Lost in Translation Part 1 – The Therapist by Persephone

Sometimes going through transition can feel like you're walking through a minefield. And sometimes you actually are...

Leamington Spa – England - 2019
 

“I’m sorry Josie but you really need to try harder.”

Doctor Beecher smiled sadly as he delivered the bad news to the forlorn young woman sitting before him. She barely reacted to his pronouncement as she sat, shoulders hunched and her eyes avoiding his. “You started your real life experience, your RLE, what? Two months ago?”

“Nine and a half weeks.” Her voice was a husky contralto which pleased him. At least she had worked hard on that.

“Nine and a half weeks,” he allowed graciously, “but I still need to see more evidence that you are getting out and about, that you are mixing with people. That’s what the RLE is all about, finding out you can cope.”

“I’ve been working hard!”

“Yes, but from what you tell me It’s from home most of the time. You go into the office only when you have to collect or drop off physical documents. The rest of the time you send it back and forth by email.”

At last she lifted her eyes to meet his. “I was there all day today,” she all but pleaded. “Anyway I work better without distractions. You try translating a legal letter from Turkish to English whilst someone is yammering away on the phone in Romanian and the boss is demanding your time sheets every time he walks past.”

“But what about outside of work? You are still in the Army Reserve aren’t you? You told me that the unit was being really supportive and the MoD now has a formal policy for managing transgendered personnel. When was the last time you were with them?”

Her eyes dropped to the carpet once again. “About two months ago.”

“Before you started living as Josie full time. Have they even met Josie?” He paused, allowing the moment to stretch until he was sure no answer was forthcoming before asking his next question. “Do you even go out to do the shopping?” Again he paused, watching the young woman closely. “Or do you order it online?”

Her guilty start told him everything he needed to know. He could almost predict the next words out of her mouth.

“Of course I go out and shop!” He kept his face blank even as the lie spilled unconvincingly from her lips and she tried to muster a facade of outraged indignation.

Doctor Beecher sighed. He really didn’t like having to do this. It was better to find out now than later, but this was not a message he particularly enjoyed giving. “Josie, If you want me to write a letter supporting you for gender reassignment surgery I really need to know you are getting out and about. For the whole year. I need to be convinced you are leading a full life as Josie. As full, if not fuller, than you had as Josh. Meeting new people, facing new situations and challenges, and dealing with them effectively. I have to be honest with you Josie, right now I can’t.”

He watched as her shoulders slumped further and his heart went out her. When Josie put the effort in she could actually be quite pretty, especially since her facial feminization surgery, although when he told her that she never seemed to really believe him. “Josie, it’s still early days and I understand that this is hard and new for you. You need to make a plan. Find a friend who can go shopping with you. Go out on the town with some colleagues. Get back to your unit and do some training nights. I know you can do it Josie, just allow yourself to try.”

She gave a brittle little smile at his encouragement. “Thank you Doctor.”

“You’ll be all right Josie, get out there and find you can fly. You never know what opportunities are awaiting you.”

With that he glanced quickly at his watch before starting to wrap up the session and arrange a date for their next meeting and within ten minutes he was sitting alone and writing up his notes. ‘If no improvement by next month’ he scrawled at the end of the page, ‘consider delaying approval for reassignment by six months.’

Josie slammed the car door behind her and savagely jammed her keys into the ignition. “Get out there and fly.” She mimicked Doctor Beecher’s encouraging tone whilst the engine squealed for a moment until she let go of the keys. “Face new challenges.” Her voice now a singsong parody. “Lead a full life.” She yanked the steering wheel even as she slipped into reverse and the battered old land rover jumped backwards. “What the hell does he think I’ve been doing for the last nine weeks?”

In the background the land rover’s radio burbled on in counterpoint to the revving engine, and occasionally squealing rubber, with the latest news and, of course, every so called ‘expert’s’ view, of the UN brokered Kurdish safe haven in Northern Iraq and Syria in an attempt to fill the power vacuum left after the collapse of the so called Islamic State. Not that Josephine Alexandra Wells heard a word of it.

Josie was angry. Angry with Doctor Beecher for rubbing her nose in her shortcomings. Angry at herself for having them. Definitely angry for being such a mouse during the session, and worst of all angry that Doctor Beecher held the key to her goal. Something only he could grant or deny as he saw fit and there was nothing she could do about it except play the game. Around her the evening rush hour traffic crawled and honked its way homewards while she fumed at the session and her helplessness. At one set of lights Josie smacked her fist hard against the steering wheel in bitter frustration. She’d been a serving officer hadn’t she? An engineer able to solve any problem under any conditions. Even in the shit hole of Afghanistan she’d managed, more than managed, and now she couldn’t even get a psychologist she was paying to understand.

The businessman waiting at the lights next to Josie in his shiny BMW saw the scratched and dented bumpers on a vehicle that would have looked more at home in a farmyard, being driven by a scowling and rather plain young woman and slowly eased fifty thousand pounds of gleaming metal as far away as possible. Josie didn’t notice. In fact she barely noticed anything as she drove through Leamington Spa until at last she had to laboriously reverse into the, almost too small, parking place she had been allocated outside her block of flats.

Grabbing her shoulder bag and the shopping she had picked up before her appointment. “I should have taken it in with me,” she grumbled, “that would have shown him.” She kicked the door closed behind her and tried to juggle with car keys, flat keys and bags until at last the alarm tooted to let her know she had finally hit the right button.

Still encumbered, she turned to be met by a scowling silent stare from behind the window of the nearby ground floor flat. Josie braced her shoulders and stared coolly back until the curtain twitched again and the old man’s face finally disappeared. Every time she went in or out he was there at his window, scowling and glaring. Josie knew that he did it to everyone who used this entrance, but it still left her uneasy. As Josh she had cheerfully ignored it. Now…well now was a different matter. She felt vulnerable and slightly dirty from the intensity of the old man’s stare and wondered yet again if this was how all women felt. She’d rather have talked to Doctor Beecher about that but… She shook her head dismissing the thought and pushed through the security door and trudged up the ill lit stairwell to her flat.

With a sigh of relief Josie kicked her front door to Chez Wells closed behind her. It wasn’t much, a small one bedroom flat that the landlord had decorated from floor to ceiling in magnolia and fitted out exclusively from Ikea, but it was her safe place. She puttered around the kitchen are putting away her shopping, making a cup of tea and chucking a sausage and mash frozen ready meal in the oven; not exactly haut cuisine but after today Josie really didn’t feel up to trying to prove she was a domestic goddess. Forty-five minutes to cook. OK, enough time to do a bit more work.

Taking her cup of tea with her Josie fired up her laptop to find her boss had dropped two commercial contract translation tasks in her email, English to Turkish and Russian to English. Oh, and he needed both done within forty eight hours. Deep joy. Josie settled down to skim through the first to discover that whilst the author apparently spoke English they had mangled the language of Shakespeare with the willful abandon only a lawyer can aspire to. Who on earth actually used words like ‘heretofore’, ‘aforementioned’ and ‘concomitant’ in the real world in any language? Josie snorted to herself.

When the oven pinged Josie arched her back and glanced down with a smile. Yep, her puppies were definitely growing. Doctor Beecher had warned her that it would take at least two years on hormones for her breasts to reach their full size so she had another year to go; just in time for her surgery. At that thought her little smile vanished. That is, if he allows me to have my surgery then.

Josie plated up her sausage and mash then plopped down in front of the TV. As usual these days the news was still burbling on about the situation in Syria and Iraq but Josie tuned it out with practiced ease as her thoughts once again returned to the session with Doctor Beecher.
She ate absent-mindedly, staring into the distance as her thoughts skittered around inside her head. What does he want me to do? I thought everything was going so well and nothing could stop me when he approved me for hormones. Has he seen something I’ve missed? Am I making a big mistake? Was Dad right all along?

That thought hurt more than most. All the way through school she had tried to become everything Dad had wanted her to be. Studying science and maths rather than the languages she loved so she could be an engineer like him. Playing rugby. Joining the Army. Serving in Afghanistan. Getting a place at Uni.

That was the point it had all come crashing down. Josie remembered the screaming arguments when she had come home a week after the start of her second term and told her parents she couldn’t live a lie anymore. She didn’t want to be an engineer, she didn’t want to play rugger and she certainly didn’t want to pretend to be a boy anymore. She just wanted, more than anything in the world, to be Josephine, their daughter. At the support group at Uni Josie had been told that sometimes parents can be wonderfully accepting, but to prepare for the worst just in case. At the time she had no idea just how bad the worst could be.

She still vividly remembered her father staring silently from the front door as she packed up her battered old land rover for the last time whilst mummy hid in the kitchen to avoid hearing the two of them shouting at each other. It was only when she was about to drive away that her father finally spoke, his voice tight with suppressed emotion and anger. “Go on and run away again Joshua. You weren’t good enough to be an engineer so you gave up on that and decided to do some poncy modern language degree. You weren’t good enough to be a soldier so you ran away from that too. You can’t even make it as a real man so you may as well fuck off and live out your squalid little fantasy that you’re a woman.” He paused for a long moment before adding the cruelest thing he could possibly say. “Just don’t bother coming back.” Then he turned away and quietly shut the front door behind him.

Tears ran unheeded down Josie’s cheeks. Was he right? She asked herself for the hundredth time. Am I making a big mistake? Was I just rebelling and it went too far? Is that what Doctor Beecher was saying? Am I really sure that this is what I want? Josie dabbed her eyes and sniffed. I just wish it was all over and done, she told herself, life will be better then.

With a last sniff Josie finally uncurled from the sofa, dropped her plate in the sink and got ready for bed with her mind still in a whirl.
Soldiering was so much easier than this. At least minefields were simple and understandable. I was trained to deal with them. Perhaps I should have stayed in?