Therapy

“Do you believe me?” I asked Dr. Malmon. It was our fourth session together. I had just finished explaining Mr. Glome to him. I expected to hear the tired refrain, ‘I believe that you believe.’

“It’s hard not to,” The shrink said instead. “You gave me permission to consult with your doctors and other experts.” He paused and gave me a look, “I hope you’ll understand if I leave the extra dimensional aliens out of my consultations—but from what I’ve seen… your explanation is as likely as any other.

“What I mean,” he continued, “is that there is no explanation for what’s happened to you.” He gave a little chuckle at the thought. It hurt a bit, but I understood his dark humor. Hard not to laugh about it, even though it had happened to me. “Doctor Gunn in particular was very distressed. She wants to run tests and make sure you haven’t imagined the whole thing. An MRI, a DNA panel. She wants to science an explanation out of it. If the explanation is actually science fiction—maybe I should say ‘science fact’—I think it would make her head explode.”

I liked him. It was nice to have a psychologist who didn’t just ask what I was feeling, but was willing to help and provide input.

Dr. Malmon continued, “Joann, and then your mother, and you too, I think; were all strongly against the idea. Medical ethics prevent her from doing anything. Do you know the story of David Reimer?”

I shook my head.

“Reimer’s penis was destroyed during a botched circumcision. On the advice of his doctor he was reassigned as a girl and raised as one. All while the doctor, John Money was writing a book on how gender was learned. The old ‘nurture or nature’ question.”

I interrupted him, “What’s that?”

“The question of whether we’re born some way—nature— or raised that way, nurture. Prone to violence, or caring; or our upbringing is responsible. Most often the debate is raised with homosexuality. The ‘pray away the gay’ crowd loves the nurture theory, as you might expect. Myself, along with the majority of medical science take a different view.

“But there are other implications,” he continued, “Whether Hitler, for instance, was destined to become a maniac from birth, or whether his mother’s preoccupation with ‘cleanliness’ promulgated his dislike of ‘dirty’ races.”

I loved his vocabulary too.

“Hitler was obsessed with dirtiness and disease. His speeches are replete with allusions to the ‘infection’ that Jews and the mentally ill were bringing into the ‘pure’ German race.” He paused and considered for a second, “There are apocryphal accounts that his sex life was both bizarre and disgusting.”

This perked my puberty brain, eager to learn something it could use. “Bizarre how?”

“Well it’s just rumor. But there was a lot of shit involved.”

Good going puberty brain. It slunk away in disgust. “You were talking about the other guy? David?”

“Thank you for reminding me. His doctor engaged in several very questionable experiments, trying to get David to assume feminine gender roles. Including sexual ones. David never came to terms with his artificially assigned gender. Both he and this twin brother committed suicide. In almost every way the doctor’s experiments and theories are a complete failure.”

“I have to turn back into a boy, is that what you’re saying,” I had started to cry, and I didn’t know why. Scared of the surgery, I suppose. Scared that I could never be a real man again. Scared that I would want to stay this way? Probably not. That thought definitely had never ever entered my mind.

Is what I kept telling myself.

“For my own mental health I mean,” I added. I didn’t want to commit suicide. And I didn’t want to want to commit suicide.

“I have some thoughts about that, but why don’t you continue to share.”

I told him more about the past week, my fears of going out in public, which had—not subsided—but gradually decreased. I could go to the grocery store without wanting to flee in shame now.

“I think we should stop there,” he said. “I want to talk more about what I’m thinking tomorrow.”

Mom took me home, and it was her turn to choose the music. She went with the classic 90s station, instead of classical classical.

After dinner I was sitting at my computer when I heard my gramma call. Gramma only calls the land line. She learned the number decades ago, and refuses to learn another one. So my mother kept the land line and so I could talk to gramma too, there was a phone in my room. Mom picked it up, and I waited for the, ‘Gramma wants to talk to you’ shout. I waited ten minutes and didn’t hear it, so I called to mom, “Mom, I need some help with something.”

“I’m on the phone Aisling,” she called. I knew she would take the pone away from her ear, and cover the receiver, and that’s when I picked up my phone. She never heard the ‘click’ as I got on the line.

I hit the mute button fast, before calling, “Never mind, I found it.”

“… Sorry about that, mom, Ash needed something.”

“That’s okay, tell me more about it.”

“He’s just in so much distress. It’s terrifying me. There’s nothing I can do to help him with her—condition.” She was already confusing pronouns. How does that* make you feel, Ash.* I wasn’t sure.

“I feel so helpless here.”

“Have you talked with your therapist?” Gramma was a doctor too, but of podiatry. She got mom into therapy young, like me, and it stuck. Hard.

“Yeah. She wants me to stay empathetic as I can. I’m hiding so much from Ash. I can’t let her see the way I’m freaking out, it would just hurt him more. He needs a strong role model. Someone to let her know that everything is going to still be okay. That she’s still loved and it will work out for the best.”

“There’s no one that can do that better than her mother can, dearheart,” gramma told her.

“I know that, and thank you. But keeping up this exterior of calm is wearing me down.” Mom gave a little sniffle, “I know that she’s strong enough to handle it. She’s young, and he has a huge future ahead of her. He’s not going to let this slow him down, I know it. But standing on the sidelines, and hoping every time she falls down that she’ll get back up is truly heartbreaking.”

“Do you remember when you came down with whooping cough?” Gramma asked her. “You were a rare case. I had you vaccinated but one of your classmates still managed to give it to you when you were fourteen.”

“I couldn’t forget mom, I cracked a rib coughing.”

“For 98 days—I counted—you were hacking and coughing and crying and despairing. And there was nothing I could do. The bacteria was in your esophagus, and you had to get it out. I had to watch you struggle. Hold your hand when you woke up in the middle of the night, coughing so hard you threw up.”

“I peed. Several times. Once in class.” They both laughed, but mom sounded hysterical.

“You came home crying. I had to watch it all, and do whatever I could. Now your in the same situation, and I know if I can do it, so can you.”

“Mom, this isn’t going to go away though. It’s permanent.”

“So you said. And I’m sure you’ll explain it when you’re ready. In the meantime you need to be there for your child. I know you have the strength.”

They tried to move on from the subject from there, and after a few seconds I hung up the phone.

I waited a couple of minutes, thinking in my chair. My knee was tucked under my chin again, up next to my boob. I had found myself touching my breasts occasionally. Something about it was comforting. I wasn’t wearing a bra right now, having ditched it almost as soon as I got home.

Then I untucked myself and padded down the hall to my mother’s room. The door was cracked, and I paused, and then pushed it open. She was lying on the bed, in the ‘Disney princess crying’ pose, quietly sobbing into her pillow. As god is my witness I hadn’t the slightest idea what to do. Dad had made her cry sometimes, I remember from being little. So I did then, what I had done further then; sat on the bed next to her and rubbed her back. I hummed our song for a bit, until her tears stopped and she began snoring.

I tucked her in and went to my own room, and crawled into bed. I put one hand between my breasts, and thought long thoughts while my tears dampened the pillow.

“So my mom doesn’t know what to do either,” I told Dr. Malmon.

“How does that make you feel?” I hate that question on general terms, as being a statement that the psychologist has no idea how to relate to you. They’re just trying to fill in until you hit on something they can comiserate with.

In this case he had a point. Identify your feelings, Ash. “Helpless. Scared. Distressed.”

“Your mother is having a hard time with this. Not as hard as you are. But this affects the people who love you, because they love you.” Malmon scooted around in his chair, “I wanted to share some things with you Ash, I think they’ll help. You know that I counsel young people who are transitioning, or want to transition, or want to not want to transition?”

I nodded, trying to figure out where he was going with this.

“Over the week I’ve taken a lot of notes, and do you know the note I haven’t taken?”

“Hmm?”

“Possible gender dysphoria.”

“So it’s a definite then?” Now I really wasn’t sure what was happening.

“Ash, you don’t show any of the signs of dysphoria. You’re not disgusted by your body, you’re perplexed by it. You’re not trying to reassume your gender. You seem to me to be adapting to it.”

Angry I said, “You think I want this? That I wanted it all along?”

“Not the least bit. But you haven’t shown me that you don’t accept it. That you can’t accept it.”

“Does this mean you won’t sign off on my transition?” That terrified me. I think.

“We have to meet for a year before I can. My position will very likely change. But for right now I would not diagnose you as gender dysphoric.”

“Then what am I?” What else could I possibly be?

“To me you look like someone who is trying to deal with bodily trauma. I’ve treated some people with limb loss, and sudden disabilities. That seems more like what you’re going through.” He paused to think some more, trying to moderate what he was saying, “Ash, I think in your case, you’re trying to adapt to a body that doesn’t seem like yours anymore, but you are adapting. What we tell people in cases of trauma, is that you have to stop defining yourself by wht you were and start defining yourself by what you are.”

I felt like, in some way, his words had helped me pass a roadblock. A week ago they would have just made me cry harder. Now I felt like they would help me deal with the days—the life—ahead of me.

I was still a boy. The rules still held. But I couldn’t act like a boy this way and still find myself functioning. “Thank you, doctor Malmon. I’ll think about what you said.” Trite, Ash. Trite but true.

“That’s all the time we have. Say hello to your mother for me. I think we’re seeing each other every two weeks from now on.”

I shook his hand as I got up, and went out the door.

Come what may, I would be ready for school on Monday.