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

Make a Smilebox slideshow

Perceptions

Perception is a difficult thing sometimes and in our community of transgendered people it sometimes can become a quagmire as we come out to people and move through our physical and spiritual transitions. I was in a several conversations recently with a friend of mine and someone who I admire greatly for her courage to come out despite risking her family and career that she has performed so well in public service here in Columbus. We discussed the fact that many in the mainstream community and in particular our families see us as in some sort of pretend world and I know my ex has even addressed me as being in a “subculture” and Paula’s parents think she is not a “real person” being who she is as Paula. The family members think that we are somehow living a falsehood being who we are and have always been on the inside and that the real us was the person we pretended to be for so long. The longer we played the game and pretended the more their perception was that was really who we are and have always been. When we finally come out and tell them who we really are they so disbelieve it and are stuck in the perception we so amply created living the lie.

I played the game so well I sometimes fooled myself. I know others have done the same. The only pretending i ever did was when I tried to fool others and hid the real me from the world. I immersed myself in almost everything from activities to politics which portrayed me as this person they grew to know and perceive as the person I really was when the truth was so far from it. The better one played the game, the worse it was when it was time to come clean as the ones who were closest to you bought into the false perception even more many times than those who knew you only marginally. The period of time following coming out, transitioning and living fulltime in your true gender is a wonderful experience in which your peace is found and the happiness of being and presenting yourself as whom you really and truly are gives you great joy and comfort. However, the loved ones who were close to you and knew you and bought into the false perception better than most are left only with their perceptions of who you are which you created even though that is not who you are as a person. I think sometimes the easiest transitions as far as retaining many of the family members are those where the transgendered person shared more of their true selves with their loved ones and did not let them obtain the deep seeded misperceptions which plague many of us in our transitions and relationships with those that were close to us before we told them the real truth about us. So they believe the other person we tried to be and misled others into believing we were is who we were and that we are only pretending to be someone else now.

We know that is not the case -but the quagmire of misperceptions of our doing which we weaved and built in our previous life in hiding and deceiving does us in and leaves those we fooled so badly (and you know they cannot be happy about being fooled so badly!) asserting we are in a pretend world, a subculture, a cult and not “real persons”. I long for the day when I can connect again with my immediate family and I get the chance to erase the misperceptions I created with them for so many years and let them get to know the real me and hopefully alter their misperceptions which I created in them. I built the misperception living the big lie for so long and so well that I know that it cannot be erased so easily by others. We do it to ourselves and we must live with the consequences of doing so and of playing the game so well for so long and leaving the trail of misperceptions that now lie at our feet as we move through our journey being who we really are as people. No one weaves a more tangled web than that of a transgendered soul….but maybe that is just my perception!

Harvey Milk, Closets, Fear and Transgendered Power

Paula and I just got back from viewing an evening out in which we dined at an Irish pub near the OSU campus and took in a movie. The diner was delightful as always love good food and Irish ale and Paula and I chatted about many things in our lives currently. However, despite the fact I love her company and good food and drink, all of that paled in comparison to the movie which we saw- MILK! If you have not seen this film you need to do so my friends! It is an extraordinary and powerful film about the life of Harvey Milk, the first gay man elected to a prominent position when he took office in 1978 in San Francisco. Sean Penn is fabulous in the role of Harvey Milk and clearly captures his essence as a human being. The film is sad at the end because of his tragic, premature death as the result of a man tormented by his own demons (It was suspected Milk’s killer who held the same elected position as that of Milk was a deeply closeted homosexual who tried to live a life of a traditional Irish catholic and “moral” life as a married man with children). The end is a perfect example of the dangers of putting handguns in the hands of mentally disturbed individuals filled with anger and repression and way too much testosterone!

Harvey Milk could have done so much more for the rights and dignity of people if he had not been tragically killed that morning in his own office along with the mayor of San Francisco at that time. The event came shortly after two major victories won by Milk and his allies- the defeat of proposition six which would have made it permissible to fire any school employee in California for being gay or simply supporting the rights of gays as well as the enactment of city wide ordinance protecting individuals from housing and employment discrimination based on one’s sexual orientation. This ordinance has since been amended to include and protect those of the transgendered community. Harvey Milk left a great legacy in the world and many have followed in his footsteps but most importantly he set the example for leadership and changes in our struggle for dignity and human rights.

What I admired most about him was his courage and there is part of the movie where in order to win the tide to defeat proposition six against the likes of a right wing religious zealot and “Nazi” Senator at that time supported, of course, by the likes of Anita Bryant and her “Godly inspired” crusade against rights for gay people. In order to win the vote against the tide of money and power displayed by the so called “Christians” Harvey Milk encouraged his friends and supporters to break down the doors of their own closets and come out to their families and friends as well as their employers so that people could know and connect with a gay person and find out that their sons and daughters and employees were simply people who were gay. According to Harvey Milk the greatest thing holding back the community was the fact that many lived in the closet and only by coming out and coming clean could the movement grow. Power ONLY comes from being free and without power nothing important can ever be accomplished. It takes great courage to let people who you work for and love and care about know who you really are as a person. That courage is what gives you power and with that power much can be accomplished. But courage is what brought about Harvey’s accomplishments personally as well in his movements and causes. It gave him and those that followed and supported him power. I will state this as bluntly as I can put it …… if the transgendered community does not show the same courage we will be left behind in the struggle for dignity and human rights that all people deserve!

So those of us who are transgendered in any way (crossdresser, transvestite, undefined transgendered, pre-op transsexual as well as post- op TS better heed the warning and get out of their damn closets and show some courage and take a voice in our community if we ever want to be able to accomplish anything in this society, achieve power and find ourselves victorious as Harvey and his followers did thirty years ago. The main problem is so many people in the transgendered community live in the closet, fearful of letting other human beings who supposedly love and care about them know about their true selves. So what if your friends desert you and so what if your family casts you aside like some weird freak. As Harvey Milk talks about in the movie….if your friends reject you- they were NOT really your friends and if your family rejects you THEY don’t deserve you! Some of them may later come around and that is great if they do- but do not let the fear of them rejecting you paralyze you and don’t let your family blackmail you into silence because they will cut you off if you come out and come clean. I know I was guilty of the same for so long. The day my ex-wife confronted me she awoke something in me and I decided I needed to come clean. She does not realize the long dormant activist she awoke inside me. Every person I told thereafter gave me more courage and more freedom. I lost friends and family like they were going out of style, BUT I hide from no one and I am truly free. With this freedom, power can come. Fear captures us as humans and the courage found deep inside all of us can overcome that fear and free our soul and our determination to bring about change.

As I have pointed out before transgendered people live in closets both prior to and after transition if they are TS. Cloak and stealth are just more ways to define closets and they keep us from moving forward in achieving rights and dignity for our community. Running and hiding from your past will only leave you without strength and courage and to be quite honest, true stealth and cloak are not really possible in today’s technology driven society. It is a myth! Just for shits and giggles, I used the internet to track down the past history and such for three of my transgendered friends who have transitioned and live fulltime as the men or women they are in their souls. It was done with little effort and almost zero cost. People you are only fooling yourself and no one else if you truly believe you can live in cloak or stealth. The problem in our community and why we will not likely prevail in achieving many of the goals that those in the lesbian and gay communities have and will achieve, is that society only sees a tip of the iceberg of our community and thinks we are a very small, minute group of freaks. Most of the community lies under the water- afraid to emerge from the comfort of the closet, stealth or cloak they have attempted to create in the murky waters below.

We are already a much smaller group than those of the gay and lesbian communities as it is and if most of our community remains hidden, then plain and simply we will find ourselves left out of society and existing with few if any rights and we will have no one to blame but ourselves! Someday someone will tear down your closet and you will be outed but when that day happens and you find yourself with little protections or rights don’t come crying to those who have come clean and let the world know who they really are- whether that be a man who likes to dress and express his feminine side on occasion or a post operative TS who lives life as a man or woman in a gender opposite that of their birth. I am not advocating running around and always announcing yourself to everyone but don’t play the game of denial to those who confront you. We have nothing to be ashamed of as transgendered people. So get out your closets and get living life without fear and with courage. You will feel empowered! Give up your stealth and cloak and be proud of who you are-even your past.

I know many post operative TS who try to pretend they have always been living life in their true gender despite transition. Everyone one of us in the TS community was born either male or female in our outer, genetic gender and we lived life for sometime this way as difficult as it may have been. We transitioned and now life in our true gender but we should not be ashamed of who we are or our past life. I will never be a genetic female no matter how much surgery I incur or hormone compounds I ingest. The very fact I was born genetically male and transitioned to live life as female because it is who I am as a human being means exactly this- I am a transgendered person! I am and always will be transgendered! If I deny who I am as a human being or the existence of part of my life in another gender, even as improper as that past life was to my soul, then I live in shame of who I am as human being. If we act like that in our community then how are we ever to achieve anything in our community or even individually. How are we ever going obtain power? Just as Harvey Milk did in encouraging his community to come out and be open we must do the same to let others know WE EXIST and that we are just people like everyone else: fathers, mothers, spouses, sons and daughters, lawyers, architects, doctors, teachers, bartenders, carpenters, truck drivers and every other profession under the sun- but people who just happen to be transgendered. When we do this we will not only find our personal freedom and power but we will find ourselves accomplishing so much more as a community. “Milk” is about a man’s accomplishments in life when he found his courage and passion for what he believed in and left the confines of his closet at age 40 to live a life without fear and even in his death his work and legacy carried on long afterward. Let’s hope we all find our courage as Harvey Milk did and get involved in moving our push for human rights and dignity forward as transgendered people. Tear down the closet doors and turn off the stealth and our power awaits us!

True Friends

They say true friends are sometimes hard to hard. True friends stay with you no matter what and support you and try to understand and help you when you need it and pull you up when you are down and share in your joys. As I have mentioned previously in some earlier blogs, I never let the shell develop many friends although I had many acquaintances. I know so may people in my area I have worked and lived for so long but the only few male friends I developed were about three people I regularly worked with for nearly twenty years and some friends left over from college days when I played the “frat boy” and we see each other a few times a year. This week this group of people will find out about Melissa as I move through the process of coming out to all and ultimately living my life as Melissa as I have always to do. There are many exciting days ahead of me as I begin that life and move to another city and look for work and live life as Melissa and move forward on my surgeries and such. These people need to know and they will in the next few days and I am fine with that as it is the next logical step in this process following coming clean to wife, children, in-laws, nephews and nieces and cousins and the other plethora of extended family members.

I suspect most if not all of these people will reject me as Melissa and my transition and relocation to live my life as I always saw it would be lived. These guys are mostly kind of macho thinking, conservative guys who like more traditional “male oriented” activities. One is a gay friend who, although part of the LGBT community, is so absorbed on his own issues and has been for twenty years- still not even fully coming out to his friends except me, although everyone has known for twenty-five years. One of the local friends is a bright, independent thinking generally open minded person and I may stand a chance with him but I doubt more than 1-2 of this narrow- minded bunch will accept and support my need to live my life as who I truly am- Melissa. I have never really worried much about whether they do as I have developed many friends in the community and I will remain such with them despite my transition. I will never forget how I started in this community, the love and support they gave me as I moved through this journey. I have always counted on them and knew that every single male friend I lost someday I would have four to five of my community of friends to replace them. I feel that they have lost a friend by their own choosing. Of course my sisters understand and support more because they are in some manner transgendered themselves and most, if not all, never really knew the shell.

I have a few friends from the “other” side of the aisle. This week at a conference I was attending I came out to Cathy and Mary. These people helped me get my start in my industry and with my business and have always been fun loving, easy going, open minded, liberal thinking people and we have worked together on several projects over the years. We have always gotten along very well. I decided before I came to the conference that I was going to tell them. I saw them the other night at our opening reception and Cathy spoke first and she said she sensed something was troubling me and thought there had been on our last collaboration in February of this year. She looked at me and first said “what is the deal with the earrings” and I asked her if she like them! She said you are getting divorced aren’t you and I answered affirmatively. She first speculated it was because I had an affair with some young thing and then that my wife had done the same. I answered negatively. Then she leans over and says “You haven’t gone over to the other side have you?” I roared with laughter. No- I said I am not gay. She says the suspense is killing her and she has to know so I lean over during the reception and tell her “It’s because I am transgendered.” She was shocked at first and said I played the cover up game well.

After getting a round of drinks I talked with some more but did not get to finish the story until later when I told Mary as well. I started at the beginning and told them everything including my future plans. They were genuinely happy for me and said they accepted, understood and would continue to support me as a friend. Cathy told me that those who won’t “really weren’t your real friend anyway”. Mary told me that life is too short and one has to live it as they see fit and be happy (now where have I heard that one before –LOL) Both of them hugged me and asked some more questions and hugged me several times throughout our evening together. They offered some advice on career movement as well in our professional field. They were as cool as two friends could be and I was so happy I told both of them. True friends are indeed rare and Cathy and Mary qualify as such………of course I should have figured it would be the woman friends who would do so. So now they have a new shopping partner as we discussed all sorts of fashion and accessories as the evening went on with much laughter and some hugs shared among friends!

Nothing will ever be the same again!

Where did Dad go? Here today….gone tomorrow. Nothing will ever be the same anymore in the house where I raised my family. We were this nice two income couple with two cars that grew into four as our kids matured from floor sweeping, toy spreading, ever growing little darlings into the young, car owning adults they are today. I remember the days of pushing my daughter’s Girl Scout cookies on my co-workers so she could get her prizes and cheering her on as she played soccer and driving her to her first date with a boy. I recall the hours spent on the ball fields coaching and umpiring and cheering as I watched my son play the game of baseball he loved and played so exceptionally well for 13 years. The crafty lefty who loved sports and the times we spent on trips together to football, basketball and baseball games as “father and son”. I remember the wonderful family vacations to places out west, the Florida beaches, England and Scotland and regions such as New England and the Pacific Northwest. America’s family of four…mom, dad and two kids- one girl and one boy all rolled up in Americana and living the American Dream. Today, I shattered those images and crushed that dream in a dose of hard cold reality called coming out fully as a transgendered person to my children and telling them of our impending divorce over this matter accompanied with words of comfort from my wife such as “you just destroyed their lives as they have known it”. I have cried so much my eyes actually physically hurt and the pain I feel so deeply is the greatest pain I have ever known. My wife did comfort me and she saw the deep sadness that I was causing more pain and I was in more pain.

After today, nothing will ever be the same-EVER! I know I have changed their world and I pray I have not pushed them somewhere where I may never find them again. I pray that they will not do something foolish or God forbid do something to themselves over all this mess. I hope they cling to and support their mother and pull together as a family as others in the extended family rally around them as well. I can be the one they all hate….. ..the one who ruined it all ……the freak who imploded “his” family ( it will be a long time before anyone in the family ever addresses me as ‘her” and for a few on the tiers beyond my wife and daughter, it may very well be a cold day in hell before that ever happens. My daughter said she knew and actually knew for about 4-5 years. She had found pics of me as Melissa although they were taken a long time ago. My son recoiled badly and was angry and after talking with his mother for two hours locked himself in his room all day until he left for his summer work. I really could care less about the in-laws and nephews or nieces. I am not saying I don’t hope someday that they may understand and accept or at least try but the immediate family is one I must find a way to reconnect with as quickly as I can as a parent to my children and hopefully a friend to my soon to be ex-wife. They will need time to heal, think, digest, understand and maybe reach out. They will need space, they will need love and they will need information- information on what it is to be transgendered and what is to become of the person they knew until today as their father and the husband of their mother.

My daughter had suspected something for some time, primarily because she is a curious, snoopy type and she just received her degree in psychology and completed course work in gender psychology where she studied transgendered people. She saw the long manicured nails, the lack of body hair, the changes in my face, the earrings….she is a bright girl and always did well in school. She could add it up and maybe she did many times in her head- but still no one actually said it so it must not be true. My son suspected so much less but mostly because he closed his eyes so tight when around me so he would not see but what he wanted to see …the “man” who is his father. Twenty four years after saying “I do” and fathering and raising two beautiful children I undid all that in on swift move and the utterance of a few simple words….You mother and I are divorcing and I am transgendered. I tried to explain it as best I could to them but emotions made it hard and they looked at me like I had just told them I was some strange alien from another planet. I hope someday they will understand and move forward to reconnect with me as Melissa and see me for whom I truly am and always have been even when they saw me as their father! They are older and maybe this is truly possible but not without time and space and finding answers and understanding. I have no idea how anyone handles all this when the children are younger I really don’t. I can only hope for peace and understanding and wait for the day when I can once reconnect with my family as Melissa and as a parent of my children as they move forward in their lives. For now, “Dad” is gone and nothing will ever truly be the same again-ever!

Choices,sadness and coming clean!

What an emotional day this has been for me! The last twenty- four hours have been a mixture of sun and sky all the way to the falling drops off tears and emotion. Last night I had a wonderful time meeting my sisters in Warren for the monthly GNO where I got to see some old friends and meet some wonderful new sisters. I particularly enjoyed meeting a good friend of my roommate Joann by the name of Sabrina. Sabrina had just returned form Montreal GRS where she had her surgeries to let her live her life as who she always has been- Sabina. I engaged her in conservation for hours on many issues and she answered a lot of my questions about this group that is high on my list for carrying out my surgery in the future. I got a good number of wonderful hugs and had a wonderful evening dancing and chatting.

I got up Sunday morning, albeit a bit sluggishly, in order to get some food and begin my trip home. I only traveled about an hour or so when I got a call from Paula and she informed me of the death by suicide of my friend Barbara Ann. Barbara was a troubled girl and I could tell by our chats she was in tremendous pain over the breakup of her marriage and struggles to emerge as Barbara. I tried to ease her pain and anytime I saw her online or in person or over the phone I tried to cheer her up and make her think positively about her life. Her wife had not supported her and was outright harsh on her over her being transgendered. She had a supportive love and I would tell her she was not doing anything to family. She still could see and be a part of her children’s life as much as she could and build a new life and do some things she always wanted to do in life. She always ended all our conversations with a hug and good wishes and peace. I knew she struggled but I did not think she would choose to end it all and take her own life. It’s a horrible choice but in her troubled mine she saw it as the only choice. I pulled over to the side of the road and balled my eyes out. I felt her pain and anguish and I kept thinking did I do everything I could to help her? This was horrible and I wept and talked to Paula as she dealt with the pain and tears as well.

I gathered myself and drove the rest of way home. I arrived and unpacked my car and began to carry things up to my office. When I got there I found a shock…..a note from my wife that said “We have to talk now!” My heart raced and I tensed as I knew what this was going to be about …judgment day ….the day I knew has been coming for a while and which I have written about in last few weeks. No more hiding everything from wife on my journey and path. I knew she knew many things but her historical perspective on my changes and being out and about where uncanny! She knew about the loss of hair, wearing of panties for years and my polished nails and toes and ear piercings but she did not know it all and I have never revealed it to her and as she freely admitted she had stuck her head in the sand and ignored all the signs just as I said she had done. She launched first and I let her go…there were no raised voices only two women talking and lots of tears. She had found my letter I had written to her and tore up and rewrote a half dozen times. She saw the pics of the real me with my friends and she was most upset about the fact I had not told her sooner and that I had started transition. The discussion lasted nearly two hours and many tears were shed but afterward, and after reading the detailed letter I wrote her she did now know it all. During this discussion where there was no anger and rage we talked about some many things and feelings and all my years of denial and repression and struggles and our finances and kids. Everything but the kitchen sink- actually I think that was mentioned. More tears flowed and during this I asked her if she would at least hug me and I opened my arms and we held each other and we both cried unmercifully. Discussions of lawyers and divorce were also raised and while she was planning initially to ask me to leave immediately we discussed it all and laid out a plan for separation and redirection in our lives. I knew this was the beginning of some hard and painful times. I knew some very hard and ugly choices would have to be made and the kids completely told and even coming out to others in family and friends. She wants me to find a new place to live where I can live out my dream to live my life as who I really am. She cried when I told her about Barbara and although she understands the pain and anguish and wants to talk with my therapist and such, she stated she cannot live with a woman as she is not nor has she ever been a lesbian. Yes some real ugly choices will now have to be made but we have a very initial brief plan and I hope this can be worked out for all and although I know I placed some pain upon her today. I will say this…I feel a whole lot lighter now…like some monkey has been ripped from my back…Judgment day came and I survived and I thank my sisters for all their support and love as that helped me so much in getting this all out in the open and getting through the emotionally traumatic day. I know I could use some hugs!


Wouldn’t be nice if someone could make our pain and tears go away? Actually I would settle for better choices. I know sometimes I am emotionally a wreck and it seems that I am managing to somehow hang on each day. I know it is not easy being transgendered and no one ever said it was so. As I have said so many times, I would not wish this on my worse damn enemy! I Know I hurt a good woman today and I still care for her and hate to hurt anyone. I sometimes cry out to make the pain and hurt go away when they do come but the answers to these calls I know lie from within and not from without. Many days I wake up early at the house and go get the paper and sit and read it but some days before I get very far I as I lay on the couch, thoughts of my anguish and fears take over and have me pouring water down my cheeks. Some nights I sit up in my office and do the same. Today I bared it all to the woman who has been my partner for 24 years but she has known for a while I was drifting and I know it was my choice I drifted that way. I know the hormones have really accelerated the intensity of the feelings and emotions. They are real and I so wish I could end this vicious cycle of tears and pain but this cycle is part of the growth and life of a transgendered person in transition. The best one can do is talking your way through these periods and finding support from others as you support them.

Some people in our community don’t like drama but I must speak from my heart and my soul sometimes and ignore the rationalizing of my mind. Some transgendered people are so comfortable in the world of switching back and forth and enjoying their occasional expression of femininity. I truly envy them and wish I could find my peace that way but that is not who I am and any attempts by me to be such person have always failed. It does so because I am a transsexual transgendered person and I know I will never find peace and happiness unless I become who I truly am as a person and live my life fully as Melissa. Why could I have not been born with the right body parts that matched who I am on the inside? What madness in our world creates such a person and throws them out in the world to go through life what society sees as a “misfit” and subjects them to abuse and condemnation for simply being who we are as people. What kind of absurdity is this process I ask you?

Why did I fear doing what I did end up doing today? Let’s see…..could it be I don’t particularly enjoy causing others pain and anguish? I never have and never will. I like people and I genuinely love to meet and interact with people and never been into hurting others. I despise such actions and dread them. There is enough hurt in our society among people. Could it be because I fear hostility rejection and increased loneliness although it is no house of warmth at the moment? It use to be better I know and I know I made it deteriorate when I pulled back on letting them know fully about Melissa. That decision cut me off from them and it was foolish to do so but I spent my time talking not to them- but to others like me in our community who understood. I kept saying to myself … “they will never accept me or understand” I think my wife understands …...she just cannot go along with my journey. I also wanted my children to avoid be picked on and made fun of or ostracized by their friends and school mates simply because their father was someone everyone would see as a freak in the wonderful warmth and cultural understanding of Appalachia West Virginia. I protected them from this by keeping all this away from them and keeping others around here from finding out about me for many years. But in doing so, I furthermore separated myself from them as well and for that I deeply regret the actions …it was a huge mistake on my part and in hindsight, I know that now. It causes me to cry as well. I am separated in my connection from my spouse as well as I knew she would never accept all this so I kept some of it from her but I hated to hurt her. I think there was some peace today as we ended our discussion and we held each other as tears streamed down our faces. However, all I did by separating myself from her was hurt her even more.

I know I must come clean with them all and let them know everything about me and where I must go in my journey– they are owed that much but I know as I do I will only drive them away and I will become the embarrassment and freak to them that they will have to explain to their family and friends. I always kept hoping for success stories in this world of ours but nearly everyone in same scenario has lost so much when they come clean and fully transition. I know my kids will recoil and rally around their wounded mother who I have torn apart. Almost everyone on my side of the family is dead and that leaves only my wife’s large family who I know, and clearly expect, will gather in support around her as I am deemed the tranny freak and ostracized by all. The community? Yeah let’s talk about the wonderfully friendly people of southern West Virginia. They are good people and known to be hard working and generally friendly but they are not known for warmth and friendliness with those that are different and when they find out that I am a transsexual and “what I have done to my family”, I am as good as stamped with the label freak and home wrecker by those around me and their fundamentalist religious upbringing. I already feel alone here anyway –might as well dig my hole deeper and make my life more stressful and hate filled. Who can’t use more stress and hatred??

The other day just as I finished a morning cry when I got online and checked out some blogs I like to read as I mentioned in my previous post and saw that my friend Chloe had written a new one called “No more cake” In it, she explains how she has done so much to make it work with her wife and kids but how her kids have been affected by others response to her being transgendered and fully transitioning. Tears began to flow again as I read it. Her best efforts failed and she is looked down upon, talked through and treated as a non entity by her family members because of her finding her inner peace to become on the outside whom she has always been on the inside-Chloe! She stated the principle that she will never be accepted as Chloe by those who knew her as Ted and I knew that is to be true for me as well. There was too much of my life spent as that “other person” –the shell for them to accept me as whom I truly am.

It would not matter if the hormones and electrolysis and surgeries did their work to convert myself on the outside flawlessly to who I am and have always been on the inside. People who have known me only as Russell will only always see me that way- treat me that way and no pleas for understanding and respect as Melissa will ever change that- ever! So what is the answer? Unfortunately, for many of us the answer is that which Chloe and many others including my wife ( she wants to leave the area and not be seen here as Melissa) have suggested- its time to leave and begin a new life somewhere where they never knew your past and only can know you and see you as you really are with no past images to reflect upon. My friend Jane did that, and in doing so, moved form West Virginia to Florida primarily because she was never accepted by those who knew her from her past life here as John. I will miss her dearly as I always enjoyed our chats over a cup of coffee or tea. A kindred soul in my home state gave me hope- her decision to leave only rattled me even more. Furthermore, I know she will miss her kids and grandkids. A clean slate or as close to one as one can find? Is that the answer? It’s an awful dreadful one but the alternative may be more dreadful. One pretty ugly and disgusting choice if I must say. Will it end the pain? Will it end the tears? I do not seek pity and I want no sympathy and I doubt Chloe or Jane does either. In fact, I doubt anyone in our community facing this dilemma really does. Sympathy or pity will not solve the problem.
What we need are more choices and solutions or alternatives between living where we will never be accepted as much more than a freak, a nuisance and be viewed as the person who hid our true essence from the world and the other alternative of cutting ties to all and starting fresh in new life as our real outward selves but cut off from the past and all that is in it including our loved ones and families. And people actually think we chose to be transgendered? If they could only see and feel the pain and anguish we experience and the choices we are faced with they would surely know this is nothing anyone would ever choose to endure in life. Like I said, if given the freedom to impose it, even my worst enemies would have nothing to fear. I am not ashamed of being transgendered –it is who I am and I am proud of that and I consider it a cherish gift but I am ashamed of the choices we are left with in this world as transgendered people. Choices that only bring about more pain and anguish and way too many tears my friends! What day this has been for sure! Sadness, tears, anguish and death and disclosure all have taken place. Hmmmm….some nice choices huh??