The "L" Word

Shooooooooooooshhhhhhhhhhh……….…….Say the letter softly when you are transgendered woman- even if the letter applies to you. You know what letter I am talking about ……………….the infamous “L” word. For you see, I am a part of that community as well even if the other genetic born members of the community don’t always see it that way. Too often when those of us in the transgendered community speak to people about who we are and our life we get many questions focused not on our gender identity issues but wrapped up in our sexuality. Most of us try to explain that one’s gender identity and one’s sexuality are separate and distinct subjects and the mere fact that one is transgendered does not define whether they will be straight, bi, gay or part of the “L” community. Gender identity is just that – how one self identifies themselves as to their gender even if vastly different than the physical parts provided at birth based on the inner soul and essence of being. I always identified as female. I transitioned my outer appearance and body through, presentation, hormones, laser, electro and three surgical procedures to get it to fit my inner self and present myself as the woman I always knew I was in my heart, soul and mind. Sexual orientation is a separate entity based on who I am attracted to as woman.

So as a woman in my heart, soul and mind and now my body to match it, my attraction sexually has been to other women. Even when I lived the other life inside the shell I always imaged myself as a woman making love and intimate with other woman. To me, nothing can come close to the touch, passion and intimacy that is experienced in being with another woman- even if I am one myself. However, that makes me part of the “L” word. I am now involved in a loving beautiful and committed relationship with my partner Paula who like me is also woman and a transwoman. She always felt inside her misfit body that she was a woman in heart mind and soul and she has spent her time transitioning her body to fit this essence as well much in the same manner as I did over the years. When we met and began our friendship which blossomed over a year or so into a wonderful romance we always saw the other for whom we really were and the shells as merely work in progress. Our love for each other blossomed and grew and we helped each other through the last parts of the physical transitional process. We are committed to each other and although we have our disagreements from time to time like any couple does we work through them as two women who care and love each other. Next month we will celebrate our love in a union/ commitment ceremony at our church with our wonderful friends. Two women in love with each other and wanting to be together as partners in this life together makes us part of the “L” community as it should be.

However, both of us have encountered some “less than understanding” members of the “L” word who have looked down upon us and even a few that have been outright hostile to us and clearly do not see us as members of the “L” community- although I am not always sure where they see us as being. We have developed many friends who are part of the “L” community and many of whom are helping us celebrate our wedding and many of whom I could not imagine my life without them being a part of it. I know many who were curious about Paula and I and our life as transgendered woman and our love for each other as women. We always have been open with anyone who asks about it. We have shared our stories, our transition and our surgeries with many in the “L” as we believe that only by sharing and discussing it with others can growth and understanding take place. We have also shared with many of our sisters our love for each other and at least in our assessment our feelings about being part of the “L’ word.

I am sure that many in the “L” scene long ago believed that you are “born woman” and being part of the “L” community meant that you must be a genetic born woman which left many of us in the transgendered community scratching our head sometimes. As we see it, we were “born woman” but somebody put the wrong body parts on us as if playing a sick and cruel joke on us which we struggle with, deal with and finally come to grips with in our transitions to adjust this mix up at the beginning. Many in the “L” community have long since left that old way of thinking anyway and have themselves grown and many are our friends today who have enriched our lives so very deeply!

However, there are some old school thinkers still among the “L” scene. The Ohio “L” Festival welcomes all womym including those who are transgendered. So does the Women’s Music Festival (Wimfest) and we find that so refreshing and enlightened. In contrast in Michigan for example, at the woman’s music festival, transgendered woman are not welcome at all. Right here in Columbus there is a group known as the Lavender Sisters which even ironically meets at our church each month which is a group in the “L” community which does not accept those of us unfortunate enough to be born with the wrong body parts despite the inner essence of who we are as woman. With these groups and other hardliners in the “L” word it is as if judgment is to be made on genetics or physical things instead of the soul and spirit and heart of the person. Should we judge someone with a birth defect on their body as not being worthwhile and look past their soul, their spirit and value as a being because of this? Of course not, but we sometimes do and it does not make it right.

This weekend Paula and I will venture to the Ohio festival where we will be exhibiting on behalf of TransOhio and conducting workshop about our lives, our transitions and our love for each other as two women and the belief in our view at least that we are part of the “L” community. We will welcome and address any and all questions as part of a dialog and exchange that we hope will further help those sisters in the “L” community understand more about transgendered women and our lives together as two women who love each other and explaining why we believe that we are part of the “L” word and hoping that our presence and sharing may open the hearts and minds of a few of our sisters about us and our presence in this “L” community. We look forward to being at the festival and meeting our sisters and experiencing a festival that celebrates womanhood!

Thanks to all our wonderful friends who have grown with us in this belief and thanks to those who have asked and shared and accepted us as part of the “L” community” and to those of you who have not yet done so, we ask that you keep the possibility open and engage us in discussion about it and hopefully with an open mind. Maybe sometime down the road we can work some things out and reach a meeting of the minds. In the meantime, Paula and I will enjoy being part of the “L” word ……. But we will just keep “L” hushed for now.

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

Growth

There are clearly many forms of growth in one’s life and in the journey of a transgendered person such as myself and I had some time this week to reflect on the different patterns of growth that has occurred in my life and in my journey. The first type of growth to be measured is physical growth. Now normally when we think of physical growth, we are talking about the changes that occur to teenagers such as hair, height, weight, and the other nuances of growth and change that is expected for such a time period in one’s life at that age. As we grow older, those changes are measured by hair loss, sagging breasts, wrinkles and weight gain over the years. However, for a transgendered person such as me, growth in the physical sense is measured by how much your body is growing or developing to more readily represent the true essence of who you are as a person. In my case, the erosion of the physical shell and the reshaping of my body to more readily reflect the presentation of Melissa. In that regard, I am experiencing much growth as my breasts are beginning to take form and shape even on my early stages of hormones. My skin is growing smoother and the hair less prevalent. My face is clearly showing its reshaping brought on by my extensive electrolysis over the last few months which has removed the shadow and made my face smoother and softer and more feminine. Additionally, the hormones have leveled me out more on an emotional level as they were designed to do.

The second type of growth one can experience is spiritual growth. This can be growth in one’s spirituality as well as one’s inner spirit. In my assessment these can overlap. I have always sought a greater understanding of God, our existence and the flow of inner and outer peace. I have tried a couple organized religions but in recent years I sought one that would be accepting of the LGBT communities as I believe one properly should but I yet to find that group yet. The one I currently belong to but now rarely attend pretends to be but in reality is a close minded as the Bible thumpers they try to distinguish themselves from in their arrangement. I think I was closer to figuring out God and the universe when I was in college and researched and wrote and extensive paper on the subject for an upper level philosophy class than I am today and I blame the organized religions for that occurrence. The other type of spiritual growth occurs from finding one’s own inner spirit and I think I am doing a much better job in experiencing that growth. Melissa has been so long repressed in that shell which has hid her from much of the world but in recent years that has substantially changed and so has my inner spirit soared as I face experiences as Melissa while emerges from the tired old shell. The freeing of my soul has made me exceedingly happy and joyful. How can this not be good? It is growth at its finest and sweetest for sure.

Growth can also occur emotionally and as I mentioned I have been aided by the fact the hormones have leveled me off more emotionally as I drive down the testosterone and increase the influx of estrogen into my body. It effects far more than the body. You began to feel more emotionally and it alters your thinking process to what seems to me to be a more feminine perspective. Men and women are wired differently and transgendered people are wired even differently. We have some emotions more commonly associated with both men and women but the hormones changes that again and we begin to think more as a woman than a man although there are no absolutes in this process. I have read several books now from transgendered people as well as having talked to many of my friends and everyone agrees that there is less anger and frustration, a calmer thinking and the deeper feelings of emotions which envelopes us as we journey along and experience HRT. I have always been one to cry but it seems I am touched even more deeply sometimes. I use to be filled with much more anger. I blame this on my heritage of a deadly combination of Scotch and German combined with the frustration of having my true essence crammed deep in a shell. As the shell erodes and the testosterone production is curtailed I am calmer and more at peace and much less likely to rise to anger. This calming effect makes it possible for more growth emotionally and spiritually and that again is a very wonderful thing.

I truly believe we must continually grow as human beings, and in my case as a transgendered woman, or we will die. Our bodies, our minds, our souls seek growth and while this true for all human beings it is exceedingly true for transgendered people whether one is on HRT or not. I know I have a great deal more growth to go and some of it will be quite painful physically but mostly emotionally. Sometime we fear emotional pain and I am know exception to this principle but it is necessary to grow and growth is what it is all about and growth is to be embraced and nurtured. I have much to go on my journey and much growth to experience but I will face it joyfully…… ….…the alternative to me is not even remotely acceptable!

“It takes great courage to grow up and turn out to be who you really are.” (Anonymous) (Quoted from Donna Rose’s book “Wrapped in Blue”