The Struggle

I have been struggling with my gender identity since I was a child, having been ridiculed teased and even yelled at just for being who I am. The first thing I remember that feel like my emotional side that showed was when I was in preschool. I was dropped off by my mother, but when she left, I started to cry, and I could not stop. It was so bad that they called my father at work to come pick me up and boy was he livid. He took me back to his work. Being a grocery store manager, he had some of his employees grab diapers, a baby bottle and pacifier which he used to tease me with saying if I could not stop crying, he would put me back in diapers and feed me with the baby bottle. Looking back at that situation, he handled that the wrong way as it was the start of me being scared on the inside and wanting to hide myself. Around seven or eight years old I felt like a girl and wanted to be one. The thought running through my head was I wonder what it is like to be a girl.

Over the next few months every time I was home alone, I would dress up like a girl. I was in complete heaven when dressed like a woman, until this one day when I was home alone and got dressed up. This time I lost track of the time because I was just too busy enjoying being myself, so I did not realize anyone was home until I heard the front door opening. The panic switch went off and I froze because the male clothing I wore to disguise myself were in my room right by the front door and me being in my parents’ room in the back, I dashed to their bathroom and locked the door. My heart was racing fast as I heard my mother coming into her bedroom and sees the door to the bathroom shut and tries to turn the knob as I say I am in here. I think my mother had like a sixth sense because she started asking me if I was okay and kept trying to open the door. I told her everything was fine, but I think she could hear a little panic in my voice and called my sister to help her unlock the bathroom door since it basically does not need a key, just an object to turn the lock. My fears of being caught were about to come true and I did not know what to do. As I heard my sister unlock the door and watched it open revealing myself to my mother. My mother giggled a little and said, “Would you like me to help you look prettier?” All I could do was nod my head for yes. It was like my dream was going to come true I was going to be a girl for rest of my life. The happy meter in my body was over capping with joy as she helped me dress and did my makeup. Once she finished her work of making me look more girly, my mother said let’s go show dad. That put me back in a worry state. As we walked towards the den area where my dad was, my mind started racing. I thought maybe he will be just like my mom and be happy for me. We walked into the den area and up to where my father was sitting watching sports. I thought this is it I am going to be a girl for life my happy meter was topping again. Then my mother says, “Hey, you look at your new daughter.” In my mind I was like, “Yes this is it.” Then I saw my father’s face.

My father's face had gone from his normal skin tone to a beat red complexion. Then I saw his eyes they were riddled with hatred and disgust. He almost jumped out of his seat as he started yelling and screaming about me being dressed like a woman and demanded my mother to undress me at once. My dream was shattered, and the fear was implanted into me. My happy meter went from super excited to broken and I spiraled down into sadness. The thought of being a girl for life shattered. My mind started racing that now I was going to have to hide my true self for good, as I did not want to see the wrath of my father come down upon me since he was already a cruel man from what I had established. From that day forth, I could not let my father know anything about my true self it seemed, which it tore my heart apart in the process. For a few months after being caught, my sister was told to baby sit me as in not to leave me alone, so I had to go to her friend’s house with her in the next court, but her friend had a younger sister who I would play with. Me and her would play with her Barbie dolls which I found out I highly enjoyed playing with them. That fun was ended 3 months later when their mother got a new career in another state. My mother, sister and I went to see them one last time before they moved, and my new friend offered to give me one of her Barbie dolls to remember her by. I told her I would love to accept her gift, but I think we should ask our mothers first since I know yours bought you your Barbie dolls. She asked her mother as I asked mine and almost in sync, they both said I should not have a Barbie doll since they are for girls and I was a boy. This made me almost cry since I know I felt more like a girl and wanted to be one. We said our goodbyes and that was the last time I ever saw my new friend who understood me. My sadness went down again after being happy.

My birthday was coming around the corner and I was turning 9 and my mother was still having my older sister watch over me. This made it hard to dress like a girl. Then one day a friend down the street needed a place to stay after school. His father had asked my mother if my sister could start watching him as well and they agreed. A few weeks and months go by and I eventually let my friend know I like to dress like a girl, he was just like okay whatever. This made it easy to feel closer to being me but since my sister was still around, I could not. He never told anyone about me wearing girl clothes. As a year went by my sister ended up getting a new person to watch after school and this person was our neighbor’s niece, which her parents did not want her at home by herself. The new girl pretty much shadowed my sister, which pretty much means they watched soap operas all day. I did figure out a way to play with girl toys when I saw she-ra toys, so instead of the he-man ones I got my mother to buy she-ra toys and she did not even notice. No one noticed the figures were designed for girls except me which made me happy I was able to play with semi girly things.

During my high school years, I would pass out in my bed still wearing female clothing. My mother had a bad habit of just walking in my room with no warning and one time she did I was still asleep wearing girl clothes. In my half-awake state I said am I wearing girl things huh I must have grabbed the wrong items last night when I had to change them. The next words out of my mother's mouth were "You better not mess up any of my clothes”. So, after I got moving, I took off the clothing and put them back and showered. This routine pretty much happened throughout the rest of high school, with my mother only catching me dressed a few more times with her laughing. Eventually I got the courage to ask my mother on Halloween if I could wear a girl’s costume. She just gave me a weird look, which then I added that I do want to be one. That is when she stopped moving for a minute and started thinking of what I had just said to her, but then she just continued to fold the laundry.

Over the next couple of years of high school, I would build up the courage a few more times in trying to tell my mother how I wanted to be a girl and not a boy. Each time she pretended she did not even hear me and pretty much going about her business like I was not even there. Around this time, I got my left ear pierced and started wearing small hoops after the hole healed. On thanksgiving, one of my mother’s brothers came over to eat and saw that I had my ear pierced and without stuttering he said, “What are you a faggot getting your ear pierced like that?” That comment really got to me and started bringing up memories I had forgotten, like the time I was at my cousin's wedding when I was like six or seven years-old and asked if I could have the female doll from the wedding cake. All my relatives started laughing and making fun of me for it. I was so humiliated and started disliking the whole lot of them. This was my mother's side of the family and they were judgmental. All these feelings and memories came crashing down on me and I got really depressed. I started thinking maybe I would be better off dead, but then I would not have to put up with these people. So, I started researching different methods of suicide trying to find the most effective painless way, but during my research something occurred to me. I had a revelation that if I killed myself, I could never find out what is it was like to be a girl like how I felt all my life. I continued to dress like a girl as much as I could get away with. Next thing I know high school was getting closer to being over and I had started doing heavier drugs to drown my depression with all different types of drugs. LSD ended up being my drug of choice. Tripping while dressed like a girl was the best, I felt so alive and more like myself than ever. This downward spiral I was in continued for 2 more years after high school when something major started to turn my life around.

Around January 20th, 1998 I got in a drinking and driving accident, the accident was horrible. I was speeding around a curve when the car went up on two wheels freaking me out, so I slammed on the breaks, which dropped the car back on four wheels, but put the car into a spin. The steering wheel went all screwy when that happened and all I can remember was hearing a major crash sound and feeling groggy. I tried to sit up a little to see what had happened and that is when I saw something I wished I could erase from my memory. The thing that I saw was a horrific sight, I was staring at my right leg laying on the passenger seat with my big toe touching my calf muscle, I immediately closed my eyes and laid my head back down. Next thing I know voices were coming from all around me and a student nurse stuck her hands in my car to prop my head up to make sure my air way was clear. The first emergency vehicle on the scene was the fire department and that is when I found out my left leg was pinned between the passenger seat and the guard rail, which had gone through my car via the driver's side and out the passenger side. The fire department had to bring out the jaws of life, which they used to cut not only the roof off my car, but the dashboard off and the guard rail as well before I could be moved. The fire department kept asking me to open my eyes because they were afraid I would go into shock and die. I said I just saw way too much I can't open them, but I will talk to you all so you know I am okay and they agreed.

The medication they had me on made me all loopy for about three days. After my second surgery I overheard the doctor talking to my mother saying your child is 5'10" now and I chimed back, saying I’m 5'11" and the doctor replied “Not anymore.” Once the doctor left the room, my mother explained to me what he meant by that, which almost brought me to tears. When the guard rail went through my car while catching my legs and destroying them, my left leg had also lost an inch of bone, muscle and skin tissue. Since my right leg was already almost severed in half, they went ahead and took inch from it as well to make my life a little bit easier by not having to order special shoes. My next surgery was having a skin graft applied to my left leg. This surgery made it impossible for me to be put in cast, which ended up leaving me bed ridden for 5 months and even after I was put into a cast, I needed help to walk. The five months went by really slow for me since I was bed ridden the whole time, but Final Fantasy 7 for PS1 kept me alive and wanting to fight to walk again. Once the skin grafts had healed, I was fitted into two cast which allowed me to be able to start walking. The casts came off two months later and I am not going to lie, during the five months I could not leave the bed, I missed dressing like a female and the last two months while wearing casts I got my chance to dress again.

Eventually my mother ended up getting cancer in different spots of her body, it started in her thyroid, then lungs and finally her liver. The time of year was May 2002 when I get call from my best friend’s father telling me the police just found his sons body in a hotel room. He had died in his sleep. His father cremated the body and had only a wake to honor his son. Two days after the wake, me and few other friends visited his father to see how he was holding up. He seemed to be doing good when he passed me a box and asked me to pass it around. Once the last person was holding the box is when he dropped the awful news of what he had been holding, it was the ashes of his cremated son I almost flipped out. My best friend was one of three people who knew about me dressing like a female my whole life. I tried shrugging off what happened, like everyone else in the room tried to do. Things from there seemed to be going well. Mother’s Day came and went then the worst thing happened only after two weeks from my best friend passing away. My mother is hospitalized and is put into a drug induced coma to sooth her pain. She was only like that for about a day and half when she too passed away in her sleep. I did not know how to handle this I shut down and did not talk to anyone, except for the chatrooms I had been visiting online to learn more about my gender identity. Now I lost two of the only three people that had any clue I love to dress like a woman. For a while I did not know how to handle it, so I just stuck to a routine, to keep me going.

This is when I started building my female wardrobe, by ordering items from online at first. I kept buying clothes and this started to bring some light into the dark world that had surrounded me from all the tragic events that had taken place. Over the next nine years I start weening myself off the hard drugs, alcohol and cigarettes, but I have stayed smoking marijuana as it helps me cope with mental issues and deal with pain in my body. During the next few years, my last friend who knew anything about me started to change. He started making homophobic remarks around me. One homophobic thing he had said around me was that he would kill his son if he turned out to be homosexual. The next few years I built up more of my female wardrobe adding all sorts of items and I was eager yet scared to be the woman I have always wanted to be. One of my other friend’s ex-girlfriend was moving back into town and we started to connect so I told her about my gender identity problems, and she was very understanding. We became best friends quickly and after few months of hanging out I helped her retrieve her things from Florida. I got to dress like a girl because no one I knew would even see me and it felt great. A week later she had me babysitting her baby daughter while she worked and went to school for money. Here is the kicker though, two weeks of me watching her daughter she asks me to marry her, of course I said yes not realizing in her mind she would not have to pay me now and that she is getting a free nanny. Exactly one month after we got married to each other, we were separated having to wait a year for a divorce.

Now that I was free from that nightmare, I continued to chat with likeminded people online and do research on what all I needed to do to start transitioning into the woman. The internet provided me with information to help me learn and understand who I was. It provided a way to buy female clothing without going to buy it in a store. I met a ton people online, who I consider my friends and have supported me in my decision of transitioning into a female. I have also struggled with finding an actual payroll job. I’ve only been able to do odd jobs for neighbors and friends to earn some cash to buy things. Around sometime in May 2020, I got rid of every single piece of male clothing I had. Right around that time, I also ordered female hormones and testosterone blockers online and started to self-medicate. I felt good about myself for taking control of my life and starting to be me and not some fake to person. As I was self-medicating on hormones replacement medication, I started doing more research and found out that self-medicating on hormones can be extremely dangerous and is not recommended at all. This made me extremely nervous, but becoming a woman was my goal in life, so started looking up therapists. I picked one I thought I would enjoy seeing at the Kalos Comprehensive Care and made an appointment. My appointment to start HRT properly started soon after. I was so excited I was bursting with joy that I am finally doing it. I was transitioning into my true self and I was out, alive and proud. I still have years to go to look more feminine, but the process has begun. My transition into being me started December 2020 and I have not felt this happy in my whole entire life.