Author's Note: I originally had no intention of actually writing this, for some time though friends and my chosen family have been begging me to. I was struggling getting my next fictional story started, and thought that I would just toy with the idea. Then the words just exploded out of me onto my IPad…I don’t know how often I will be able to add chapters, this was fairly painful to relive so I could write it. I will continue adding chapters as I can, if you all are interested. ~Rebecca
Moments… A moment is defined as a brief unspecified moment of time. Every one starts out in this world with a moment, followed by another… then another, and so on. When you string all these moments together you end up with a life lived. Some moments try to lift us up, some try to bring us down, some even try to completely break us… Ultimately it is up to each one of us to decide what to do with each one that we are granted. One thing in common with everyone though, is all our moments that we experience, and how we deal with them, define us… In one way or another. Looking back throughout my life and my collection of moments, many stick out in my memory.
Of all the ones that I remember, one particular one sticks out most. I’ve had a lot of ups and downs in my life, and there are many notable ones, the main one was on Christmas Day 2011. It was the day my ‘suit of armor’ cracked, no that’s not quite right, it had been cracked and dented many times throughout my life but this time was different. It didn’t just crack, it shattered… Irrevocably and irreparably, shattered... No, I’m not talking about a physical suit of armor, while they are resilient, bulky, and extremely heavy. I’m talking about the one that I made, that no one knew about, it was something that I had crafted out of sheer will. It was invisible, except it wasn’t, it was physically weightless, but it was so heavy that it had been crushing my soul and had been for a long time. It was the person that I had projected to the world for the last 27 years, the person I had been told that I had to be. It was my masculine shell that I had created to protect myself from the world, and in a twisted way I believed it also protected the world from me, well the real me. It was that day, when it shattered, that has become the turning point in my life. It was the day I couldn’t stop myself from crying, the first time that had happened since I was 12 years old… I had just turned 39, 11 days prior…
To understand a bit more of the gravity of the situation, you have to understand a few things. I had built a good life, a life that I truly loved, even if I hated myself internally to my very core. I had been married at this point for 12 years to my 2nd wife, with four children, 3 girls that were mine, and my step son that I had already laid claim to when he was 9. I had recently moved to the Tampa bay region of Florida from Columbus, MS back in October, the original plan was to move the whole family down but I had already started a new job so had to move here by myself. We had decided to move, mostly due to the recommendation of my oldest daughters doctors. She had been diagnosed with severe allergies that had started causing asthma and was crippling her. I had actually accepted a pay cut for this job, for the betterment of my daughter, and my whole family. Of course the idea of moving to where we had 12 different beaches within 30 minutes was a big draw as well. I figured that I could just work a lot of overtime to compensate for the pay loss. I would do anything for my family, that would become even more apparent in the upcoming months, but I digress.
When I first moved to start work, in an attempt to save money I had bought a derelict old sailboat to live on. I got it cheap and living aboard was extremely cheaper than renting an apartment here in St Petersburg, so until our property back in MS sold this was home for me. I actually had two distinct reasons for buying the derelict old 28’8 Columbia wide body ‘yacht’… I only said yacht because that’s what the title called it, and it had tickled me to think I was the owner of a ‘yacht’. While yes my main reason was to live on it, the second one was a reason that I no longer had to consciously think about anymore. It had become second nature I had been doing this for so long. It was so that I could stay ‘busy’ in my downtime. so that I didn’t have time to think about that impervious, invisible suit of armor I wore in miserable silence. In other words, I had learned to keep myself so busy, and so engaged doing things, that I never had to contemplate or focus on my own internal fear, and disgust with myself. It was an exhausting way to live, day to day, week to week, and eventually from year to year, but I had managed this way for a long time.
When I first moved on the boat, it was a wreck and a miracle that it wasn’t in the bottom of the bay yet. Being an aircraft mechanic for decades at this point left me with enough skills, that I started spending my every waking moment working on the old girl. Even though I was separated from my family, life was pretty good to tell the truth. We talked and face timed every day, and I was even able to make it home for Thanksgiving. By the time Christmas break had rolled around, my wife had decided to have Christmas in the land of sun, sand and palm trees. I mean how cool is it to be December and still walk around in tee shirts, shorts and flip flops. This was what led up to that fateful day.
My family had arrived late Saturday the 18th of December, and all of us were going to live on the boat until the New Years. Yeah I said all of us, my wife and I, our three daughters, and even their two dogs, all living for two weeks on a 28ft sailboat. While the dogs were small chihuahuas, the smaller of the two was the reason that I broke. While it was an extremely tight fit, I had been ecstatic that they were here so we made the best of it. I still had work to go to, and the next week my family was able to hit all the sights, and beaches. While the boat wasn’t quite ready it was close, and I had an idea so I kept working on the last minute things for that week.
The following Christmas morning, after breakfast and presents, we cast the lines off of the Boomer II, that’s what her previous owners named had named her. I had believed that the experience of spending Christmas Day sailing around Tampa Bay would have been life changing. I was right, but ultimately not the way I had thought. We had spent several hours sailing down to the Skyway Bridge, which had required little to no change of course with the way the wind had been blowing. Turning around though, brought a whole new set of challenges and ultimately led to my undoing.
We were about half way back to the marina, after countless jibing to keep the tack of the boat into the wind when it happened. We had put the dogs and the two younger girls down below, in an effort to keep accidents from happening. While my oldest daughter was still only 12, she was built just like me so she was tall and really strong for her age, I had decided to have her help jibing. Since my wife was having back issues at the time, her job was to ‘man’ the tiller while Elizabeth and I handled the sails. It had been working well, and the family was still having fun. Even with being ‘stuck’ down below, Gracie and Nicole were playing with a puzzle and some card games. After about two hours of constant jibing was when it happened. Jack, the smallest of the two, got sick.
Jack was one of the sweetest little dogs I had ever met, due to problems when he was born he was severely stunted and barely topped over 1lb. Not only being so tiny, he was one of the happiest little things I had ever seen and was always just wanting to love on everyone, that and be loved.
I was attending to reefing the mainsail, due to the winds picking up, so I was out of the cockpit and up at the mast when it happened. Gracie, not wanting to get Jack in trouble for being sick down below, stuck him out in the cockpit without anyone noticing. When I directed Elizabeth to adjust the traveler for the main, was when Jack’s head got stepped on when she moved into the cockpit. My whole world stopped at that moment when I heard Elizabeth’s scream. I immediately dropped the main and ran to see what had happened. That’s when I saw just how badly injured he was, and while he was still alive he was hurt… He was hurt really bad. Sadly I knew what I had to do.
Growing up like I did in a rural area, I had been around all sorts of animals, cows, pigs, chickens, and a lot of dogs. I’ve had to do the unthinkable before, but I always knew it was for the greater good. I had always been caring and compassionate, even if I couldn’t show just how much. I hated seeing an animal suffering, and I knew Jack was suffering, bad. With us still being about two hours from the marina and without any other way I knew what I had to do. For Jack, and my daughters, I had to make the decision to end his suffering, the only way I had available.
With the sails dipped down and the boat just bobbing in the waves, I directed my entire family down below and to close the hatch, I didn’t want them to witness this. I didn’t want this image burned into their minds, as far as how it affected me was irrelevant. I had dealt with pain my entire life, so I thought a little more wouldn’t matter. So I did what I had to do, I held the little guy as he whimpered painfully and then I took his little life… With my bare hands… It was the only thing I could think of, and when I felt his little body relax was when I broke.
I was sitting there with him in my hands when I felt the first tear streak down my face, then another… A few moments later the dam broke, and 32 years of pain and repressed emotions came out and I cried… It was that moment my armor shattered, into billions of pieces, never to be repaired again. It was in that moment holding Jack’s lifeless little body that was my downfall, but it also marked the beginning of my rebirth.
Before I go any further, like any good story, maybe I should start at the beginning.
To be continued as often as I can.
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Author's Note: I know that this isn't something to be read for pleasure, trust me it's hard for me to write. I do hope that sharing this might help someone, anyone... ~Rebecca
Over the last few years, at least since my transition, I have witnessed and heard many different conversations against someone like myself. They have ranged from, there wasn’t a strong male role model, we weren’t taught properly about God, or even that our parents pushed it upon us by forcing us to play a role against the gender we were born as. On the other side of the argument, from support groups and conversations, I’ve talked to many different transgender people about their varied experiences. Some have claimed they didn’t realize they were different until later in life, while some claim to have known from birth, or anytime in between. The one constant I’ve found is that all of our experiences, while similar, are still very different. I would like to be able to say that I came out of my mothers womb proudly proclaiming, “I am a girl!”, while that would make this much more entertaining to read, that’s not how it happened. There wasn’t anything in my early life that would give reason, or indication, to why I was different. My life back then, was mundanely normal, boring even.
I think that when we get older and look back at our lives, we are able to see things with much more clarity than we had then. I know now, that we were poor, and I don’t mean that we had to limit our eating out to one night a week poor. I mean the kind of poor that most would relate to the epitome of ‘poor white trash’. A small example is that I know now, that my parents would skip meals just so I wouldn’t have to, and often would send me to my aunts to eat simply because there was no food in our own kitchen. Years later, my Mom would tell me that there were times they were severely afraid that I might be taken away, simply because they struggled so hard to support me.
I was raised in an old trailer on family land that had been passed down for seven generations. The plot our trailer sat on wasn’t even directly ours, the land left to my Dad was not accessible, so my parents had parked our trailer on land that belonged to one of my aunts. With my Dad being a disabled war veteran from the US Army, he was unable to keep sustainable employment. My Mom was almost our only source of income, a medical secretary who was keeping our little family alive the best that she could. My Dad with his struggles, while it wasn’t diagnosed back then, would have made him a strong candidate for PTSD, at least from what my mother had finally confided to me. He had seen or done more than he could cope with when he was in Korea. Since his discharge and up to my birth, he had struggled with alcohol and nightmares but had found his salvation in his strong religious beliefs. His saving grace was that he had become a minister. He even had a church long before I had been born, but had given that up to became a traveling minister, speaking at different churches several times a month by the time I came along. My mother also had a strong faith, and how she received her strength was through music. I also credit her for my love of music, since I joke that since she was a choir director, that I have been attending choir practice since before I was born. Literally..
Even with the struggles that I know about now, my memories tell me otherwise. I don’t remember struggles, I remember having two parents who loved me, and showed it all the time. I didn’t remember a dad struggling with issues so bad he couldn’t hold a job, or a mom who was struggling so hard to hold it together that she cried almost every night. I don’t remember being upset at not having new name brand cloths, or seeing my parents feed me without eating themselves.
I remember having a dad who was there… I remember a mom who kept me fed, and in clean clothes… I didn’t know or care if they were thrift or hand me downs. I remember being loved, and safe with my parents. The way I remember things, my life was full. Over flowingly full most of the time.
Since my dad wasn’t employed, I remember that from the moment I woke up, and until I went to bed, he was always there, and I had become his little shadow. I had even been named Robert after him, so we were Bob and lil Robbie wherever we went. With his gifts and skills of mechanical and electrical repair of just about everything, he did odd jobs for the community, often doing the work for free just to help others, but occasionally those he helped were able to pay him. With the large parcel of family land, he also farmed, which meant that when mom was at work, I farmed too. Some of my best memories were spent in those fields. Especially those when he would shut off the tractor, an ancient 1942 International that only he could keep running, and we would sit in the field while he would break open a watermelon over his knee. Sitting there with Dad, both of us covered in sticky watermelon juice, is something I will hold dear to me for my entire life. Even though I’ve eaten hundreds of watermelons since, I can honestly say that I’ve never had one that ever tasted as sweet as those that we ate in that field. While Dad was tall, he was also slight of frame, and due to working in the field he was in good shape. All I knew was that my Dad was my hero, he was the strongest, friendliest, and funniest dad in the world.
My mom, even though she worked every day, was just as important in my life. With her directing music in the church, I was well grounded in the First Cumberland Presbyterian church as a child. She also gave me a strong love of music, that lives on to this day. Even though I was my Dad’s shadow, I took after my mom, with her wit, her humor, and her dedication to family. She was just as strong as my dad, maybe not physically but in other ways. She never would let me know just how difficult things were until much later, but always reinforced that I was loved and cared for.
That was how the earliest years in my life were spent. There were no markers that could lead to suggest that I was different or anything that could be argued as causation for it either. My life was simply going to church, helping my Dad farm, and just being a young child. Another great point in my life was that I had an Aunt that lived just down the road from us, with two of her four children. Whenever I wasn’t with either Dad or Mom, I spent time with my cousins. The two still at home, were Scott and Susan, both only a few years older than myself. While Susie was closer to my age, I spent more time with her than Scott, mostly because with the larger age gap, I was his ‘annoying little cousin’. That being said, yes, I would play with her and her dolls, but she would also play with me and my cars and Star Wars stuff. We also spent a lot of our time racing through the woods, fishing, flying kites, and even gorging ourselves with my aunts fruit trees until we’d make ourselves sick. I honestly didn’t know or understand any difference between “men” or “women” then, I was just a child and all those thoughts never surfaced… At least until I started kindergarten when I was five… It was then, that I started noticing the differences, however slight and barely perceptible. I’m not talking about how girls and boys dressed, that was superficial. The thing that struck me the most was how they interacted with each other. Until then, the only kids I had been around were my cousins, my moms boss’s children, or the children at church.
At first it was fun for me to be around so many other kids, but slowly I’d always find I’d gravitate towards the girls during recess. They were just more interesting, and fun to be around. The teachers would always try to push me back to playing with the boys, but the games they would play would always be very physical and at the time I was much smaller than the other boys. That ended up with me always being picked last for teams, and because I couldn’t keep up they would start becoming mean. While the bullying started out very slight in kindergarten, it was still there. The phrases, “Boys don’t cry”, and “Man up” had already started being used by the grown ups around me. I’d try my best to try to fit in with the rest of the boys, but I’d always end up being pushed down and teased to the point I’d cry. That only made things worse, not only with the boys, but my teachers as well, as they kept trying to reinforce “grow up and learn how to grow up to be a man” mentality. I tried to, I mean my Dad was my hero, I wanted more than anything to grow up and be just like him. I really did.
The girls though were much nicer to me. They wouldn’t tease me after I had ended up crying after the boys would ‘punish’ me for being ‘like a girl’. They’d actually invite me to play with them, either jumping rope, or hopscotch, or any other game they were playing. I’ve learned that later that girls can be just as mean, if not more so, than boys, but it was here where I noticed the difference in how they acted with each other. While yes, if one of the girls tripped while jumping rope, or messed up in any way, they would still get teased. Unlike the boys though, the teasing wasn’t mean, they would then encourage them to try again…
That’s how my experience started, as a small five year old, constantly teased and bullied for being a ‘crybaby’ or being a ‘girl’. I found the insult of being called a ‘girl’ was hurting me less and less, with the way the girls accepted me, not as a boy or a girly boy… They just accepted me as me, and they are who I wanted to be around. The divide between the boy’s and the girl’s grew slowly throughout kindergarten, but I didn’t care. I had my group of female friends, and while I got picked on by the boys, the girls liked having me play with them. That’s how it continued until 1st grade started.
Somewhere between the ages of five and six, the idea of boys being ‘icky’ had started to form with the girls. Maybe it was the conditioning they had to go through, just as I was being conditioned to be a boy. Regardless of the cause, by the time that 1st grade started, I was still a target of ridicule by the boys, and for the first time the girls started rejecting me… Only because I was an ‘icky’ boy… Nothing I tried to do helped, all I could do was sit and watch from the sidelines. Knowing I was supposed to be a boy, I still tried to fit in with them without any luck. Every time I tried only ended up with more ridicule and bullying. I just didn’t understand why they acted like they did, and trust me I tried.
It was during this time, that I told Susie how badly things were going, and how much I hated being a boy and having to try to fit in with them. In our young ages, six and seven respectively, the simple answer was if I was a girl then I wouldn’t have to play with the boys anymore. It was then, that after ‘borrowing’ some of my cousins clothes that Rebecca was discovered. Susie started treating me then like I was simply a girl now and I remember how freeing it felt to not have to ‘be a boy’. We didn’t tell either of our parents about this, for some reason we knew we had to keep it a secret.
For the next year, even though I had to deal with the rejection and harassment at school, whenever I was alone with Susie, I could just be Rebecca. Most of the time, It didn’t even require me to change out of my boy clothes or anything, I just simply was ‘her’ when I was alone with my cousin. It wasn’t perfect, but it helped enough that I could deal with school and being treated like I was. Then came the summer and I was spending a lot more time with Susie, until one day my Mom had come hope early to pick me up from my Aunt’s and found us playing with makeup. She became livid, not only at me, but my cousin and my Aunt for letting it happen. My aunt tried to tell her we were just playing, and it was no big deal, but my Mom didn’t see it that way. I was forbidden to spend much time with Susie or even to go over to my Aunt’s without either Mom or Dad with me. The reinforcement that God made me a boy became so much stronger at home, and I started feeling more and more lost. The sense of wrongness and being corrected all the time to be a boy just grew as I started 2nd grade.
My memories are a bit faded at this point, I think that my mind blocked out most of it trying to protect myself. I do know that my entire world stopped on that day in August 1980. While my mom was still mad at them, It had been long enough at that point, that my cousins were allowed to come over to our trailer and it was there playing on our front porch, when I remembered my Aunt having to rush my Dad to the hospital. He had collapsed in the field and couldn’t be revived. I was left there with Susie and Scott until my Mom came to get me several hours later, the whole time not knowing what was happening.
I know that my Dad never regained consciousness. He suffered a heat stroke while working in the field, and collapsed. I have no actual memory of that or the next several days, I don’t even remember when mom told me that he had died. She had told me how withdrawn I became, and had shut everyone out but Susie. I have no recollection from that moment until the day of his funeral. His funeral sticks out in my memory from the loud report of the rifles, as soldiers gave the twenty one gun salute to a fallen brother. It was that day that a little seven year old boy had to say goodbye to his Dad, his hero, someone who he had thought was immortal, that has been etched into my memory. It was the percussion of the rifles reverberating through my small body that forever etched that memory, on the day we laid a giant to rest.
To be continued as often as I can.
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Author's Note: I know that this isn't something to be read for pleasure, trust me it's hard for me to write. While this is mostly me purging old demons, I do hope that sharing this might help someone, anyone to know they aren't alone... ~Rebecca
The next few months of my life, I had to piece together over the years, only from hearing bits and pieces from my mom. No matter how much I’ve tried to remember, those several months have been and continue to be, mostly blank to me. I had asked my mom what had happened during that time, hoping to jog my memory. The best I could ever do was to remember how I felt at the time, with hardly anything else. As one would expect, I remember feeling hurt, and a sense of loss over my dad, but there was more. I also remember feeling betrayed by my mom, and also yet more hurt and loss from being moved away from my Aunt’s… And also Susie. I’ve also found out that I was able to meet my step-dad on the same day we buried Dad. He was there to pay his respects to a friend, and fellow soldier, as they were both in Korea at the same time. He had buried his wife earlier that year, and when paying his respects, he reconnected with my Mom. It was three days shy of being three months from the day my Dad passed away, to when my mom married Ernie…
I know now, many of the reasons that they married so quickly, hindsight being what it is. The truth of the matter is that with the cost of the funeral and the medical bills from Dad’s collapse, had Ernie not come in when he did, Mom would have lost the trailer, and also me. Scraping like she had been doing we were already behind on pretty much everything, and by the time of the funeral she had seen the writing on the wall. They had also been friends already long before I was ever born. Ernie and his family used to be in my Dad’s congregation back when my parents had lived in Mississippi back in the early 60’s. With the death of Ernie’s wife earlier in the year, and then when Dad died, they both reconnected in their friendship and shared loss. Sadly I knew, or understood, none of those things at the time. I only knew that months after we lost Dad that I was loosing everything else I knew, my home, my friends, my Aunt and my cousins.
That’s what led me to having a ‘new’ Dad just six days after I turned eight years old. We did spend Christmas in our trailer five days after their ceremony, but the week afterwards was spent packing our meager possessions and moving our lives to Starkville, MS, which was where Ernie lived. I wasn’t able to say goodbye to the few friends I did have in the 2nd grade, before we moved. Not really fitting in with most of the kids, I had drifted to the ‘outcast’ clique. Yeah, even back then in elementary school there were cliques already forming.
Even with how hazy my memories are, I distinctly remember how frightening starting a new school halfway through the year was for me. I also remember that was when I started comparing myself to a ghost. I was determined to fit in and be the boy I thought my Dad would be proud of. I had created this image in my head, not only of the man that he was, but also how other boys were. My goal starting the new school was to be that boy.
To say that it was a steep learning curve for me to try to fit in to a new school, would be one of the worlds greatest understatements. The remainder of the school year only proved that I couldn’t truly fit in, anywhere. The more I tried to emulate the other boys, at least the more popular ones, only caused my behavior to get me into more and more trouble. I thought that if I copied what the other kids did, but just do it more, that I would no longer be laughed at or picked on. It also caused me to get into trouble, not only with the teachers, but also my parents. It was quickly believed that my behavior was directly linked to me acting out because of what happened with my Dad. I guess indirectly it was, but not for any reason anyone thought.
My behavior also got me ‘incarcerated’ in an older type daycare where it seemed like mostly troubled kids were, simply because my parents didn’t trust me to stay at home during the summer. Also with their reasoning it also meant that after school I would get dropped off at the hospital where my mom worked and be stuck with her in her office until she finished work in the evening. That was my life for the next few years.
Towards the end of 2nd grade I completely gave up trying to fit in, the embarrassment of my failures were too much for me to bear. It was also the time that I started reading heavily, basically anything I could get my hands on. The ability to get lost in a story was heaven for me, it was the only time that I could truly forget about everything. That was my escape, from the bullying, from the failure to fit in, and also the perceived way I had failed living up to what I thought my Dad would have expected of me.
I find it fascinating how difficult most of my memories are to recall during those years, except those I have of the first times I read a new book. I still vividly remember the first time I sat foot in the Lantern Waste with Lucy, or the first times I set sight of Middle Earth, or fighting the cauldron born alongside Taran in Prydain. I honestly think my closest friends were people who I’d never met, CS Lewis, Lloyd Alexander, Tolkien, and Herbert. That’s how I lived my life, enduring the real world until I could truly feel alive between the pages.
A positive outcome from my voracious reading habits, is that I developed an incredible level of comprehension of anything I read, plus I was a borderline speed reader by the time I was 11. Information came easily to me, no matter what it was. I was an A student, and because I no longer was causing any trouble from my ‘acting out’ my parents began to trust me more and more. It was also ultimately the reason I found out why I felt like I did.
As I have said before, after school I had to go to the hospital where my Mom worked. She was the first ever Medical Staff Secretary for the hospital, and she dealt with all of the doctors in the hospital. Since she was also the first one in that position there wasn’t an office ready, so they made the medical library her office. So the times that I was stuck there waiting for her to finish her job, when I didn’t have homework or a book to read, I’d start reading medical journals. It was somewhere towards the end of the school year of 4th Grade when I came across an article in one of the journals. It described, in as much detail that was available in 1983, people who had felt wrong in their bodies, people like myself that felt completely wrong in the gender we were born in. For me it was an epiphany, I wasn’t the only person that felt like that. Over the remainder of the year I’d often reread that article, and try to find anything else related to the subject with what was available in the library. Sadly there wasn’t much that I could find. It was enough though for the wheels to start turning in my head.
It was during the start of 5th Grade, when my parents finally started to trust me enough to go straight home from school, my grades and behavior had given my parents the impression that I was as close to the ‘perfect’ child that one could get. That granted me a lot more freedom in the afternoon, which meant I had almost 3 hours almost every day to start exploring my feminine side. At first that just meant I could quit trying to act like a boy should, or at least how my young mind perceived it. Even if no one else was in the house at the time. I started to quit feeling so withdrawn, and as time progressed my mood throughout the day started improving. By the time the second semester had come around I had started trying to look more feminine for those few hours each day, playing with my moms makeup or trying on some of her clothes that she no longer wore. I was trying to rediscover the girl that I had thought had been gone forever. It was working, and working well. I was becoming more and more confident in myself about the direction my life was heading. Except for the time around Susie it was some of the happiest moments of my young life.
It was also during this time that I had been given the ‘birds and the bee’s talk by my parents, and also when the boys and girls were split to watch a video showing the difference between the sexes. What I was hearing was terrifying for me, the thought of growing big and hairy, having to shave my face, and having my voice drop into a masculine register was the last thing I wanted. Even with a short boyish hairstyle I could still look convincingly like the girl I pictured in my mind.
Armed with the new knowledge and what I had discovered in the medical library I started making a plan on how to talk to my parents and get them to understand. I was so sure of myself by the time summer break had started, I had it all figured out, or so I had thought. I just knew that once my Mom saw how content and happy I was as Rebecca, that she would listen to me and help me to become her. With them having given me the, “You can be whatever you want to be, just as long as you’re happy and healthy speech’ countless times, it made sense to my naive and preteen mind.
Over the end of the school year I had been collecting clothes from a friends donation bag his parents had started collecting. He had three older sisters all who were close to my size, and they always started outgrowing their clothes that were bought at the beginning of the year, it was like a treasure trove for me. In my desperation, I had rationalized since they were giving them away, it was okay and wasn’t hurting anyone.
It was the second week of summer break that I decided to put my plan in action. I was several weeks past due for a haircut, I had faked not feeling well every time Mom had planned to take me to the barber. I got up early to see my parents off for work, which surprised them that I got up on a non-school day before 7AM. I waited about an hour after they left just in case sure they didn’t forget something and come back home. The last thing I wanted was for them to surprised me half way through all my prep work. I intended to look my absolute best when they came home, it was going to be perfect.
I spent an hour taking a bath with my moms bath beads, and spent extra time carefully shaving what little fuzz I did have on my legs and underarms. I had been keeping my eyebrows neat, but now this time I actually shaped them. I had also been filing my nails for several weeks, keeping them shaped and clean and growing a bit longer as well. I had even taking one of my moms sewing needles and pierced my ears that morning. It was well after noon by the time I had my hair and nails done, my makeup immaculate, with my hair curled in cute blonde curls. I put on a nice, but well worn, black skirt with a maroon sleeveless top, and a pair of mom’s 3in heels that she rarely wore. I admired myself for almost an hour, practicing my smile just so I could prove how happy I was. Then I waited.
By the time I was ready, I only had about an hour and a half until mom was Due home, so I waited in the living room with no distractions, so I wouldn’t miss hearing her drive up. When she arrived, I went and stood at the doorway and waited for her to open the door. I was expecting her to be surprised, but I was positive she would see my smile and everything would be okay. It had to be.
People often say that I have one of the most expressive faces they have ever seen, something that passed down directly from my mother. I remember vividly how all my hope and happiness started to fall with each range of emotion that passed over her face. First it was shock, which was expected, then disbelief, confusion, then anger. At that point I stepped back in fear, and softly told her, “Mom? It’s me… I wanted you to see me… This is who I really am…”
In anger, she retorted, “This is all your damn Aunt’s fault and her kids! They made you think that this is okay! You’re not a girl, you're a boy Robbie!!!” Seeing the hurt in my face, seemed to catch her in the middle of her rage, then the anger turned to something even worse. As tears started falling from both of our eyes, her face slowly shifted from anger to shame…
She ran to her bedroom, which was next to mine and locked her door. I knocked and called out to her, begging her to talk to me, but the only response I got was her sobbing. After several long moments I gave up and went into my bedroom, and I started removing everything… The whole time I could hear her crying in shame over me… Which only made my tears fall even faster, I had hurt my Mom, after everything she had done for me, this was all my fault.
That was the day that self doubt started replacing the hope that had faded. It was the day I showed my mom the real me, the best version of myself, the day she rejected me… I ended up taking off everything that screamed Rebecca, and sat in my room just waiting for them to come talk to me, or yell at me or anything else… I sat there on my bed waiting for them, until I finally fell asleep. With no one even checking on me the rest of the night.
I still remember how it felt to be that self assured, and having that much hope… Even after 5 years in my transition I still am striving to have that level of confidence that my 12 year old self had on that day…
To be continued as often as I can.
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Author's Note: This was was a very difficult chapter to write, so I urge you to observe the cautions with this part. Even though I still feel the need to share this part of my story, secretly I hope no one reads it. ~Rebecca
Most people probably never have to come face to face with their own personal boogyman, I unfortunately was not so lucky. I met mine a week after I had tried to come out, and was introduced to him by none other than my own mother. I had been promised that he was going to help me, at 12 years old I unfortunately misunderstood the ‘help’ he was going to administer.
Nothing had been said to me about meeting Mom as Rebecca, and the only time I tried to bring it up I was sent to my room the rest of the day and seemingly forgotten. I learned quickly not to bring it up, unless I wanted to spend the rest of the day in complete and utter solitude. So you can imagine my surprise when I was told to get in the car, because Mom had found someone that had promised to help me.
Meeting Dr. Bill the first time was actually a pleasant experience, he seemed to be a jovial older man with a warm smile. I immediately liked him, at first. Our first session he had told me what my Mom had witnessed, and even asked if I wanted to be called Rebecca. He had also expressed that what was said in our meetings was secret and we both promised that we’d never tell anyone else what we talked about. I was ecstatic, this nice old man understood and was going to help me, so I of course told him yes. The first couple of sessions was about opening up and telling him everything, he had said for him to do his best he needed to know, so I gladly obliged. I couldn’t ever imagined how he’d have used what I told him against me in the months to come.
After I had completely opened up to him, he had suggested that the only way to be sure if I was really a girl was to try to be a boy. After that point, the more I tried to insist I was Rebecca, the more and more frustrated he would get with me. At the end of the first month he had prescribed some medication for me, he had told my mom it was for my anxiety. He had claimed I was being unruly in our meetings and it would only make me more relaxed, and also make it easier to help me.
The prescription was immediately filled and I was started on it that night. At first I thought it wasn’t working because I didn’t feel different. About a week after I started taking the meds, I noticed that occasionally I’d read whole paragraphs in one of my books only to not remember what I had read just seconds earlier. I also started finding it harder and harder to focus or concentrate. The entire time though our sessions continued.
When I would start trying to insist that I was a girl, Dr. Bill would get me easily confused, and flustered. I couldn’t recall information that I had read from the medical journals, and then Dr. Bill starting using the memory of my Dad against me. Since I had already told him that Dad was a minister, he also started using religion against me as well. Even had I not been drugged I probably couldn’t have withstood his onslaught.
At the beginning of this part of my therapy he used my Dad’s calling to make me feel ashamed of not living up to the man of God that was my father. He then used that shame to make me believe that if I prayed hard enough that God would cure me and I could live up to what Dad would have wanted. When the prayers failed to work, it then became my fault, because I obviously didn’t love and trust God enough. Otherwise I’d have been cured by now… This is how it went on for several months.
About five months into ‘curing’ me, our sessions took a much darker turn. I know that sounds hard to believe, after all at this point I firmly believed that my Dad was looking down at me in shame, as well as my Mom and Step-Dad. I also believed that I was weak because I wasn’t worthy enough for God to cure me, and to top it all off, that because I was so weak that God hated me. Still though it got much darker.
He started bringing up how God punished the wicked, and that’s how God saw me, a wicked little boy who thought he was a girl. He then started twisting the things I had told him, to ‘prove’ how much God had already punished me. The reason that my parents had been poor in the beginning, why I was always being bullied, and then there was the kicker. To save such a holy man of the cloth from the shame of having to be around a girly boy like me, that God took my Dad away. His death was my punishment for feeling the way I did. All because I couldn’t just be happy as a boy, God supposedly killed my Dad. Being drugged up, and overwhelmed by what he was saying, I couldn’t argue back, I couldn’t deny what he was saying, so I just nodded and absorbed it. It was that moment that my resolve was broken, as was my will. Another five months with him, he finally declared me cured to my parents.
Needless to say my parents were happy with the news, they were so excited that I was cured, but they didn’t see how truly withdrawn or despondent I had become. I guess in a way you could say I was cured, I mean I didn’t want to be a girl anymore, I desperately wanted to be a boy. I hated the thought of being a girl. It still didn’t change the fact that down deep I knew I still felt like a girl, so that simply caused the anger and self loathing to start building up. That’s how that kind of therapy ‘cures’ people, it doesn’t, it just make you hate yourself so damn much that you’d do anything to keep anyone from finding out the truth so you look like you’re cured to the outside world.
I was 13 by this time and in the second semester of 7th grade. Due to the medications effects my grades had significantly dropped, I had gone from a mostly A student with an occasional B to a mostly C student with an occasional D. With me being supposedly cured, I was able to come off of the medication and the fog started lifting. The only problem now was I no longer cared about my grades, or much else. My parents had let my grades slide while I was undergoing treatment, but now that it was over they expected, no demanded, I return to an A student. It never happened, so I stayed grounded until I was 16 and working. Being forced to stay at home, other than being able to attend school, or church functions, wasn’t punishment for me though. Where I was at, mentally, being forced to stay at home was a blessing.
Coming out of the therapy I was at such a dark place, but I knew that if people found out how depressed I really was that I would get sent back to therapy. That wasn’t going to happen, so I learned how to put on a happy face no matter how much further I sunk. I was also afraid, not of just being found out, but of people I cared about being taken away, just like my Dad was. I stayed distant from people, I mean I would talk to people at school but didn’t strive to form any close friendships. I couldn’t do that to them, being a friend to me would just be too dangerous. To protect the people around me I chose to retreat further into my shell, the shell that people saw, my armor had started forming. It was also when the thought of how much better off people would be if I simply disappeared, how much safer they’d be, started to permeate.
There were other things that I had to do as well, to try to fit in and n0t draw attention to myself. I became an avid observer, not out of fascination but for survival. Because I still didn’t understand how most guys thought, or the reasons they acted the way they did, my life started becoming all about percentages. Probably not what you’re thinking, but I couldn’t make any decision or action without running the percentages. I had to weigh each and every thing that happened to me, and respond how I perceived the largest percentage of guys would. In my earlier days, I guess you could say it was fairly comical but I probably came across as a nerdy spastic kid. That was okay, it kept people from actively trying to be a close friend. The way I saw it was at least that way they were protected, from me.
By the time I entered high school I was beyond a mess. At least internally, externally I think most people just saw a goofy kid that while socially awkward was mostly happy. I was perfecting my armor, and while it wasn’t foolproof yet, it let me survive and function. At this time my parents had given up grounding me for my grades, I think they had sort of given up as well. I guess I did fairly well considering how little effort I put into school. I was an average B/C student at this point, only because I never did homework or study. I also hardly ever slept. Another result of my therapy were my nightmares, it was basically a play by play of the worst moments in my therapy.
My not sleeping was probably the only trouble I got into with my parents, they’d have to pass my bedroom when they got up to use the bathroom in the middle of the night. Most nights I’d get yelled at around 2-3AM, that was when they’d make their pilgrimage to the toilet. They’d see my light still on and me deep into a book. Reading and playing my video games were my only reprieve from my thoughts. There were quite a large number of days that I’d go to school with less than 2 hours of sleep, if I got any at all. That was basically how I lived my public school life, I went through all the motions and silently just endured.
By the time I turned 16, I was told to get a job, it would make me more responsible my parents had stated. I started working at a grocery store part time, simply because it was expected of me. This was before any labor laws were in effect for teens, so I was trudging along working 30-34 hours a week and attending school. Since I wasn’t able to escape as much through reading, this was when I learned my other survival method. Keep moving, and keep busy, from the time I woke up till the time I laid down at night I was constantly doing something. It kept me from thinking about my internal demons as much, while not as effective as getting lost in a story it worked mostly.
It was also at work where I developed a couple of friends, at the time I thought it was great, until I realized their motivations a few years later. Sadly I was just entertainment for them, I know that now, my social gaffs would be amusing to them. The other benefit for them was that, I was their scapegoat with their own parents. It’s funny, the first time I every tried drugs, or got drunk was with my ‘friends’, only to find out later they had told their parents that I was the cause of it.
While I didn’t care for the drugs, I found out I loved who I was when I was drunk. I no longer cared what people thought of me when I got trashed, and it was about the only time that I could stand my own company. So at 17 years old, I became a functional drunk. Passing out at night was preferable then going to sleep naturally, because I wouldn’t dream. I knew it wasn’t healthy, but it worked…
I had hated school so much, than even with my less than stellar grades I was only one credit shy of graduating after my junior year. I attended summer school for that credit just so I could escape, college had to be better or so I had thought. So what should have been my senior year, was my first year in a community college. My parents had given up their dreams of me becoming an engineer. I loved working with my hands, and anything related to aviation, so I started technical school to be an aircraft mechanic. Another benefit that I thought at the time, was that one of my friends who had just graduated was going to the same school, even he was taking different classes. That let us carpool, another benefit for him, was that he didn’t have to spend his gas money that way…
I honestly thought it would have been better than high school, but I was actually treated worse in tech school than the bullies treated me in high school. Most of the guys in the class were already in their early twenties and here I was at 17 in the classroom with them. I made an easy target, but still didn’t stop them from inviting me to a lot of their parties, simply because I was a funny drunk. The year just pressed on.
I had gotten the noticed during the summer after my 1st year in college that the instructor had been fired, but not to worry they would hire another. Then the weeks kept going by then months and they had yet to hire another instructor. It should have been half way through my 1st semester back when I received a call from the Navy recruiter, who promised me everything. I was thinking really hard about it, then Kuwait was invaded by Iraq. In my sense of duty, and thinking this was the way to make not only my Dad, but my Step-Dad proud I enlisted.
I actually loved being in the Navy, for the first time I felt part of something. I liked how everything was structured, I knew what I had to do, and when I had to do it. I trusted my shipmates and they trusted me, it was a huge melting pot of personalities, ethnicities, and religions; we were all different, but the same. Other than the physical aspects, boot camp was also easy for me. Mostly it was a huge mind game, and at this point I was an expert with that, so I sailed through easily. Since I already had college I went in as an E-2 and my Company Commanders recommended me for E-3 upon graduating boot.
I also found out how much working out helped me burn my anger. With limited space available, I couldn’t have my mountain of books, but working out helped. I had gone into boot standing 6ft tall and a chubby 180lbs, two months later I was up to a trim and fit 215lbs. I continued working out my entire Navy career, which unfortunately was cut short… All because of my issues. No I didn’t come out again or anything, I still despised myself too much for that. It was the nightmares becoming more and more vivid. Dr. Bill in my dreams had become twisted, even more than he was in our sessions, and I started sleep walking. A year and a half after the day I enlisted I was sitting back at home on a medical discharge. I had failed, at the only thing I had truly enjoyed at this point.
I was 19 years old at this point, and the only thing I had to show for it was my part time job at a grocery store. I didn’t have school, the friends I did have I had realized only hung around me because they used me for entertainment. While they didn’t show it, I felt that my parents were so disappointed in me for my failures. That is how I perceived myself, as an complete and utter failure. How everything that had happened to me was because of who I was, on the inside. It was just further punishment from God, for not being able to get over it. Those thoughts that had haunted me for so long came to the forefront, how much better it would be for everyone if I just disappeared. I had fallen into such a depression at this point, even my books wouldn’t give me any solace. Just a few months after I was discharged, I made my decision. To protect everyone else, and to escape my own life. I was convinced that I was already going to hell for not being able to stop feeling like I did, I was ready to go, I felt I deserved it.
A few weeks later, I had told everyone I was going on a week long camping trip. Nobody even batted an eye, they all wished me a lot of fun and how they expected to hear about it when I returned. Except I didn’t go camping, I had gone and rented a cheap hotel a few hours away from home. It was where I was going to say goodbye. I had planned this over and over so many times, I was extremely calm. I no longer had any doubt. I had done my research, and I knew with what I was going to take, and how much. I’d simply fall asleep and never wake up, waking up wasn’t an option.
It was on that late fall evening, a few months before I was going to be 20, that I hung the do not disturb sign on the door. I was paid up for the week, so they would never come to check on me until I was a no show at checkout. I had thought about writing a note to let people know why, but I couldn’t do it. Even in that moment my self loathing made me think it was better for everyone else if they didn’t know. I carefully counted out the pills, four times a lethal dose, and said a final prayer. Not for me, but those I was leaving behind, wishing that without me they would be happier.
I then took all of my pills, it took me 6 handfuls in rapid succession, and then laid down to wait. The tears were still flowing when everything faded out.
To be continued as often as I can.
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