I was going to a LGBTQ AA group a lot now and was getting used to being around other LGBTQ people. You have to remember that up until getting sober I had been very homophobic and would have never been able to be around “those people”. I had a bad case of internalized homophobia which is common with people who are closeted and not comfortable with themselves. One of the members there introduced me to another sober transgender person who recommended I go to a transgender support group he knew of in San Antonio. The first time I went to a gender support meeting I again was confronted with my still dying homophobia because it was a very interesting assortment of people in various stages of transition, dress, and coming out. It occurred to me that a year ago I would have been repulsed in that room and that I was completely at home and felt these were my people. They talked about a topic and then we broke into groups for social time for a couple of hours. I was surrounded by several other transwomen who kind of played devil’s advocate for a while asking me questions and in the end they all agreed I was one of them and in the right place. I continued going to that group until the pandemic hit and it went to Zoom. I found the doctor that first prescribed hormone replacement drugs and a lot of other helpful information at that group.
This is such a huge subject it is difficult to try to describe the feelings, thoughts, stigma, challenges, etc. of being transgender, the list could go on and on. Being transgender is just words and falls short of describing who I am, what I am. When I was little, I just hung out with girls and did girl stuff and felt ok. My mother, grandparents, and friends’ parents were so busy working and dealing with life they never really noticed, I guess. We were just kids playing and were ignored until we could not be any longer. Kids really were seen and not heard back then. Once my dad came back and tried to masculinize me I realized something was off, and I am sure he did too, because none of it made sense to me. I would always be upset because I just did not seem to get it when trying to do boy stuff. Later at the orphanage when they cut my hair off and told me “Boys don’t like boys” I just kept getting angrier and more frustrated because no one was listening. Over the years who I thought I was slowly got pushed into the background and became a dream and fantasy. Occasional crossdressing and acting out seemed to help to remind me of who I really was but nothing ever came of it. Between dissociation and a thick closet door, I just faded away.
As people like my sponsor, my therapist, the therapists at Teddy Buerger, my friends from my AA home group, and of course the folks at the gender support group took me serious without judgement I gained confidence and courage. Each step of the way, shaving my legs then underarms, wearing some light nail polish, wearing very faint make up that only I probably knew was there, tweezing my eyebrows, and wearing progressively more feminine clothing all made me feel more comfortable with myself. One of the first things I did was find a spa and started laser hair removal on my face. Since I have light skin and dark hair it worked amazingly well, as well as hurting pretty bad. To this day I do not have to shave my face at all. My wife and I decided to divorce since she was not going to be able to live with my changing. I do not blame her, again I cannot imagine what she has gone through. I had tried to keep my changes small and less noticeable until I moved out, but it was more and more noticeable and bothering her a lot. A week after moving out into an apartment my friends threw a coming out party for me and the next morning I threw all my clothes in a dumpster and never looked back. I bought a few things at Wal-Mart and started my new life. Three days later I sat in the parking lot of a pharmacy looking at two little pills in my hand, my first dose of hormones, knowing that nothing would ever be the same and swallowed them down.
The changes were slow at first and I now know what it is like to be a young girl looking in the mirror sideways trying to see if her breasts are starting to grow yet. I also know what it like to be a teenage girl trying to figure out what to do with all these new emotions. Over the next couple of years my breasts grew out, my skin softened, my muscles weakened and became soft and squishy, my brain even changed. One of the unexpected changes was how much my brain function and thinking has changed. Everything always seemed out of reach and fuzzy and is now all crystal clear. I truly believe that my brain could not function properly full of testosterone and now has what it is supposed to be full of, estrogen. Now that I have been on hormones for over six years everything just feels to be at peace and normal. It has not solved all of my problems but has made everything easier to comprehend and deal with.
I am also fully aware that I was going through intense mental health therapy, going through my sobriety journey and that healing process, as well as undergoing gender transformation all at the same time. It would be impossible to say what parts of those processes helped with what parts of my healing. I do believe today that if I had not done them all together it would not have worked. Everything just seemed to flow together. And keeps getting better.