Caught in Transition (3 page)

ME: It looks like you chose the red road instead of the black road.
 

STEVE: It looks like I chose the red road but when I was on the black road I would either get bummed out or something would happen that would throw me back onto the red road.
 

ME: But you didn't really have a choice to choose the red or black road because you are who you are.
 

STEVE: I guess I am who I am but I don't know how far back I was who I was.
 

ME: What does that mean?
 

STEVE: Maybe some people have lives that go along without too many events happening so that they become a lot older before they are faced with the situation of questioning something about the way their life is explained to them by the world, and what they discover on their own.
 

ME: But your life didn't explain to you that you were a transsexual - you always knew you were different.
 

STEVE: I always knew I was different but there weren't always words for it although I think I went right off the black road when I had a conflict with Christianity and having that spiritual experience when I was twelve or thirteen. I guess there is no explanation for that - I read my way from front to back of the bible and I was a bit stuck on Christianity up until that point and I thought there were answers to everything in it - but for the kind of event I experienced there wasn't any answer. So that had me questioning things not just about church or people in a church, but that particular event, that particular experience and other events happening around that time that related to it.
 

ME: Moving forward, you reached a point when you had electrolysis in the late nineties.
 

STEVE: Yes, 96 or 97.
 

ME: Then you quit that because you were tossed back or chose to go back to the black road.
 

STEVE: Yes - but it was 1997 when my first marriage ended. By the time I went to work for eight hours and came home and looked after the house chores, and attended a night class, there wasn't very much time left in the day. I still hadn't given up - I still had that thread of that view of how I could live my life as a woman and that was still happening right up until the time we got together. You asked some questions and I tried to explain it and it was a big problem for you which meant it was a big problem for us and I needed to keep you around because I loved you so much. Although, I'd been on that path for quite awhile I also knew there were a lot of conflicting opinions about it. There were people at that time who said it's the way you were born and you can't get rid of it, and unless you do something about it you're going to suffer. There were other people who said, we don't know the real cause of it and no one can pin it down to just one particular thing so it could be an aberration or it could be a matter of self discipline.
 

ME: So when you met me you were already in the transmode?
 

STEVE: I was already in the transmode, transgender, although I don't think that word was around too much.
 

ME: But when I met you, you weren't dressed as a woman.
 

STEVE: Not particularly but you also forgot that when you introduced me to your sister I was wearing eyeliner.
 

ME: I don't remember that.
 

STEVE: I didn't remember it either until she mentioned it. So that was after we were living together in Lakefield.
 

ME: But you stopped all that and put it aside because of your love for me.
 

STEVE: That's right.
 

ME: So that was back in 1998, so what changed by 2011 that you said I can't do this charade anymore - I'm done.
 

STEVE: That was a conclusion that was drawn over a period of self-reflection. The day I injured my back was the day I started back on antidepressants. I had gone to see my doctor and he said I looked sad and I said I was and he asked me if I was always like this and I said I was. He asked me if I'd been on antidepressants before and I said I had, and he thought I should begin taking them again. I asked how long I would have to be on them and he said if you've been on antidepressants at least twice before, then the current thinking is that you have to be on them for the rest of your life because after you've had two major depressive episodes it's like there's a track burned into your brain that can never be removed again. So I left and picked up the prescription and I was feeling pretty bad about that and I had no inclination to be self-destructive but when I went to pick up the mail from the box, the motorcycle bucked and went forward. I had to grab it so it wouldn't go off the side of the road and smash itself. I had one hand in the mailbox and one hand on the handlebars and apparently when you have a thousand pound motorcycle with a 100 horsepower motor do that it causes quite a bit of damage to your back so at that point I knew there was something wrong - it felt quite wrong but it didn't feel like it was broken. It was a day later that my back tightened up so badly that I couldn't move and couldn't go into work.
 

ME: I remember that - what year was that?
 

STEVE: That was in June 2010. So there I was - I had incurable depression and medication that I had to take for the rest of my life. I had not been feeling good for at least a couple of years and I figured this is stupid, this is really stupid - why am I living like this. I have a nice house, I have a nice wife, I have dogs who love me, and I
’
m not poor - what's wrong with me. So I made up my mind within that month of June since I was totally incapacitated, that I was going to discover what it was that made my life feel like a burden instead of a joy.
 

ME: So in this time that you had off what was the defining moment - how did you know that you weren't supposed to be Steve?
 

STEVE: I think it's very hard to pinpoint an exact moment. One thing I do remember was when I was studying that mantra course and there was a particular mantra of Lakshmi in there that provoked feminine energy. I remembered repeating that mantra and the energy I was feeling was extremely familiar and I felt very aligned at that point. There were some other things that came up from doing EFT (Emotional Freedom Technique) as I was unburdening myself of a lot of the superficial things, I was remembering attempts at transition, or whatever it had been called years before, and I remember questioning myself as to why I wasn’t happy. The first answer that always came up was - you're not living the right life. You're not supposed to be a man in this world, but automatically, without hesitation I would shut that down. Now things were coming up to the surface - this was something I knew about myself - back when I was kind of experimenting with being a woman I was happier, life wasn't easier, but I just felt better. It were those memories, that refreshed my memory that that had to be a part of my life whether I wanted it to be or not.
 

ME: So when you first met me you put all that aside and lived your life with me as Steve, so what was the difference between now and before?
 

STEVE: Because I believed in 1998 I could put it all behind me but by 2010 I had twelve years of recognizing that was something I really couldn't do. It had been knocking me down for years and years and it would not go away, no matter how much I wanted it to go away, no matter how much I prayed it would go away, no matter how much I saw it causing far more agony and pain than I wanted, I could not stop it, I could not stop it.
 

ME: So either you wanted to kill yourself or you had to take that path.
 

STEVE: Exactly, unfortunately neither way would leave things intact as they were. It was do or die.
 

ME: So when you told me, were you hoping I wouldn't leave or did you know I wouldn't leave because I loved you.
 

STEVE: I wasn't even planning to tell you, I can't even say that I had a plan of approach. I just started doing stuff. I didn't have a plan or a preconception in my mind of what would happen. I just started taking estrogen to feel more womanly. I had no plan of telling you or anybody else.
 

ME: But you did.
 

STEVE: Well, you asked the questions and those questions led to the revelation as to what was happening in my mind with regards to that.
 

ME: So you told me and I freaked out and what made you realize that being a crossdresser (a woman at home and a man out in the world) wouldn't be good enough for you.
 

STEVE: I knew it would never work for me because it had never worked before. Crossdressers, based on what I knew, got thrills from wearing women's clothes, but that's not me. For me the women
’
s clothes come along with the women
’
s world, for crossdressers maybe the women's world, comes along with the women
’
s clothes. My situation is I was a female spirit living in a world that treated me as male, so there's not a whole lot of joy in that kind of thing.
 

There is no more joy for a woman living as a woman than there is for a man living as a man. Both genders have their own joys and challenges. But when a person is one way inside themselves but appears very differently on the outside, there is a huge distress in trying to deal with a world that unknowingly treats them wrongly every day. So there is great relief to them when they can live as they actually are supposed to.
 

I feel like I have escaped from prison, and it really feels good to be living a life where I feel I can be me. I go through a day now enjoying it instead of pretending to be a male. I no longer have to live the life I'm not in order to avoid the fear. It's nice to live a life without fear.
 

ME: Fear of what?
 

STEVE: Fear of being ridiculed, the fear of rejection, fear of loss, it was keeping me locked in and keeping me away from living the life that fate had selected for me.
 

ME: So it came down to you having to save yourself at the expense of your marriage and your job, basically everything.
 

STEVE: That's right because when the alternative is death, no matter how much you don't want to upset the rest of your world and hurt the people close to you, there really isn't an alternative. If I chose living as the woman I am, then I could have lost my loved one. If I chose death I would certainly have lost you. By becoming myself, at least there was a small chance that we could stay together.

As far as work went - I could live or die one way or another with that. But it was you that I was really concerned about hurting or losing, and that's why I couldn't talk to you about it before. In the past years, when the topic came up in any conversation, you were vehemently opposed to talking about it, or anything to do with it. I really didn't expect a good outcome by being more open with you about this.
 

ME: I'm still here.
 

STEVE: Awesome - miracles do happen.

V Sees a Therapist

I needed to talk to a therapist of my own, so through Steve's work I was referred to a male therapist in our hometown. The hour I spent with him was one of the most demoralizing and depressing hours of my life. He seemed amused at first, and when he picked up on my strong dislike of transgenderism (after I had explained that term to him) his prejudice began to show. I was looking for some direction or support and he actually said:

"Those people should stay in San Francisco."
 

That did it for me - he just lumped everyone who was not heterosexual together and thought they should go off and live somewhere else. I couldn't get out of there fast enough, and when he wanted to know when I'd like my next appointment I told him I'd get back to him. I never did.
 

When I got home I just cried on Steve's shoulder. He was extremely supportive. He said we'd find someone else who knew what they were talking about. I thought that was going to be a very hard person to find, but less than a month later I was able to meet up with a female therapist who had a background dealing with transgendered individuals. She actually was able to help me get a handle on things and feel grounded.
 

One of the things she said was that if I didn't want to leave the relationship I should have some type of input into it. This made sense and the biggest thing I hated at that moment was the name Sophia Grace. I went home to Steve and said that I really hated that name and could we please pick a name we both liked together. He seemed shocked that I wanted to have a say in his name but after I explained how the therapist put it, Steve understood.

The next Saturday over barbecued hamburgers and wine we bantered around a few names. Steve's two final picks were Stevie and Sophie and mine were Shayla and Sheelagh. After a while Steve decided on the name Sheelagh spelt not Sheila, but Sheelagh, so as to look unique and different. She picked Tara as her middle name which I was happy with. It was a good way to compromise all the way around. Therefore as of July 2011, when dressed as a woman, she was now known as Sheelagh.