of eating in a restaurant? What about accessories...like scarves or pins or necklaces...how can we tell which ones look nice? These are all things that I wanted to learn. Whereas most of us learn by watching, and by trial and error, and by our own clumsy experiments, I wanted more. I wanted a teacher. So I found one.
I found a small modeling agency near Phoenix that offered modeling classes. It was run by a young woman named Sandra. I called to get some information, and she sounded very friendly and bubbly on the phone, so I asked to stop by to chat with her.
How could I explain this to her? How could I explain that this obviously masculine guy needed to learn to walk and move and look like a woman? I was afraid that, if I told her the truth, she'd tell me I was a freak and ask me to leave, so I convinced myself that a little fabrication about my motives wouldn't hurt anything.
I told her that I was a journalist, and that I would be writing a story on what it is like to live as a woman for some length of time. I told her I was documenting what it took to get ready for this story, as well as what happened when I actually started, and I needed help to prepare. I told her I had no idea on looking or acting feminine, so that if she could help by providing some private tutoring it would make a world of difference.
She had no reason not to believe me. In fact, she felt that the entire experience would be fun, and jumped into the effort with a tremendous amount of enthusiasm.
I went to class with her during my lunch hour. I'd bring a pair of heels and a dress, and we'd practice. She showed me how women walk, how they move their feet, how they swivel their upper body to match their feet, how they hold their hands when they walk, or when they're talking. She showed me all kinds of gestures. She showed me how run, and how to go up or down stairs in heels, and how to get into and out of a car in a tight skirt with a purse and a set of keys. She'd video tape it, like we did in my earliest wrestling days, and watch it to critique what happened. She taught me about makeup, and started to tweeze and shape my eyebrows for me - I was scared to death that others would notice but nobody said anything. She took me to a wig store and helped me buy a wig that she thought looked good. Although I'm sure I looked absolutely ridiculous, I really enjoyed myself. All in all, we had lots of fun.
I didn't approach all of this so much as a "how-to" class as an opportunity to highlight all the little things that men and women do differently - some of the unique considerations to recognize. There was just so much of it. As transsexuals in training, it's not that we simply need to learn how to do these things. It's that we need to un-learn the way we've done things for our entire lives first. It's harder to do something once you've already developed bad habits, and that's how much of this was. And, I started to learn that there was an interesting thing taking place. I couldn't really feel comfortable expressing my feminine until I could somehow forget my male self, and I couldn't really forget my male self until I felt comfortable expressing my feminine self. It's quite the conundrum.
Eventually, Sandra decided that we were ready to take this out of her small studio and into the real world. She took me out for my first time in public as Donna and I'll admit that I was absolutely scared to death. And I was exhilarated beyond words. It soon became apparent that this was to become one of those life paradoxes that I'd need to get used to - being terrified and excited both at the same time.
We decided to go to a local store briefly to buy a dress. Up to that point, my wardrobe was purchased without trying it on - just putting it into the cart based on what I hoped it would look like and what I thought my size might be. I couldn't make heads or tails of all the sizes in women's clothes anyways: Petite, Women's, Missy. And, there didn't seem to be any consistency between the numbers and the actual sizes anyways - I was a 10 in some things and a 12 in others. I'd buy these things and pretend to be talking on my cell phone so the clerk wouldn't say something to embarrass me. And, that had been good enough.
This time was different. It was time to put all of the things I had been learning together. The thing I remember most about the experience is looking straight ahead, in hopes that I wouldn't notice everyone noticing me. I tried to remember all the things I had learned, but as with anything else, getting good at it only comes with practice. And I was far too nervous to concentrate.
Practice practice practice. I used to wake up early (before anybody else in the house), go out into the garage, slip on my heels, and walk back and forth, back and forth for a half hour before taking my shower.
We made plans to do a major shopping trip to begin Donna's wardrobe. Everything seemed to be going well. Until I told her the truth. When I told her the real reason for my "training" I think she felt an empathy for my wife and my son, and she suddenly became uncomfortable. Soon, she wouldn't return my phone calls. Eventually, her office assistant called to say she couldn't help me any more, and that she was sorry. And that was that....
Note: I have since met wonderful people who provide femininity training services specifically for transsexuals, and can't begin to recommend this reputable service highly enough. It is good for the mind, good for spirit, and good for the soul. If you do contact them, tell Danea that Donna sent you!
Electrolysis
Visualize this. A completely smooth face. When you run your fingers over it, it's silky and soft with no trace of coarse stubble or "5 o'clock shadow". You never have to worry about shaving, or covering telltale growth that always seems to bleed through no matter how hard you try to mask it. I ask you...who wouldn't want something like that if they could have it? Even if you're a guy, an opportunity to never shave again can be an attractive proposition.
Now, visualize this. Lying on a table for hours and hours at a time with someone sticking a needle into each follicle. Once it's in there, they zap it with a jolt of searing electric current for a few seconds to kill it. Then, they pull out the dead hair by the root with a pair of tweezers. Follicle after follicle. Hour after hour. Day after day.
Unfortunately, at the time I transitioned a few years ago, you had to do one to have the other. You had to go through the long, uncomfortable, expensive proposition of electrolysis to get a completely clear face. It was just another step, another test, along the path. I sometimes felt it was a direct challenge: "Just how badly do you want it???!!".
At the time I transitioned the only certified method for permanent hair removal was electrolysis. There was certainly a "laser vs. electrolysis" debate, but I decided early on that I wasn't going to take any chances here. I decided to go with electrolysis all the way.
I think that if you talk with many successful T's, one of the strongest recommendations is to begin electrolysis as early as possible. I have been told that there are somewhere around 60,000 hair follicles on a typical "male" face (who counts those?), and each one must be treated individually, sometimes repeatedly, in order to completely kill it. It is a long, expensive, uncomfortable process.
That being said, although I had certainly seen that advice, I did not take it. Electrolysis did not fit into my day-to-day life as a guy. Plus, I just didn't have the money! I took hormones, and met with my psych, and started expressing my Donna self more and more, but for some reason I couldn't find the time or the money to begin electrolysis when I should have.
However, as I looked at the "must-have's" for my transition, a mainly cleared face was near the top of the list. The thought of having to shave before I put on my makeup, or of having to worry about the stubble showing through, was something I absolutely couldn't handle. I know others who have been successful at doing it...I'm just saying that as I looked at everything that needed to be done, a clear face was non-negotiable. Unfortunately, my delay, and the fact that I underestimated the effort that was involved, would make it a very serious issue very quickly once I actually started to transition.
Facial Feminization Surgery (FFS)
There could be no arguing it. I looked like a man. No matter what I did with my hair, or how I applied my makeup, or what I wore, I looked like a man. It can be argued that there are genetic women who look masculine, so it shouldn't really be a big deal. But it was a big deal. To me, it was a HUUUUGGGE deal.
I think that transsexuals are hyper-sensitive about looking, and feeling, masculine. Some of the things we do are not necessarily so much about looking "pretty" as looking less masculine. In my own awkward attempts to confront this issue, I have learned several things.
First off, less is more. Far too many of us think that by adding more makeup we look more feminine. Be careful there, as the end result is a caricature that is bound to draw unwanted attention. I often think of us as pubescent high-school girls. When a grown woman looks back at her high school pictures she often cringes at the image. Funky hair. Too much make-up. Girls at that age, I think, are searching for their "look". Their newfound freedoms of expression tend to lead down some wrong paths, and so too is that true for transsexuals.
Also, I find that transsexuals often use things as "crutches". I had a friend whose own hair looked wonderful, but she refused to be seen without her wig. I know people who go to the fitness center with a full face of makeup. Our sensitivity it matched only by our desire to be accepted, and sometimes our own insecurity causes one to short-circuit the other.
Very few of us are born fortunate enough to have typically female facial features. Our masculine brows protrude. Our male jaw lines are strong. Our noses are prominent. If nothing else, our enlarged tracheas are dead give-aways. For those who have the financial wherewithal to manage it, there is help.
The pinnacle of "looking" feminine can be achieved through Facial Feminization Surgery (FFS). There are surgeons who have done extensive research on what makes a skull, and the corresponding facial features, "look" masculine or feminine. We are the first generation of trans-women who can take advantage of these advances, helping us to take even greater strides into mainstream acceptance.
Masculine looking brows can be shaved smooth. Large masculine noses can be reduced and turned up into a feminine looking bob. Large, masculine foreheads can be reduced. Strong jaws can be softened. Bulging male tracheas can be dramatically reduced. Not all of us need all of these procedures. But many of us will find that one, or several of them, will substantially improve both how we look, and how we feel about ourselves. In fact, based on my own experience, I found the money spent on these procedures to reap far, far more benefit in my day-to-day life than money spent on SRS.
Let's be real, though. To think that a large masculine skull will be reduced to a petite, dainty, feminine face is just not going to happen for most of us. Expectations need to be managed. Reality needs to figure into the equation somewhere. But as part of the overall package, facial feminization surgery to some extent, at some point, makes things significantly less difficult.
As I considered my own transition, facial feminization surgery was a "must".
Voice/Communication Training
What makes a woman sound like a woman? There are women who have deep voices. What is it about their voice, and the way they communicate, that clearly and definitely indicates that this is a woman?
Generally speaking, men have longer, thicker vocal chords than women do. The result is a voice that sounds lower, deeper, thicker. In order for genetic men to achieve a sound that is acceptably female, we often need to train our voices. We need to "re-set" the registers that we use to speak.
But on a deeper level, men and women use communication differently. Men use it to give information. Men use it as part of their overall persona of strength. Men are often very superficial in what they talk about, or how they talk. Women, however, use communication to share, and to develop intimacy. They talk about feelings. They express themselves much more openly and freely. These differences come across in how men and women communicate.
For example:
The pinnacle of success for trans-women is to talk on the telephone, or at a fast-food drive-up, and immediately be accepted as female without any visual cues whatsoever. It's so frustrating to be totally and completely passable, but to pull up to a McDonald's drive-thru, to order, and have the kid on the other end of the microphone ask, "Would you like any fries with that, sir?" Ouch!
Anyways, I have digressed. Back to our story......
So at this point, the time is mid-1997. Life at my house was not fun. Considering how bad things would get before too long, I suppose I shouldn't complain. The thing that continued to confound and frustrate me was the fact that my wife refused to learn anything about my issues...her mind was made up. The psychologist was obviously brainwashing me in the wrong direction! I needed to break free! And the more I tried to get her to read things, the more rigid she became. She once told me she rather that I had cancer than this....
Still, we managed to co-exist. We tried to put on a happy face in front
of our son so he wouldn't know what was going on, and I think we were pretty
successful. She rarely asked about my gender stuff, and I knew that
mentioning it was sure to provoke a fight, so I didn't say much. I
continued to take my hormones. I continued to see my psych every couple of
weeks. And I continued to think about taking the next steps.
By February of 1998 things had settled back to an uneasy calm. I had been on hormones for nearly 2 years, but that alone was the secret that still hadn't been discussed. It was a very odd existence, as my life consisted of trying to hide my babies (my boobs, that is). I wore only baggy shirts. I bought a couple of sports bras that I wore underneath my shirt, and lived in constant fear that a strap would be showing, or that someone would touch my back and feel them. I used to wash them in the mornings, then keep one in the car to dry. I hate to even admit that, as it makes me sound so "sneaky" and conniving, but I did what I needed to do.
Perhaps the most awkward part was going to the fitness center, as I was running 3 or 4 miles and doing hundreds of sit-ups every couple of days to get my body into shape. I had to change into my workout clothes in a toilet stall, as my bra and shaved body would have been a very odd site in the men's locker room. Afterwards, taking a shower and getting dressed was a constant challenge, but for all of my fear, nobody seemed to pay any attention.
At that point, how could I tell my wife about the hormones? It's not as easy as just bringing up in casual conversation. "Honey, ya know...the oddest thing. I've been on estrogen for almost two years now, and somehow I just haven't known how to bring it up...." Ka-bloom. World War 3.
Well, fate had an interesting way of intervening at the oddest times. I had been going to the doctor for my shot...faithfully...every two weeks. It always cost me $45, and I paid right then and there. Well, one day in January, I went for my shot, and the gal at the payment window only charged me $40. I figured, "Wow! Maybe the price went down!" or "Maybe I'll actually save $5 this time!". So, I paid my $40 and left.
One day in early February I was at work, and the phone rang. It was my wife, and she was angry. "Have you been taking estrogen shots?" she asked. "We just got a bill in the mail from some doctor for $5, and it says you are taking estrogen. Are you????" My mind was racing. I felt like I was going to faint. I didn't know what to say. So I said the first thing that I could think of. "Yes".
"GOD DAMN IT!!!" and she slammed the phone down. As I said.....World War 3.
If things were bad in my house before, it was hell-on-earth after that. It's not a time that I like to remember. My stomach was in a perpetual knot. I couldn't sleep....usually getting up after a couple of hours of restless attempts to fall asleep, drinking a cup of Nyquil, and going into the den in hopes of falling asleep on the couch in front of the TV. I think my system was gearing itself up for the battle it knew was coming.
I did everything I could do to stay away from home to avoid the emotional flare-ups and confrontations that inevitably broke out if my wife and I were around each other for very long. I arranged weekend trips with my son to get away from the house. Sometimes, we just went to the mall and walked. It was bad, bad, bad.
On the positive side, though, I continued to get more comfortable with myself, and my with my own self-acceptance. I think the scariest part of it all was the fact that an actual, honest-to-God transition started to seem like a real possibility for me, instead of just some far-off dream that other people seemed to do.
At the same time, I started to meet an incredibly supportive group of people online. I found people whose stories were inspirational to me, and found that they were eager to provide encouragement and support. I found others who were dealing with the same emotional family turmoil that I was. I found pen pals that I could write to every day...sometimes two, three, four times a day! I found that writing to them, and getting regular validation and encouragement, was very healthy and therapeutic for me, and more than made up for the doom and gloom I got at home.
As odd as this may sound, my wife and I still loved each other very much. She was trying her hardest to keep the thing that meant the most to her in the entire world from slipping away, and felt helpless to stop it. I understood that. I empathized with that. But I needed her to understand how I was feeling...the pressures that I had faced for my entire life...my need to make decisions about exactly how I needed to live my life. She didn't want to know those things, though, so we continued to clash. In fact, the fact that we did still love each other is what made it so painful. For both of us.
At one point she told me that, if our son ever learned about this, she'd take him away and I'd never see either of them again. She said it wasn't something that he needed to know, that he needed his daddy, and that I needed to keep it as a personal issue. Although I doubted she'd follow through on her threat, in a way I agreed with her. I didn't have a real clear picture of how this would eventually end up, so any thought of jeopardizing my relationship with my son for the sake of some "fantasy" or "dream" was immediately banished.
The fact that my impossible dream of transitioning was becoming more possible every day helped propel me to take some more steps in that direction.
After my "trainer" decided to back out of the picture I realized just how valuable she had been, and how I needed to find someone to fill her shoes. I needed practice going out into the real world as Donna, and help learning (or at least identifying) all of the things that women learn from an early age, and seem to instinctively know.
One day I was at work reading a local magazine, and came across a story on an "image consultant". Her name was Julie. She was young. She was very pretty. And most importantly, the quotes they included in the story were exactly the things I would want to hear from a potential "coach". There were quotes about how she acknowledged and accepted each person's individuality, and how it was her job to help others find their full potential, etc. etc. etc. I decided, right then and there, to call her.
Since I had learned the hard way how trying to lie about my intentions could blow up in my face, I decided to take my changes and tell her the truth. So when she answered the phone, I told her that I was a transsexual contemplating a possible transition, and although I realized I wasn't really her target demographic, I seriously needed some of the services that she provided and I hoped that we could meet to discuss it.
If she was surprised by my revelation, it didn't show in her voice. She told me that she appreciated the courage it must have taken to call her, and that she'd have to do a little research. BUT she thought meeting later in the week would be a good idea, so we made the arrangements.
Her name was Julie. When we first met, I felt an instant sense of comfort. She just had this very calming way about her. And she seemed perfectly comfortable with me, too. She asked very intelligent questions. Was I working with a psychologist? Was I on hormones? Was I following the SOC? Was I considering any facial feminization surgery? She had obviously done some research, and it was comforting to know that she made the effort to learn all she could. By the time we were done, she told me she'd be happy to work with me. I was ecstatic!
Over the course of the next several weeks we got together for hourly sessions during lunch. Our time together wasn't spent so much on "how" to do things as on "what" to do. She did an analysis of styles and colors she thought would look good on me. We discussed the essentials of a basic wardrobe. We practiced comportment a little. And finally, she felt I was ready for the real world.
My first true extended time (if you consider 8 hours as "extended time) as Donna happened in February 1999. I took a day off from work and we spent an entire day at the Arizona Mills Outlet Shopping Mall in Tempe. It's a day I will never forget.
As we got ready to leave the house she told me I looked beautiful. I know better. I was a wreck. I'm sure I had a look of sheer terror on my face. You'd think the the opportunity to express Donna would bring some sense of relief, and I suppose by the end of the day I had gained some small level of confidence and comfort. But the overwhelming thought at the time was on being detected, on being harassed. That had been an over-riding fear for so long, and now it had a chance to actually come true. It's one thing to dress in public, or at night when nobody can see. It's a whole other thing to go to a mall with kids and people who have no reason to be sympathetic. I realized that a bad experience here could crush me, just as a positive one could propel me to new heights. But in the end, it was like jumping from a plane and hoping that the parachute opened. So, I closed my eyes and jumped.
It was a wonderful day. I used a Woman's bathroom for the first time. I had salespeople bring me clothes to try on, and I just enjoyed allowing myself to do thing I had always imagined doing but never dared to do. We shopped. We talked. We enjoyed. When it came to salespeople Julie did most of the talking, as we strolled through the racks I never let her get too far away. And, but the end of the day I was emotionally drained, my feet were killing me, and I felt a sense of quiet achievement I had never experienced before.
Of course, my joy was short-lived. My wife knew that I hadn't been at work and made a huge scene as soon as I got home. Such was the price to pay. But at that point I wouldn't allow anything or anyone to diminish what had happened that day.
A couple of weeks later Julie and I spent another day "out" together. It was my birthday, and Julie wanted to take Donna out to lunch. We went to the Royal Palms, a very fancy resort here in the Phoenix area. Again, I was scared to death, and I had the added exposure to valets and restaurant staff to worry about. Everything was going wonderfully until right at the end. Julie somehow knocked over her glass of water, and wait staff came from everywhere to dry it up. As every eye in the place focused on the table causing all the commotion I just wanted to crawl under the table. But, I somehow survived. :)
As my comfort in being Donna increased, my marriage crumbled. My wife hated what was happening and she became mean. "You disgust me! I can't even stand to look at what you're becoming" she'd hiss. Or, "God, you walk like a FAG!" On my 40th birthday we met for dinner at a local steak restaurant, and halfway through the meal she got up and left, saying that she just couldn't do it anymore. I wished I had someone with whom I could share all the amazing things I was feeling and doing for the first time in my life. Instead, I had to hide it. Eventually, the marriage would die a slow, agonizing death.
Transition - What's the Point?
Transition is a term that we all use, but I wonder how many of us can really explain what it is. More than that, I wonder if it means the same thing to each of us. I don't think it does.
My view of transition was a little different. My goal was to be able to make decisions about myself, about my life, based on first hand experience rather than on fears, fantasies, or a world that would tell me who and what to be. I was learning to trust whatever internal thing it is inside ourselves that helps us to know when we've found our place in the world - a place where we feel comfortable both with ourselves and with the way the world treats us. My mind had told me that this place - for me - was a feminine place. So, my path led me progressively towards it.
Throughout it all, I remained keenly aware of everything that was at stake. I realized I could not afford to make a mistake, or at least the mistake of eventually taking the wrong path for the wrong reasons. I was also keenly aware that the things that were happening were about much more than gender. Certainly, the gender aspect of it is the most easily recognizable, but in my mind I was learning and growing as a person, not just as a man or a woman in our culture.
To this point in my journey - still near the beginning - my gender transition had progressed in small, measured steps punctuated by huge life-altering events. I understood that the key element of it all was time, that patience was perhaps more than strength or courage, the element that would help me find the things I needed to find. Some seem to head for sex reassignment surgery like a bee for honey, but for me that destination was never a foregone conclusion until I could make that decision based on self-knowledge.
All of these things I had been doing were certainly important in the new life I envisioned for myself, but to think that this journey was simply about walking or dressing or acting like a woman would be to trivialize it to the point of losing the whole goal. In my mind, I wasn't becoming a woman - I was becoming me. It took me a long time to learn that. The fact that me happened to be a woman in the eyes and minds of our society didn't change to point of the journey. But those who can understand that this journey is far more than skin deep - it's soul deep - can put all of this into some sort of perspective.
My wife used to ask me what about being a woman made me want to do this. She was a woman, and she had the hardest time imagining what could make me want to be one. I had the hardest time trying to explain that it wasn't any one thing. It wasn't the clothes. It wasn't makeup. It wasn't sex. It wasn't being treated like a second-class citizen. Those things certainly come with the package, but individually those things are just perks.
No, the point of this journey is much more intangible. It's being able to sit with a group of women and talk. It's being able to sit in a beauty salon with foil in your hair and just be comfortable. It's the simple pleasure of having someone holding a door open for you. It's being able to shave my legs because I like to. It's being able to cry if you feel like it, of allowing yourself to be vulnerable and real. For most, these things are birthrights granted by the physical gender, and there is an internal comfort (or not) with them that they rarely (if ever) consider. For us, we need to transcend sex and gender to find them.
Transition is about more than just gender. The person who comes out the other side of it all is profoundly different from the person going in. I tell you this so you'll recognize it in yourself. And, at this point in my journey, the fun had just begun....
There's so much more to share. Some bullet points:
The rest of my transition story is available in my book, "Wrapped In Blue" !!!!!
As I write this it is January 2004. It has been 4 years, 3 months, and any number of days since my first day living full-time as Donna. My days as a guy seem like a lifetime ago, and in some very real ways, they were. The fact that I've done what I've done, and that I am who I am, amazes me on an almost daily basis. I'm sometimes afraid I've dreamed it all after having fallen asleep during half-time of some football game, and I'll wake up just in time to catch the 4th quarter. But, thankfully, it remains real.
Things have changed dramatically in those 4 years.
Although my son seemed to be able to accept me at first, his acceptance faltered as my physical appearance changed. There was a point early in my transition where I didn't see him, or talk with him, for nearly 9 months, and that rejection was, by far, the most difficult part of my transition experience. Thankfully, that has changed. Today my son is 18. He's a high school senior. And, he lives with me. Slowly but surely we got to know each other again, forming a new relationship based on love and acceptance. We've gotten to know each other again, and today we rarely think about how unique our situation is. He makes me incredibly proud, both in his acceptance and love for me, and in his own sense of individuality and uniqueness in himself. Now, if we can only get him thru high school..... :)