Caught in Transition (2 page)

While he was gone I got to thinking that maybe I had gone a little overboard ranting at him that morning so I made his favourite yellow cake with butter cream icing. He came back home with two entwined hearts on a necklace and handed it to me with a bunch of flowers and then started to walk away.

I said,
“
Did they give you any problem exchanging it?
”
and all he said was,
“
No - they felt sorry for me.
”
 

That's when my heart broke again, this time for him. The pain and the sadness just kept piling up, we were both hurting and had no way to reach out to each other. I just could not reconcile myself to the fact my husband wanted to become my wife. He couldn
’
t understand how I couldn
’
t understand him.

I couldn’t believe the feelings of sadness and the amount of pain I felt on a daily basis. We continued the dance and every day it felt like he was moving further and further away from me. I always hoped that the next day would be better - but that never happened. My life with Steve was all I wanted, and that was being taken away from me. I felt I would be sad forever and a day - if I lived that long.
 

We both decided that maybe a change of scenery might help, so on the second weekend of March we went for a shopping trip to Syracuse, New York. We found a lovely Holiday Inn Express near the Carousel Mall (now known as Destiny USA). I love shopping so I was in my element and feeling happier than I
’
d felt in months. It made Steve happy to see me happy and he took me to a Coach store and told me to pick out a purse. I was in shock because I had never had a purse that cost more than fifty dollars before. Now I had my first gorgeous amazing purse that cost more than any shoes I had ever owned.
 

I was beyond thrilled, and in turn wanted to make Steve happy, so I suggested that maybe if he was interested we could go and look at ladies clothing. That way we could find him something he could wear around the house. He loved that idea and that's the day we found tall jeans by Liz Claiborne at J.C. Penney's. He picked up four pairs and snuck them into the men
’
s change room. You have to know that Steve is six foot one inch with thin long legs and when he put on those women's jeans they hugged his butt and made his legs look amazing. I tried not to notice that he looked better in jeans than I did.

Back at home I made it my mission to push the androgynous card. I thought if I could help Steve look less masculine for his sake, and less feminine for my sake, we would both be happy. He could remain a male but not necessarily look like one. At this point I had living in denial down to an art form.

I thought perhaps he was just confused and only thought he would like to dress like a woman. We lived in a rural area which didn't help with clothing options so when my daughter and her partner were over for dinner (her partner who dressed very avant-garde/metrosexual), it was decided that the two men would go on a shopping expedition to Toronto together. They both liked the idea and I didn't have to be involved with it, so the idea worked out well.
 

The reality was a lot different, when they returned from their day in Toronto. Steve had two men's shirts that were pink and orange and a story on how they had lingered over a two hour Indian lunch. My daughter
’
s partner on the other hand came back with lots of fun things for himself - this was so not a good plan. Steve came back frustrated and angry, and that night we had a very strong worded discussion. The bottom line was that androgyny was not going to be an option; the only thing he wanted and needed was to become a woman.
 

I thought if I went along with Steve dressing as a woman just at home, maybe that would be good enough and satisfy this urge he had to be female. I thought it was a good compromise and we could all be happy. The key words here were “just at home.”
 

On weekends we would usually go out for a drive to poke in antique shops or have a coffee and a chat, but that stopped when Steve wanted to go out in public on weekends as a woman. I didn
’
t want to hurt his feelings so I just made up reasons not to go out. One Saturday he came downstairs dressed as Sophie and asked if I was ready to leave. I must have looked at him as if he had two heads because he just looked back at me and said,
“
What?
”
 

I said,
“
I can
’
t go out with you looking like that here - we live here.
”
Steve got angry and accused me of being embarrassed to be seen out with him when he was Sophie - which was true. I did not go out with Sophie that day and Steve didn’t talk to me for the rest of the day.

Seriously, how could I? How could I possibly go out when we might have run into people we knew and what explanation could I give as to why I was with Sheelagh. In my mind everyone would know it was Steve and I feared the stares and judgement. It was all too unreal, and I felt I was living in the Twilight Zone - the only problem being was I never woke up.

It was also around this time when Steve had restarted facial electrolysis. I say restarted because unknown to me he had electrolysis on his face in 1995/96 because even back then he wanted to be a woman. This was before we met and I had no idea. This procedure was now taking so much time and money it was affecting our lives. I kept thinking my
l
ife was too short for this nonsense. This constantly ran through my mind, each time immediately followed by the thought that Steve should do it if it made him happy. I would like to say we lived each day as it came and life fell into a nice rhythm, but it didn't. There were many dark days that I felt like killing myself to escape my misery, and days I felt like killing Steve for taking the life I knew away from me.
 

It was springtime and I remember walking around the house with Steve, looking at the birds in the lilac bushes. Seeing the daffodils and tulips starting to inch their way up out of the dirt and then we made it to where the clothesline was. This was a beautiful clothesline that he made for me out of two cedar trees from our property that he cut down and erected by himself. I took one look at it and I just started crying - he was ruining everything with his "want" to transition.
 

I was going to have to leave him and my home and lose my beautiful flowers and clothesline - all because of his selfishness. That day I absolutely felt my life was over. That evening when I was drying dishes I was so overcome with anger and remorse that I took the glasses in my hands and smashed them on the floor while yelling at Steve about how everything was over. I kept smashing more plates on the floor with sobs racking my body because my life had changed, everything I believed in and loved was changed forever - I couldn't stop any of it. I couldn't bargain, or plead, or threaten; the course of life had taken a sharp turn and I had no say in the matter at all.

Diagnosis

In late April, Steve was given a set of tests and writing assignments to do by his therapist which were to be completed and then evaluated by a clinical psychologist. Subsequently an evaluation with the psychologist lasted two and a half hours. After looking at the assignments and the interview, the psychologist came back with a diagnosis of gender dysphoria, and a recommendation that Steve receive treatment for the condition. Gender dysphoria is a condition that affects people who identify with a gender different from the one they were assigned at birth. The current medical treatment for people diagnosed with gender dysphoria is to support them in physically modifying their bodies so that they better match their gender identities. This approach recognizes that they have a medical problem that is corrected through various forms of medical intervention.
 

Steve came home with the results and showed me he had proof; he had a genuine medical problem and wasn
’
t just wanting to be a woman for the heck of it. I asked if I could read the report and even though he didn
’
t really feel comfortable with me doing so, he let me read it.

I think at that point he was feeling very vulnerable and raw and didn
’
t want me using anything in the report against him. After reading it I remember sitting there and thinking that was the nail in the coffin. I had reached the point where I had proof Steve was a woman trapped in a man
’
s body. Proof from a licensed professional, now I really had to look within myself for the answer to what would make my life happy.

Would I be happier on my own without my partner of thirteen plus years, or happy with a wife instead of my husband. Never in a million years did I ever think I would be faced with this question, and at that moment I didn’t have an answer.

Starting Hormones

Now Steve had a real diagnosis of a recognized medical condition from an expert in medicine. The diagnostic report included a recommendation for treatment using contra-hormone therapy, as well as any other needed therapies.
 

He took the report to his doctor to make a request for contra-hormone therapy (CHT). When he went to the appointment, he also took two medical articles that fully described how to administer and monitor hormones .

“Do you want to see a psychiatrist?” was the first thing his doctor said to him. Steve pointed out to him that he didn’t need to see a psychiatrist since he had already spent several months in therapy and had been diagnosed with gender dysphoria. All that was needed was to prescribe the medication that was standard for the condition.

“I don’t feel qualified to treat you for this,” the doctor countered.

“But here are all the instructions you need to help me!” Steve replied.

“If you’d like me to refer you to someone, I will,” the doctor offered.

The doctor seemed to have no idea of who he could refer Steve to.
 

Basically his family doctor had refused to prescribe CHT and seemed willing to leave his patient without any treatment at all. Steve knew he needed the treatment to continue on his journey to becoming a woman in hopes of getting beyond the darkness and gloom he spent so many years living under. If the doctor wouldn't help him, then he would help himself.
 

He found the medication he needed on an online pharmacy. He ordered the drugs and a few weeks later started regularly receiving packages from Asia. I asked him what they were and he told me one was a female hormone called estradiol and the other was a testosterone blocker called spironolactone.
 

I could not believe that Steve would order drugs from a foreign country and then put them in his body without even thinking twice. Seriously - drugs from Asia ordered online! They were totally legal, but who knew what was really in them or if they were safe. The man was driving me crazy!

He explained they were made by a reputable North American company, but they were just coming from Asia because he couldn't find any doctor willing to prescribe CHT in Ontario. My concern and love for Steve overrode all my other feelings and I begged him to stop self-medicating. He said he couldn't - this was the path he had to take in order to be healed. For now that meant he was becoming the Sophia Grace that I didn’t ask for.

An Important Decision

I knew I had to talk to someone or I was going to explode. I just couldn
’
t deal with this all by myself any longer so when Steve went to work I called my sister, who I called Sissy. I just put everything out there and between sobs I said, “What do I do?
”

I remember her taking a deep breath and asking me what did I want to do. Not really helpful, but all I wanted was my life back. I wanted to be normal and live a normal life, but at that point we all knew that wasn't going to happen.

In my mind I kept thinking I was married to a crossdresser which refers to a person who wears clothing and accessories commonly associated with the opposite sex. The hard truth was that I was married to a transsexual, a person whose sex related structures of the brain that define gender identity are exactly opposite to the physical sex organs of their body. I was on a steep learning curve because when I first heard of the word transsexual, all I thought of was the Rocky Horror Picture Show, but I quickly learned how wrong I was. Steve was not someone who wanted to wear women's clothes for fun, but a woman who was trapped in a man's body.
 

After all was said and done it came down to one question - would I love Steve no matter what or who he became. It took some soul searching but in the end the answer was relatively easy, and the answer was yes. My love for this person could survive because I believed in him and loved him from the very core of my soul. It was a decision I made knowing he couldn
’
t change the way he was, but I could change the way I thought.

Trying to Understand

One afternoon I sat down with Steve to discuss the whole phenomenon that was changing our lives, and recorded his answers.
 

We started with two roads - the red road that meanders and goes over hills and is hard to maneuver and the black road that was straight and level.