Becoming Myself: The True Story of Thomas Who Became Sara (6 page)

It was around this time that I started to sense my feminine side in a more pronounced way than earlier in my childhood. It was becoming less vague, especially as I was beginning to feel increasingly physically abnormal. I couldn’t understand why I had a penis instead of a vagina, and then I noticed girls my own age developing breasts and wondered why I wasn’t. I became increasingly distressed but never dared to express my feelings to a living soul, especially as they already considered me to be odd. There was no undue female influence upon my life that could explain this and I tried to be a normal boy just like my brothers and friends. In fact just about everything I did throughout my entire life was aimed at proving to others that I was just as normal as they were.

I was about nine years of age when I started to wear my mother’s clothes. I would be left alone in the house to take care of my younger brothers and sisters and to do the housework, sometimes for hours at a time. I would go to my mother’s bedroom and go through her wardrobe and drawers to find clothes to wear. She had lovely floral patterned dresses of crimplene, crêpe and chiffon. When I was dressed I would then experiment with her make-up. It is so difficult to explain the sheer joy and
knowing
contentment I would feel at these times. The experience was full of delight and terror at the same time. I was exhilarated and wonderfully content being a girl for that short time, but I was also terrified at being found out. I was caught once by one of my brothers, but he never let on that he saw me. It was to be years before I discovered why he never said anything, and his reasons were to reinforce for me the fact that I wasn’t dressing for kicks, but for an altogether more profound reason. The simple truth is, I felt like a freak inside while I was living, or
should I say
trying
to live as a boy, but when I was dressed in my mother’s clothes, I felt truly normal.

There were a few occasions when I was nearly discovered by my mother. I remember running and hiding in the wardrobe with my heart racing, waiting for her to come up the stairs and to open the wardrobe only to find me standing there in her clothes. However, not even this fear was enough to deter me from taking every opportunity to dress and be a girl; to be my true self, a girl with no name. That is what I was until my friend Kathy gave me my new name in 2003. These rare opportunities were to end after I started working and once I became a teenager, it was to be at least another ten years before the opportunity to be a girl, well, to at least
feel
like a girl, was to present itself.

One such occasion was during the annual Community Week in Ballyfermot. It was held during the summer holidays and there was a variety of activities, including soccer tournaments, fancy dress competitions and a fair. Community Week was a really big deal, a real coming-together of the community. We all joined in in cleaning our streets and putting up bunting. It was a time for taking pride in ourselves and in each other. Soccer tournaments took place in the Lawns. As much as I looked forward to it I was rarely picked for any of the teams, which made me feel left out, but I came into my own at the fancy dress parade.

One particular year, 1970–71, I dressed as Miss World. It was suggested to me by my mother for some particular reason. But I jumped at the opportunity because it was in keeping with my instincts, my growing sense of my own femininity. I was dressed in a striped swimsuit, tights, heels and a wig. The only thing that struck me after the initial nervousness was how natural I felt, for the first time in my ten years. It felt like
I was in a state of bliss. Unfortunately, it didn’t last very long and was to become nothing more than a fond memory of one day in my childhood when I really knew who I was supposed to be. It was simply a wonderful experience.

There were times when I felt myself able to fit in with the other boys. During the summer holidays one of our favourite pastimes was to go up to the canal and play around the Seventh Lock. We liked to dare each other to walk across the narrow foot boards. This was a special thrill for me because I couldn’t swim. I really did envy the boys who could be so fearless and jump into the lock and swim. I feel that the reason I still can’t swim is because of the time that Joey Maguire pushed me from behind into the canal. I was about eight at the time. We were standing under the bridge and Joey was daring me to get into the water, but I was saying I didn’t want to.

‘That’s because you can’t swim,’ he said.

‘Yes I can,’ I retorted, although it was a lie. I didn’t want to be caught being a cissy.

‘I bet you can’t.’

‘Oh, yes I can,’ I said, adamant.

The next thing I knew, I was heading towards the water in a state of total panic. ‘Jaysus! I can’t swim, I can’t swim! Get me out! For fuck’s sake get me out, I can’t swim!’

‘I knew you couldn’t bleedin’ swim, you fuckin eejit!’

They pulled me out of the water but not before they had a really good laugh. I never learned to swim after that. I was like a ship that was off balance and kept keeling over to the right every time I tried.

We would go to the Gala cinema on a Saturday or Sunday for the afternoon matinee. We also went to the pictures
shown in the playground hall. We saw all kinds of films, Westerns, war films and fencing films — as we called them. We would play out what we had seen in the films on the way home through the Lawns. We also watched
Lassie, Flipper
and the
Three Stooges
, to name but a few. We all wanted to be the Americans when playing out the war films and the cowboys in the westerns. Sometimes we went searching for vampires in the old graveyard. The graveyard was turned into a mound some years ago.

Another formative time for me was our holidays in Oakwood in Co. Wicklow and Coolure House in Co. Meath, organised by a local community group. We loved these holidays; I just loved being away from my parents and from all the stress and tension, the rows, violence and favouritism. I still remember our bedrooms in the cabins and the toilets and showers across the yard; the communal hall for our meals and the sitting room where we relaxed and had our dances. I loved Oakwood and still do. It was there I learned to love the songs, ‘Matrimony’ and ‘Nothing Rhymed’ by Gilbert O’Sullivan and ‘Sylvia’s Mother’ by Dr Hook. I won a talent competition in Oakwood for singing ‘Two Little Boys’, by Rolf Harris. I loved the farm animals, the ducks and geese, the pigs and the donkeys, the sloping hills down towards the rushing river; walking across the river on the slippery stones. I envied the boys and girls who could swim in the deepest part of the river, and I especially enjoyed sitting by the riverbank watching them all jumping in and having such fun. It was all so lovely and relaxing and I really did feel free from the awfulness of my home life.

The last of my holidays was in 1972, the same year I left school and started my first job. The holiday was to be truly
momentous. We were due to go to Coolure House in August and, needless to say, we were full of excitement and impatience. A few days before, I was trying to flush the toilet when the chain came away in my hand. I tried to put it back into its bracket, but while I was standing on the toilet seat, it split in two. My mother came home and discovered the broken seat. I was too scared to tell her what had happened and, as usual, she threatened us with another beating from our father. We were all under suspicion, but despite this I was just too terrified to own up. When we were summoned by him we remained silent. He then told us that we would not be allowed to go on our holidays. Still no-one came forward. He was relentless and we were all sent to bed without anything to eat. The next day we started all over again, after he arrived home from work. Needless to say we were disconsolate at the prospect of missing our holiday. Eventually, my brother Stephen went in and told him that he had done it.

‘I fuckin’ knew it was you, you little fucker!’ my mother shouted.

When I heard this I started to cry for Stephen and rushed in to tell them that I was the one who broke the seat and how it came about, but as usual they would not listen to me. Stephen got the most savage of beatings. He was beaten with fists, then an army belt and then my father kicked him around the floor. I was having flashbacks to the vicious assault on my brother Peter years earlier. My father was determined to continue with the punishment against us so he forbade us to go on our holiday. It was a completely petty and unjust act. We pleaded with our mother to ask him to let us go. He eventually relented and allowed us to go.

We travelled to Coolure in a Ford Transit minibus. I remember us driving up what seemed like a boreen into a
wide opening at the front of the house. It was a mansion compared to what I was used to, with large rooms immediately to the right and left as we entered. We slept in a communal bedroom. No sooner had I arrived, than I felt a strong sense of elation mixed with an immediate dread of going home in a few days. Anything was better than Ballyfermot and this was paradise.

I went out to explore the grounds. At the rear of the house was Lough Derravaragh; to the right were the stables, where I met Angela. She looked after the horses and was very down to earth. I felt really comfortable in her company. We had discos in the big room to the left of the entrance and I enjoyed the dancing. It was wonderfully peaceful and stress free. I just loved it and hated having to go home.

One day, we were riding along the boreen and, coming through one of the gates, one of the boys hit my horse’s hind leg. The horse bolted and the next thing I knew it was galloping along the boreen. Someone shouted
‘watch out!’
I stuck my head up and back to see who had shouted the warning, then I turned back, just in time to see the branch sticking out from the tree. The next thing I remember was waking up in the arms of Angela in Our Lady’s Hospital in Drogheda. I had been unconscious for quite some time.

I awoke to the sound of Neil Diamond’s
Hot August Night
LP
. I still remember listening to ‘Crunchy Granola Suite’, ‘I am, I Said’, ‘Canta Libre’, but most especially ‘Morningside’, a song about a man who made a table out of oak wood, but noone noticed the gift he had. He died alone and that made such an impact upon me. I recognised myself in the man who gave the best of what he had only to remain unwanted and alone. And then there was ‘Girl, You’ll be a Woman Soon’; except that I never did get to be a woman any time
soon. No prizes for guessing that Neil Diamond was, and remains, my favourite singer song writer, with John Denver a very close second. They sang to my soul.

I was the one who introduced the Bee Gees, Neil Diamond, John Denver and many others into our home. My brothers would let on that they didn’t like them but when I wasn’t at home, they would listen to my records. Sometimes, they would think I wasn’t going to be there so they would play my records, only for me to arrive home and catch them. In fact we learned to gauge the state of each other’s love lives by the music we were listening to at any given time. Peter was dating a girl from across the road and we could always tell when it was going well and when things were going badly. He would play my records until they couldn’t be played any more.

Peter had this habit of rolling his head from side to side with the head phones on and singing at the top of his voice, while crying. We got a great kick out of this, especially when he would deny that he was even doing it. Despite the fact that he did ruin my records, I hated to see him go through the pain of his break-up. He had been with the same girl for a number of years and he clearly loved her very much. I always had a soft spot for Peter and tried to get close to him, but it wasn’t to be. Like all my siblings, the need for my mother’s approval meant that I was belittled at every opportunity. This was to be one of the greatest hurts of my life.

My entire childhood was notable for a complete lack of moral guidance from either of my parents. They issued their orders, but never felt it necessary to explain the reasons why we should obey their rules. It was supposed to be enough for them to tell us what to do and we would simply obey without question. It was a case of ‘do as I say, not as I do’. It never
occurred to them that we realised that they were applying double standards. We were not permitted to ask even the most innocent of questions or to make any kind of comment or complaint. Most of us lived in fear while a small number of us lived in sheer terror. Virtually every one of my brothers and sisters learned to keep their mouths shut — it was far more important to fit in and avoid vicious beatings than it was to have their own thoughts and opinions, to have their own minds — all except me. I just never believed that it was right for me to remain silent and I’m so glad I never did, despite the vicious beatings and other abuse I was to receive throughout my childhood and well into my adult life. I’m really glad I withstood all the attempts to get me to be something I’m not.

This phase of my life was to be marked by a growing sense of being disconnected from everyone around me but, more importantly, feeling disconnected from
myself
. Of course, I didn’t know that it was really the girl inside me trying to live, but it was at this time that I started to wear my mother’s clothes and to experiment with her make-up. It was also a time in which I began to develop a sense of my femaleness, but without really understanding what was happening to me. I began to develop the ability to relate to people on an unusually deep level and was able to see to the very heart of issues rather than engage in petty squabbling. I also developed an ability to strongly empathise with other people’s suffering, especially other children, all of which might be considered ‘female’ qualities. But I received many put-downs, precisely because of the fact that I was so very different from everyone around me. So, the more they told me I was abnormal, the harder I tried to be normal. But the more I tried to be a boy, the more I felt like a girl; the more sensitive I was, the more
they ridiculed and abused me. Growing into adolescence was to be a very traumatic and lonely time in my life.

The only real glimpse of light for me during these times was when I was kept out of school by my mother to do all the household chores while she went to visit her mother, or went into the city. It meant that I was home alone and could listen to my father’s music. It also meant that I could dress in nice clothes and put on some make-up and feel like my true self, though it also meant being really scared in case someone would arrive home unexpectedly. But it was so worth it to have those all-too-brief hours alone and to express on the outside how I felt on the inside. They were the only times when I felt any real sense of being normal and fulfilled as a young girl. It was just so precious and so wonderful. No-one could hurt me during these few short hours of respite.