Resolution Evaluation

2024-01 January - New Year’s Resolution Story Contest entry

It’s the last day of the year, and a friend asked me if I had made any resolutions.

I think so, but before I make it, I want to look back at the resolution I made last year.

Most people, they make resolutions that don’t last past February at best, but I actually managed to keep mine going all year.

So my resolution this year would be to continue what I started last year, but before I do that, I need to make sure continuing is the right decision.

But I am getting ahead of myself.

I should introduce myself first, to anyone who might read this besides myself.

My name was Todd, and I have had what I usually refer to as an interesting life. The suicide of my father, suffering sexual abuse while still in Elementary, and physical abuse from my stepfather until I reached 18, I had found myself in a repeating pattern of every few years I would sabotage myself.

So having now introduced myself, I need to look at where I was going into last year, and to say I had hit rock bottom is probably putting it mildly.

A series of poor decisions that occurred because I had basically shut down had caused me to lose my home and my marriage, as well as hurting my brother who had cosigned for my mortgage. By the beginning of last year, I was left sheltering in my mother’s basement.

So last December, I decided to make fixing my mess my new years’ resolution.

The first hurdle I faced was how.

My first attempt was to get back to the basics of my Christian faith. I spent time carefully reading my bible, using a program that allowed me to work my way through scripture over the course of a year.

I also got into latch hooking, which is sort of like rug hooking, and made a picture of Jesus. Each thread I attached was like a small prayer, and I have now finished the picture, and gave it to my brother as a small apology for how my actions had hurt him.

I also saw a Christian counsellor.

I considered that I had two problems. I have said, I had suffered sexual and physical abuse as a child. But I also had another issue that had plagued me my entire life. I had struggled with a sense of discomfort when it came to my gender, an ache that I only got relief from when I crossdressed and wore women’s clothes.

At the time, more than anything, I wanted to blame the second problem on the first, hoping that if only I could move past what had happened to me, I would also be free to be the man everyone else expected me to be. Unfortunately, my Christian counsellor had no real experience with either issue, and while he tried his best, and the bible study and making the latch hook had strengthened my faith, I didn’t feel like that counsellor was able to help me.

So eventually, I realised I would have to look elsewhere.

Then by chance I came across an add for a free counselling service that focused on sexual abuse.

I went. The counselling office was in an industrial part of town, and I was very nervous, but the counsellor made me feel safe, and because she was an expert on assault, I felt like I could make progress with her help.

She first taught me some grounding techniques for dealing with flashbacks, and I got to put them into practice a day after my first visit, as I got a flashback, which led to a bit of a surprise.

Being able to withstand the flashback, I noticed that I had been wearing girl clothes during the assault.

I talked to the counsellor about that, and she suggested I try and follow that flashback, and see if I could find out when the first time I was dressed was.

And another flashback showed me just what I needed to know.

During the flashback, I saw that I was in girl’s clothes, but nothing had happened to me yet. In fact I felt free, and happy, that an adult had taken my gender issues seriously.

Only to then betray me and use my feelings against me.

That meant that assuming I could trust the flashback to be a real memory, I was already wanting to be a girl before the abuse began. That in fact my desires were part of my abuser’s leverage over me.

My need to be a girl had not been caused by my abuse.

I told my counsellor, and she asked me what I wanted to do about that.

I thought about it, and asked if I could come in female dress for my next session.

She told me of course I could, and so when I went home I pulled out the one dress that had survived my last purge.

Because that had been a pattern for most of my life - bingeing, buying whatever women’s clothes I could afford, followed by purging, where I would give away the clothes to whatever charity store was closest.

But as it happened, I still had one dress left over at the time. I had kept it because unlike almost any other dress I had tried, this one actually seemed to fit my body, especially if I padded the one bra I owned.

So I put it on, and with my heart in my mouth, I drove to the counsellor’s office, thankful that it was in such an out of the way location.

Until I arrived, and noticed there were workers fixing the roof of the building.

I was so scared, I almost went back to my car, but I somehow managed to put one shaky foot in front of the other and entered the building.

We started our session as normal, but at some point she asked me about the dress, and I told her despite my nervousness there was something right about showing my female side. Then she asked me if I ever named my female self, and I said I had not. She suggested I think about it, and I promised I would.

So for the next week, I wrestled with the idea of a female name. For no reason I could put my finger on, I didn’t want to negate my male name entirely. Somehow it felt wrong to erase my male history, so I wanted to keep some kind of connection. But no feminine version of it really appealed to me.

I was just about to give up and look up random girl names, when I looked at my name written on a piece of paper, and realised I could reverse it, and go from Tod to Dot.

That felt close, but not quite perfect, so I went with the longer form, and chose Dorothy.

And that felt . . . right. Then I wanted to find a good middle name, and remembered a conversation I had with my mother some time before, where she told me that she was so sure I was going to be a girl when she was pregnant with me, she hadn’t even prepared a male name, and came up with Tod basically at random. Then she told me what my name would have been - Colleen, and I realised that would make the perfect middle name. So then I practised signing my new name, and it felt good to see it written down - Dorothy Colleen.

I told my counsellor about the name, and she asked if she could call me that, and I said yes.

Hearing it outloud, said by someone else, gave me a good feeling.

She then told me that while gender issues were outside her training, she knew of a gender specialist who worked at a local hospital. She got me an appointment, and then we went back on working on my childhood traumas.

Because of her recommendation, I was able to get in to see the gender specialist very quickly, but enough time passed that I was starting to doubt the origin of my feminine side. After all, my body was very male, how could my mind or soul be anything else?

So I was actually shocked when after my first appointment with the specialist, he told me I was transgender, I was a good candidate for a transition, and if I wanted to he’d make me a letter to that effect if I wanted to begin a real life test, as he referred to it. He then explained the real life test is for people who want to live full time as the gender they know themselves to be, including having genital confirmation surgery.

I learned the letter he gave me is sometimes called “the bathroom pass”, because trans people often use it to use the bathroom, so in case someone complains, they can show the letter, and hope to defuse any tension with it.

And as it happened, I would get an opportunity to use the letter almost immediately, when a friend had invited me to a performance at a dinner theater. He actually worked for the dinner theatre, and as a result, got tickets to every different show that was put on, and as it happened his normal plus one, a mutual friend, was not available.

While I was very nervous, I accepted, and naturally during one of the breaks in the performance, I needed to use the washroom, and so joined the line of ladies waiting their turn.

I kept a hand on the letter while I waited, prepared to use it if challenged, but no one even blinked at me.

This gave me hope that a transition might be truly possible for me.

But a couple of months ago much of that hope collapsed.

During this time, I had been working as a nurse’s aide, a job that gave me good feelings, as I felt like I was making the patients I dealt with lives a little better.

But then I lost the job, after I had made a serious mistake which resulted in a patent getting hurt. The moment where I dropped her joined the memories of my abuse in my catalogue of flashbacks, and would have tormented me if I hadn’t been making progress dealing with my PTSD thanks to the councillor.

So I was unemployed, and still in debt from the money I had spent to get a nurse’s aide certificate, and feeling very much like a failure in all ways.

Fortunately, I went to an employment agency, and as part of describing my situation, I told them I was going to start my real life test.

They said they would do what they could for me, which gave me some hope, even if I still had trouble believing that anyplace would take me.

Not long after they said that Walmart had a reputation of acceptance of trans people, at least at the local stores.

Not only that, they were looking for night floor stockers, which was a job I felt I could do.

I wasn’t sure I believed what the employment agency had said, but I went to the job interview dressed as Dorothy, even though I had not gotten a legal name change done.

To my delight, they told me it didn’t matter to them at all, and hired me.

They even made sure my name tag said Dorothy.

For a while, I was flying high, working as Dorothy, and I began the process of legally changing my name. I even began preparations to have gender confirmation surgery by going on a weight loss program.

But then I began to suffer setbacks.

I suffered an injury at work, dislocating my knee and had to take time off from the job. The injury also put a hold on my weight loss plans, making me to have to put off any surgery. At the same time I had managed to lose my wallet which had all the documents I needed for my name change, which meant I had to start the process again from the beginning. Worse, I ran out of free sessions with the sexual assault councillor, so I no longer had support for my problems in that area.

It was at this point that my faith in my resolution began to falter, and I began to wonder if I had put too much emphasis on my gender issues, and since I no longer was getting counselling, I was not sure how I could rectify that.

Then I found an online support group called Daily Strength. It had a number of subgroups that specialised in gathering people with specific issues together to support each other.

So I joined two groups. One dedicated to trans issues, the other dedicated to childhood trauma. Then I joined a third group that was dedicated to writers and writing.

Part of the way I had always dealt with my issues was by making up stories, but this was the first time I had considered sharing those stories with others.

All three groups helped me, but it was the writing group that had the most immediate impact. I made friends with a woman who was actually a member of all three groups, and told me writing out what happened to me as a child could be an effective tool in helping me recover.

So I made a couple of short stories, and shared them with her.

She said she had joined a writing site that was made up of mostly gender divergent authors, such as trans women, trans women, crossdressers, and more. She then suggested I join the site, and submit my pieces. She also told me I could have a blog on the site, so I could get support for my personal struggles as well as for my writing.

So I did, and I found a wonderful group who supported me, and they even liked my writing.

So since then I have made even more stories, some based on my experiences, some just pure fiction.

Then last month, I officially went on full time disability, allowing me to give up my job and still pay my bills. This last year has been an eye opener for me. It started with me not even ready to acknowledge Dorothy, not really even realising she existed outside of a need to escape from my abuse, and ended with me making steps to be Dorothy full time.

Which leads to me making a resolution this year, which would be to continue on the path I began in January.

And I have come to the conclusion I will continue it, with one modification. My health is not good enough for gender confirmation surgery, so my goal in terms of the gender issues will have to be that I settle for being Dorothy full time.

We’ll have to see how this new resolution goes . . .

End.