Becoming Myself: The True Story of Thomas Who Became Sara (22 page)

We had a lovely lunch with my parents and the atmosphere was convivial and conducive to sharing my situation with them. I started by telling them about how I’d always found it difficult to live as a boy growing up and that I had been dressing as a woman as that was how I really felt myself to be inside. I then showed them the photographs of me as Sara, as I was calling myself when in female mode. They were shocked at the news and even more so when they saw the pictures. They said I looked like my younger sisters. Then my father poured wine into our glasses and stood up and toasted my courage and wished me every happiness for the future.

I was deliriously happy and felt absolutely that I had done the right thing in telling them. They even thanked me for trusting them and confiding in them. My father and Kathy went onto the patio and left me and my mother to talk in the dining room. We had a very open and frank discussion about whether she should tell my brothers and sisters. She said that she would keep my secret, but I told her I had nothing to hide
and that I’d prefer it if she told them. So it was agreed that they would be told over the coming days.

Initially, there was a mixed reaction to my disclosure by my brothers and sisters, but it was positive for the most part. In fact, most of them promised to come and visit me in Cork and even suggested having a party to celebrate having a new daughter and sister. I was on such a high during those few months. By the end of 2003 at least four of my siblings had met me and had been really impressed with, and supportive of, my transformation. Three of them were openly declaring their support and one invited me to her wedding, as Sara! I had travelled from Cork to Portlaoise and to Cavan to visit my sisters and a brother in order to introduce them to Sara. They were undoubtedly nerve-wracking experiences but they were so worthwhile.

The last family function I attended before my sister’s wedding was my mother’s 70th birthday party. I was still living as Tom and just getting used to my new situation. The party was a nice occasion and everyone seemed happy to meet me. Some of my brothers told me they were going to be the same towards me as they were when I was Tom, which included being vulgar. I told them I didn’t mind so long as it was based on acceptance. Surely now, for the first time I could truly feel like I belonged to this family?

It was now eighteen months since they had been told of my condition, and numerous expressions of support had been given along with promises to come and see me and an invitation to my sister’s wedding in December 2004. It would not be hard to imagine, therefore, the utter devastation when I discovered that they meant none of it and that, despite being well advanced into my transition, I would be asked by my sister to attend her wedding as a man! How did all this come about? Two words:
my mother
.

All the time she was letting on to be supportive of me she was making it abundantly clear to my brothers and sisters that she had no intention of ever accepting me as Sara-Jane. She had me as a son and that was that; never mind the fact that she told me in the most shameless manner that she never wanted me, always resented having me and resented my being so different as a child. Her initial support when I had visited with Kathy had really been just for show — she hadn’t wanted to be embarrassed in front of my friend. Of course, my brothers and sisters would do anything rather than go against our mother, so, in spite of all their outward professions of support, some of my siblings began privately to refer to me as clown and a freak while some of my other brothers and sisters would even try to persuade me to change my mind and not go ahead with my gender reassignment.

It was in late 2003 or early 2004 that I was invited up to my sister Martina’s house and told that my closest brother, Peter, was coming down to see me, ostensibly to meet me and for me to explain my condition to him, in order to give him a better understanding of it; that it was going to be a friendly and supportive experience, but it would not turn out that way at all. I had been in Martina’s house a while when Peter phoned to say that he was on his way and he wanted to know if I was dressed in women’s clothes, because if I was, then he wasn’t going to come down. Martina assured him that I wasn’t dressed in women’s clothes and so he agreed to travel down. He eventually arrived at the house, but before he came in he looked through the window to check that I wasn’t dressed.

My brother then began a provocative rant about a sensitive subject in what I know was a deliberate attempt to goad me in order to make a point about my false claims (as he saw it) of being a woman born into the wrong body. The more I
resisted his attempts, the more agitated he became until I thought his head would explode, so I stopped the argument by asking him why, after not seeing each other for so long, he would choose to behave in such a manner. He shocked me with his response: ‘To prove that there’s no fuckin’ way that yer a fuckin’ woman!’

I was completely gobsmacked. ‘Are you for real?
’
I asked him.

‘Yes,’ he said, and he was deadly serious.

‘And how do you make that out?’ I asked.

‘Because there’s no fuckin’ way that woman could be as fuckin logical as you are.’

I burst into laugher at such a ridiculous assertion and turned to my sister to see her reaction. She was clearly shocked by what she’d heard.

‘So, let me see if I’ve got this right. You’re saying that I can’t possibly be a woman because I’m too intelligent?’

His answer was immediate and as clear as could be. ‘Yes, that’s exactly what I’m saying and, if you don’t like it, then tough fuckin’ shit.’

The penny was finally dropping for me. I asked Peter if he was trying to prove that I wasn’t a woman and if this was the real reason for his coming to meet me in Martina’s house, to try and talk me out of going ahead with my gender reassignment. He said that this was correct. I then asked him if he was aware of just how offensive this was to me and how terribly hurtful.

Again he was as clear as could be: ‘I don’t give a fuckin’ bollocks if you’re offended, just get fuckin’ over it.’ The only thing more frightening right then than Peter’s hostility was the realisation that I had been set up by these two and quite possibly by the rest of my family and that these were the two who had volunteered to be the ones to carry out the plan to
get me to change my mind. As if my condition was nothing more than a state of mind.

I left the house and walked around the town in the early hours of the morning and in freezing cold weather. The question going round and round in my head was: how many more of them are involved in this setup? Are my parents involved? If they are, that means they are not really accepting me despite leading me to think that they are. So how many of my brothers and sisters have also been lying to me? I determined to return to the house and put these questions to them.

But as soon as I returned, Peter apologised profusely for his outburst, justifying it on the grounds that he was nervous and wasn’t sure how to handle it. I accepted his explanation.

Martina opened a rare bottle of Spanish liqueur, saying it was a special night. She had the pictures of me as Sara that had been sent to her earlier and we showed these to Peter. This was the first time he had seen them and could see right away that this had nothing to do with my being a transvestite or cross-dresser. He was also shown pictures of the different hypothalamuses and he said that seeing them helped to make sense of my condition. We spent the rest of the night and the early hours reminiscing about the past and Martina told me how proud she felt whenever we talked on the phone and how she used to tell her husband how eloquent I was. My hope returned, for a little while at least.

However, in spite of such moments, another eighteen months were to pass and, despite travelling long distances to meet some of them and putting myself through the stress of meeting them as Sara, not one of them phoned me during that whole period to see how I was, to arrange to come and visit as they had promised or to express even the slightest concern for me. Any conversations that did take place by
phone were the ones I’d initiated and when I did call, I tried not to talk too long about my situation and made it my business to enquire into how things were with them. Eventually, I thought I would bring them all up to date on my progress and so wrote to each of them. I enclosed an up-to-date photograph that had been taken during a photo shoot for a feature in the
Irish Examiner
and a leaflet that explained
GID
. I expressed my disappointment that none of them had come to see me as they had promised and hoped that I would get to meet them soon. I also requested that they call me Sara from that moment on. I then received a number of phone calls in which I was accused of putting the family under pressure! I couldn’t believe my ears. This was around August and September 2004.

Come October, matters became irretrievably bad. I’d received a very unpleasant and upsetting letter from one brother in which he made it clear that, not only was he not prepared to accept or to respect my request to be called Sara, but that he would call me any kind of vulgar name he chose, ‘except Sara, until I’m ready’. I was doubly hurt because this brother had more reason to treat me better for all the times I’d stood by him through his many difficulties. He even wanted the name of my consultant so he could question him about my condition. He demanded this as a condition of accepting my diagnosis.

I received a number of phone calls from members of my family during this time, saying that there was a problem with me going to my sister’s wedding as Sara. I was told that there were concerns about what might be said to me or about me on the day and that I might be upset and that it might be better for me to go as Tom. I was shocked and tried to reassure them all that I could not see a problem and that I was
perfectly capable of looking after myself. I then received other calls in which I was told that some of my brothers and sisters were saying that I would look like a side show at the wedding and that people would be laughing at me. They were clearly together in this with my mother.

Their desire that I should attend the wedding as a man rather than a woman completely and deliberately ignored the simple fact that I was by now looking far more feminine than masculine, not to mention the fact that my breasts were growing and would have stuck out through my shirt. Everything about me was feminine and there was no way that I could have gone back to being a man. But this was completely ignored by them.

It all came to a head when my sister phoned me personally and asked me to attend her wedding as a man and to wear a suit. This was to become a pivotal moment for me and them. I realised that my family had not changed at all in its attitude towards me and that it was imperative for me now to move on and to have nothing more to do with them. It would have been so easy to justify becoming bitter towards them, but I was determined not to. Never again would I allow them to bring me back to that place where I’d tried to end my life; never again.

But the biggest test of my determination still lay in front of me. The last time I had spoken to my mother was during the whole wedding débâcle. I was very honest with her about how I felt about the way she and my family had treated me and that I found the whole thing an act of betrayal by all concerned. I challenged her to give me one good reason why she was not prepared to meet me; she had none. I really was hurt and decided not to have any further contact for the foreseeable future, save to keep my promise to find a suitable wedding gift
for my sister as I’d promised. She told me she’d like an angel, so I searched high and low for months before I found the right one. It was an angel with its wings covering a child to protect it.

It was ten o’clock on Friday 23 September 2005 and I was sitting at my office desk working. The phone rang and it was my father on the other end of the line sounding very distressed. ‘Thomas, I’m afraid I’ve some bad news, your mam died this morning at half-eight.’ He went on to tell me that she had had a major asthma attack and that she had not responded to her ventilator. He told me how he tried unsuccessfully to apply
CPR
. She died in his arms.

It is hard to describe the effect of this news on me. I had been grieving for the loss of my mother for over twenty years and now she was finally gone for good. She died without accepting me as her own, just as she had failed to do throughout my entire life. I felt the most incredibly sublime peace and knew immediately that I would not be going to the wake or to the funeral. I wanted to be left alone and come to terms with the realisation that she could never hurt me again, ever.

At about 11.30 a.m. I received a phone call from my youngest sister Sophie who wanted to know if I’d heard the news and to know how I was. She then asked if I was going down to Wexford, to which I replied that I would not.

‘Well, she was still your mother, Thomas.’ I told her I did not wish to discuss it further and wished her well, but she insisted that I should go down. I replied by telling her that I was not going to be a hypocrite and pretend to grieve for someone who had treated me so badly right up to her death. ‘Well, I think you’re wrong.’ She handed the phone over to Graham, who also tried to convince me to go down, but again I refused.

He said: ‘We know you had your differences but she did love you. I know she loved you.’ I couldn’t agree.

The next call I received was from my brother James. Had he heard right, I wasn’t going to Wexford to say goodbye? I repeated that I wouldn’t be going, to which he replied: ‘You mean you’re not going to your own mother’s funeral?’ I simply replied that I had my reasons for not going and that I really did not want to talk about it. He just said, ‘Good luck so,’ and hung up.

When I got up on Saturday morning I noticed a missed call on my phone. It was from another sister, Brenda, saying they were concerned for me, that they loved me and that she would call back later on that day. She never did. In fact this was to be the last time I spoke to any of them until Friday 3 November 2006 when my sister called me as I was driving onto the M50.