Chapter 2

But things work out, and they made it to the hospital they wanted, the one where their doctor was waiting for them. All I know about this time was that in 1943 mothers were kept in the hospital for two weeks to recover from the birth, and that I won the most beautiful baby contest for that month. A beautiful baby girl…so they thought, but looks can be deceiving.

Hell, I knew ‘they’ were wrong before I was five—that was the soonest I could articulate it, and I’m sure it came out as an ‘oh isn’t that cute’ moment on my parents’ side.

That being said, why did I go into hiding almost immediately? I felt like I was dead inside, below the neck; I was locked into a dark coal cellar of my own making, with only shame and cold darkness outside the locked door. There was one small window way up high, that I could only reach when absolutely necessary to save my ‘house’ or body from physical harm, or to get a breath of air, to keep myself barely alive. To keep from being completely dead.

Did I try to kill myself? No, because I didn’t feel like my life belonged to me, anyhow; it belonged to my mother, with whom I was fiercely codependent. I had no innate knowledge of how to be a woman in the world, and the information on being a man was not coming in anywhere, not from any role models, not from knowing anyone else like me, not from books or looking it up in the encyclopedia, even if I had had a name for it. Any time I even hinted at it from the time I was five, I was ignored or shut down so firmly, that I knew it was wrong to mention it. Who would believe me? Nobody knew anything anyhow.

All I had was shame and confusion, and guilt, but I don’t know why. I think I knew I’d be mocked if I wore boys’ shoes or trousers with a zipper up the front. And, that also had to be shoved aside so ‘no one would know.’ Why the shame and hiding? Research has not even helped me find an answer, other than that I had to act my role as physically assigned to me at birth in order to just survive.

Up through fifth grade, I was the most popular kid in school. Then puberty hit. Luckily in high school there were other rejects, I have no idea if the boys had rejects, too, but there were three or four other female outcasts in high school. One was poor, another only had a mother, a third was horse crazy. None of us bought into the expensive clothes and hairdos and shallow conversation, nor did we attempt to join in with the popular group. We were lucky to find each other.

By then, I’d been going to church and Sunday School for ten years. All the pronouns in the Bible and at church were him, his, he; I knew they thus didn’t pertain to me as a female. That was confusing and only helped me feel worthless.

I actually heard of Multiple Personality Disorder before I ever heard of Transsexualism and wondered if that was my ‘problem’. Then, because of the male pronouns plus how men worked and had adventures and were heroes, I thought maybe I was just jealous. My sister had blond hair and blue eyes and was the smart one; maybe I was just jealous of everything. That made me ashamed as well. As adults we once shared that we both thought our parents loved the other one better, so we both suffered from that.But Hey, Some Background First

Oh, but I was talking about my background! Well my dad had a male cousin who…never married. He had a female cousin who had a ‘live-in companion’. Yeah, right. He himself bought Mom satin nightgowns and slips every Christmas, and my mom would go in the bathroom and cry. Guess who really wore them; you think?

So here are all the actors on the stage; Dad, Mom, ancestors in the shadows, my sister and me, various aunts and uncles and cousins. In my opinion, there are two things that make you who you are: one is your family/background/environment and the other is what you brought to this planet, your own inner self, which is probably not even known to us until after it all unfolds, years later. Nonetheless, family; how did they affect me? How did I interact with them? What did they teach me? How did that play with what I brought to this planet? And when they disagree, which one do you believe in?

I think I chose the wrong one; I never validated my belief that I was not a girl but a boy; how crazy a secret was that anyhow, in 1948 when I first articulated my feelings? Of course at age five I had no concept of what that whole difference entailed, anyhow. As I got older, I got quieter, stuffed myself and that deep dark secret down into the coal cellar of my mind, and firmly locked the door. From the age of ten, I wrote, daydreamed, played pretend, and dreamed at night—as male. Exclusively. Only once did I think of myself as a girl/woman; I dreamed that I was a little black girl in a blue dress, crying in a hallway. Not until after surgery and hormones did I ever dream of myself as a female, and not very often then either. Oddly enough in my dreams I could never see what clothes I was wearing. (Note: I am 75. Last night I dreamed I was a normal, ordinary, beautiful young man, teenager, naked at the doctor’s office, no big deal, nobody cared. I lay back over some chairs as if it were the most common thing to ever happen. That feeling of wholeness that there probably isn’t even a language for, because it’s never been needed by the majority of people. I feel now that if there is indeed a spirit form of ourselves, that it was complete.) How do you make a life when you are not a whole person, but only the shadow of one?

From my dad, I learned to keep quiet; that if I bothered him, I’d be sorry. I don’t think he ever sexually abused me, but I’m not sure. Physically—yeah. Long story short; he’d hit me on the back of my left hand at dinner out of the blue for what felt like no reason—I laughed too loud or had my elbow on the table. Years later when I became a cutter, you know what I cut? The back of my left hand. Yeah…The morning after he died, I woke up feeling safe. That’s a fact; I have no explanation why. The only advice he ever gave me was, ‘Be nice, even if it hurts.’ You can translate that as ‘be a victim: don’t bother anyone; you’re only a girl’.