Breaking Through the Shell

After a brief but very important interruption last week to discuss the important aspects of the Hate Crimes Bill and ENDA and our trip to DC to lobby for changes and dignity at the federal level I resume my story of my life and journey as I sail closer and closer to my date of my gender conformation surgery in about eleven days. In this week’s blog I now get to discuss a more palatable time period in my life than my early years of discovery, guilt and isolation and my middle years of denial and repression and the encasement of my true self in a shell of my own creation and design. When I left off I made references to the rising forces that would collide and bring me to the point of my journey today. These forces were powerful and they pushed me along in my journey sometimes with great force and calling. These forces included my continued partial living of life as Melissa, the abrupt end to my career with the law firm, the death of several family members and my contact with several important friends in our community.
As this decade progressed I spent more and more time away from the house and on the road which gave me more and more opportunities to live life and experience the world as Melissa- my true essence. Each time I pushed it further and further. Dinners become lunches, afternoons were spent at museums and site seeing and shopping and I also began to present myself as my true essence for longer and longer periods of time. In 2005 I decided I wanted to go to a weeklong conference for transgendered people where I can live as Melissa for a whole week and meet more people like me. Spending a week as Melissa seemed like a dream I never wanted to end! I spent every day and night as Melissa and met so many wonderful people. The day I was to return home I dropped into a deep sadness and depression that seemed to tear me apart……I knew I was miserable going back to my world of lies and deceptions. It got so bad I stopped my car a few blocks from my house and buried my head into my heads and sobbed miserably. For that point on this routine became very common. Each time I spent time as my true self and met others like me and interacted with the world as Melissa I felt so high and so happy and each time I went home and pretended I was someone I was not, I got depressed and racked with sadness. It was truly a miserable cycle that I felt was tearing me up.
In the middle of this decade I also made another dramatic life choice. After twenty years of practicing law defending corporate America in a prestigious law firm and selling my soul to the devil to live this life I walked away from it all. I was burnout and barely could look at myself in the mirror in the morning and I drug myself into to work but looked for excuses to get away from it whenever I could. I had a particularly difficult client who yelled and screamed about everything on a daily basis and he took years off my life with his stress. He chewed up lawyers like they going out of style and had gone through about five lawyers in a span of two years. No lawyer had lasted longer than about two to three years as his client. I lasted over ten! By the time I was spend my week as my true self I had experienced enough and was suffering from severe burnout that resulted in my leaving the firm and starting business as a meeting planner. I had done this work on the side for almost ten years. I was good at it and I enjoyed it immensely. With some additional training in the field I embarked upon this new career. The work involved far more travel than I had done but that only served as more opportunities to get out and enjoy life as Melissa! I attended more conferences and I began planning events and conferences for people like me and soon was spending ten to twelve days living and even some work projects and errands as Melissa. Each period of time brought me into contact with so many more people in the transgendered community. Each experience in doing so brought about deeper depression upon my return but it also opened me up more to the possibility that I could someday live fulltime in as my true self. However, family crises developed around this same too which left me in some of my darkest periods of my life and deeply soul searching.
I was born late in my parent’s life as my mother had been told that a miscarriage she had experienced years before I was born had left her unable to have any more children so I guess birth control became a bit relaxed my parents household. Unfortunately my older brother was 14 years older than me and was pretty much out of my life by the time I had figured out I was different inside. My parents, by virtue of their age when I was born had grown old and they began to experience severe health problems. My mother’s was the worst and maybe one of the most dreaded disease in society…one that eroded her dignity, fractured her mind and left her in a dire situation….Alzheimer’s Disease! She had been “covered for” by my father who health was deteriorating physically but he protected her nevertheless. She was so paralyzed by the disease that she would sometimes forget to help my father get to bed or make him food as he slowly lost the ability to walk stand or care for himself at the same time. They fought bitterly any attempt by me or my brother who was significantly further away to move into a nursing home and the situation deteriorated rapidly. Finally late in the fall of 2005, my parents were forced to move into a nursing home – a move my mother was resentful of me for making happen.
New situations do not bode well for Alzheimer’s patients. In February of 2006, my passed away one night in her sleep – something I had heard her silently pray for over the last several years. It would be the first of three funerals and three eulogies written by me in a span of fifteen short months. In December of 2006, my brother Richard was killed in a freak accident. What followed was one of my most sickening moments in my long tormented life ……I had to visit my father in his wheel chair at the nursing home, months after he had lost his wife of sixty plus years and tell him face to painful face that his son had been killed. I felt like I had reached into this tired old man’s heart and ripped out pieces from it and we cried in each other’s arms. The physical demise of my father from disease and torment and pain as well as his advanced age led to his own demise in May of 2007. I hugged him for the last time only hours before he died and told him I loved him dearly. I wrote his eulogy but was so emotionally drained I could not read it and it was read by his minister. My father was in the military and as such he was entitled to 21 gun salute and a burial flag at his gravesite. Each blast resounded in my ear and when it was over, the flag, which have gone to his wife or his oldest son except for the fact they were already gone from this earth was gently folded and handed to me as the only survivor. I fell down to ground and sobbed uncontrollably. Three I had loved and who were my family were all gone and none of them ever knew me for who I truly was – only who I pretended to be. I said to myself that life is too short and I cannot go on living this ugly lie any longer and letting people think ZI was someone I was not. When I die, I asked myself how I wanted to be remembered and memorialized ….…as someone I was not but pretended to be or someone who I truly was as a person and one I was happy living as in this life. The answer was clear…….the charade had to end. I go not go on living in the shell any more.
The very week of my father’s death was another significant event in my life and journey. It was the night I met my now partner and soul mate Paula. Several support and social groups during the middle of this decade began hosting GNO events for people to gather and socialize. One of these events took place the day after I planned my father’s funeral and wrote his eulogy and I needed to be with friends who understood who I was as well as my pain so I decided to go to the event in early May of 2007. On that very night Paula introduced herself to me over a cocktail and we sat and talked at table for about an hour and talked about everything from family and work to our lives as transgendered people. Later that night we both went out on the deck of the club and talked again for another hour or so and I found talking with her to be so easy and delightful. We had much in common and I liked her a lot and was hoping we could become friends. Paula will tell you she fell in love with me that night but she never let on to me about that fact for nearly a year. We talked a lot on the phone as well as online during that year and as those of you know from my previous blogs last year at some point last spring I fell in love with her and we consummated our relationship on a date on the last weekend in March of 2008. What had started as a wonderful friendship blossomed into a beautiful one filled with love and I found a soul mate. Paula’s love for me and our deep friendship helped me so much in my transition and in bringing me to where I am in my life. Her heart is filled with passion and love which she shares for people as well as me. I do not know where my life would be now if I had not met her that night!
Three other people had significant impact on my journey as my close friends including Joann, Chloe and Debbie. Their friendship and their sharing of feelings and thoughts as well as support helped me evolve from my shell and emerge fully as Melissa and they provided so much support and guidance for me as I transitioned to live my life as my true self. I roomed with Joann at so many of the conferences and events we attended and we spent many hours talking about our lives. The week I spent with Chloe and Debbie as they were weeks and months from the surgeries was so insightful to me. My interaction with many new friends and others like me over the years, all aided in the emergence of my true essence. I learned so much from interacting and talking with others. I would not be here today if not for the time I spent with others like me and supporters of our community. Shortly after these events I attended the Be-all Conference in Chicago where I had the opportunities to attend workshops on some things I would need in order to fulfill my gravesite revelation such as counseling, electrolysis and laser as well as hormones. One day during the event I was having lunch with several other transwomen, most of whom were already post op or at least fulltime. I asked them when you know it is time to come out and live fulltime as your true self and one of the girls chimed in saying … “Melissa you will know it is your time to do when you can answer this question……………..Are you willing to risk it all to live your life as Melissa – risk your friends?, your family?, your career?” I knew I would have to find the courage to do this and that the causalities of such action may be many or all of those things!
I did not know where to find a counselor I could work with you supported and understood transgendered people, however Paula again helped with this by talking with her therapist and finding some recommendations for me. The closest one to me was Meral Crane in Columbus, a three hour commute from Huntington, WV I enjoyed working with Meral and she has helped me tremendously over the last couple years. My work with her led to going to the support group meetings where I met so many sisters and brothers in my community who have become my friends. By the early fall of 2007, I was ready to come out and go fulltime as my true self -but for one more and final time I placed my family ahead of my needs. My son was in his senior year of high school and my daughter was in her senior year of college and all this would wrap up by late spring so I decided to begin transition under the cloak of stealth all while working with my therapist while they finished up school. Being in West Virginia I also did not want all of this to backlash on my son in his senior year of high school and baseball. The problem was I had grown apart from my wife as more and more Melissa evolved and all the time I spent away from her with friends, therapists, work and conferences. I found out after the separation that she had felt the same way and was holding on until the kids got through their final year. We were adrift and really just going through the motions the last year of our marriage of twenty- four years. She knew some things about Melissa and she discovered more and pretended not to notice the changes- continuing her don’t ask don’t tell policy we had begun so long ago. Sometimes saying nothing is the easy way out.
By the end of 2006, I had already removed all my body hair from my body and began working on taking better care of my skin. In January of 2008, I began a lengthy process of electrolysis. There is nothing like lying still for three hours at a time while someone pokes hot needles into your face to destroy hair cells in your face and neck. The work over the lip area would make water boarding torture feel like child’s play! Also during this time I began the administration of hormones which meant I had to come out to my PCP so she could take care of this for me. I did not expect much to happen for some time and I thought I was safe for a while. I was very wrong. By March I had begun the development of breasts I had always wanted and my skin grew remarkably softer. These changes would have to be hidden for a bit more time so baggy clothes came more standard wear for me to conceal the changes. I also had begun growing out my nails which invoked several comments by my children. My wife pretended like she did not notice them or my painted toe nails as well- but she did.
When all the family stuff wrapped up in early June of 2008, my wife and I reached our conclusion of the so called game we were playing and just about the time I had completed writing her a detailed letter and ready to present it to her with a copy of “True Selves” and discuss all this with her she confronted me and we talked one afternoon for three hours while the kids were out of the house. I remember the weekend well for it was the one in which my friend Barbara committed suicide from the guilt her wife inflicted upon her for being transgendered and losing her children she loved so dearly for transitioning through impending divorce. (Barbara’s wife had convinced the court that it would be dangerous for their kids to see or visit with Barbara without supervision.) I spilled out everything and we actually talked longer that day than we had done in years but the marriage was over and we had known that for quite some time. Shortly thereafter and after one more good discussion we separated our ways, divorced and I moved to Circleville Ohio to begin living fulltime and continue my transition. Circleville would be an intermediate stop for me and I appreciate Jenny for opening her house to me as I gathered my pieces. Paula joined me later that fall and we have been together ever since. The divorce was somewhat “more difficult” than it needed to be but her main issues had more to do with me living life as Melissa and changing my name which occurred in September of 2008 than it did with anything else. I was so happy that day finally having government entities recognizing my true identity and the new driver’s license- which for the first time in my life reflected who I was and always had been in life- Melissa was so incredibly wonderful! Even today my ex –wife will not address me by real and legal name of Melissa – my true self and I was given a choice of either being addressed with no name at all or the one that was given to me at birth which never fit who I truly was in life. Obviously I chose having no name in our infrequent communications. The loss of my marriage had been pretty much a given as I knew my wife was not a lesbian and too much distance had grown between us as I emerged from the long confining shell. She is a beautiful and talented woman with a passion for working with little children and I truly hope she finds peace and joy in her life.
While the loss of marriage was expected -my emergence was beginning and the causalities of such unraveling would grow as well. I found out what the message delivered to me in Chicago the year before by another sister really involved in the process of coming out to all The next people after my wife to be told were my now adult children. My son took it the hardest. He would not even come out of his room for ten days and to date he speaks to no one about his father even his mother. I have not spoken with him by form of communication humanly possible since last summer. In fact, the day he left for college was one of the saddest days of my life because I watched out the window as he got in his car I had bought him only months before and drove away without ever saying a word to me- not even goodbye -despite the pleading of his sister and mother to do so. As he drove away from my life that day I dropped to the floor and cried for hours…… My daughter found out about Melissa apparently years before I told her and despite her open-mindedness and diversity and personal beliefs, as well as the fact she majored in psychology and took gender psychology in college, she was upset I had not come clean years ago. Great I thought I was protecting them and all I was doing was making her madder because she felt I should have come clean earlier. I simply could not win. She does not speak with me either. Gifts and cards for their birthdays and holidays go unacknowledged and despite my letters to my children and the fact I miss them so much and so dearly, I remain separated from them in all ways. My heart has pieces missing from it that can only be filled by their return to my life and I sometimes wonder if the holes will ever be filled. However, I love them dearly and I remain hopeful I may someday hold them in my arms and hug them again.
The more people I came out to, the more people I lost. Friends and many others in my family disappeared and drifted away, old colleagues and coworkers made jokes and disparaging remarks about me and companies I did work for in my new business discriminated against me because I had transitioned and was now living my life as my true self. The Truth may set you free but it does one hell of a number on the relationships that had been built for sure. Only a handful of relatives and a couple old friends still communicate with me. Even my professional organization has treated me differently because of my transition and have forced me off the Board of Directors I feel because e of their uncomfortable with me. I now knew what it meant to risk losing it all to be free to live as who you are as a human being. The pain and sadness and disappointment over all these losses are indescribable. I have somehow found the courage and strength to pull myself through all of this and my life with Paula is wonderful. She is a beautiful loving woman of her own strength and courage and in her I have found a soul mate and partner for life.
I have moved on from Circleville to Columbus and I have made many new wonderful friends here since I began living fulltime including many people outside our community. I have found a loving accepting church filled with caring and loving people and this has brought me great joy and many new friends. These people are incredible and I wish the world could operate like North Church does that is for sure!!! I feel so loved there and the hugs I receive each week warm my heart dearly .I have continued my physical transition with more electrolysis and laser and extensive and painful facial surgery this past January. Each step along the way has brought my body more in line with my true self and being. This will only continue as now head into the final stages of my physical transition with my GCS and breast augmentation shortly.
I am free to live life as my true self Melissa and I have grown more and more at peace with myself as I have continued my journey. Even after my impending surgeries this month I still have much way to go in my journey as a woman but somehow I will find my way and enjoy my life and my friends being who I am and have always have been in life. The shell has been destroyed and lies as rubble at my feet. Weight has been lifted from my shoulders and through all this process and despite the physical and emotional traumas I have experienced and loss of finances from surgeries and my transition, I am no longer living a lie and no longer hiding my true self in some shell. More importantly, I stopped lying to myself and pretending. I have emerged a better person and one I am now happy to let the world see and know- Melissa Marie Alexander. And so …..the journey of my life as Melissa continues as it should be …….Next week I will take a look at some of my final thoughts as I head into the weekend before my surgery and thank some people for their impact on my life, transition and journey……

There comes a time when the risk to remain tight in the bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom...Anais Nin

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