Author note: Somehow I had gotten myself on the panel of a symposium. It sounds all too weird to me. I will be giving my speech via skype since I cannot take off from my job. It has to be ten minutes long. The symposium has to deal with spirituality, so I warn you, there are Biblical references. If that is a problem for you, quit reading. I do not wish to see comments why my faith is wrong to you. Without further ado... my speech. I am looking for feedback on making things better.

When I was in High School I was the person who had it all together. I was a star athlete who was going to go to college on a wrestling scholarship, I was highly active in the local church and youth group, and I was popular; not just at my school but the whole county knew me. I couldn’t go anywhere without people coming up to me and talking to me like I was their best friend even though I didn’t even know who they were. Back then no one called me Katie; they didn’t call me by my given name either. Everyone called me Tiny and after initially fighting the nickname, I gave into the moniker. I was the guy that parents wanted their children to be like and many of my peers would go along with that idea. Though I didn’t smoke, didn’t drink, and didn’t really party outside of church run functions, I stood out from the rest and was the most popular kid at school. I worked hard at everything I did and I was successful by the world’s standards. The one thing that those around me didn’t understand was that Tiny was a facade, he was a mirage, he was a fictional character that I created in order to hide something that I thought no one else would accept or understand. You see, in high school I already knew that I wasn’t born in the correct body but I did everything in the world to keep that a secret.

In the Bible there is a parable starting in Matthew 7:24 that talks about the wise and the foolish builder. The wise builder, built his house on the rock, and the foolish builder built his house on the sand. When the rains came, the wise man’s house stood and the foolish man’s house can down in a crash.

I was the foolish builder when I built my life on an image so that others could accept me. At the time, I got the reward I was looking for. I was successful, I was popular, and the world was at my doorstep. But those rewards came at a cost. Since people only knew the facade, since they only knew Tiny, the Christian wrestler who stood out wherever he was, no one knew the real me. Sure, I had thousands of people who knew my name, but I didn’t have one person who knew the real me. In a crowd, I was alone because I built a wall around me and painted it nicely so people would accept and like me. The funny thing was, no one liked me. How could they? They didn’t even know me. Instead, they liked a fictional character of my own making and when I was finished with school, when the crowds faded away and there were no more matches to wrestle, I had no one around me that I could call my friend.

It took me a long time to figure out what I was doing. I thought the whole idea about life was to be on top, to be the best, to be the fastest, strongest, best looking, most liked person I could be, whether I was being true to the world or not. But there was something that I failed to realize; whether you build your house on the rock or on the sand, the storm will come. It always does. I convinced myself that I could live a facade for the rest of my life and that maybe one day I would conform to the image I created and enjoy life. Then the storm came. I went to college and the first year everything went great and I was well on my way to living a dream that wasn’t even mine. My freshman year I won nationals, I was the Most Valuable Wrestler for the year and I was off to wrestle internationally. When I came back from my trip to Central America, my knee went and the storm came. Everything came crashing down around me. Gone were the dreams of going to the Olympics and school was a chore because I couldn’t put my energy into the facade any more. Since no one knew the real me at college either, I didn’t even have a friend to turn to there because no one knew who and what I was. I needed to be vulnerable, but that wasn’t part of the facade, so I suffered in silence a pain that was worse than my knee hurting. Alone with myself I realized that I was trying to live two lives when one is more than enough for anyone.
The Bible says in James 1:8 that a double minded man is unstable in all his ways.

That described me. I was double minded. There was the real me who knew that her body and her spirit didn’t match up and there was this ultra male persona that I was projecting to the world that was supposed to have everything together. Because I built my house on the sand, everything became unstable, and life came crashing down around me. I wound up leaving college and floundered for a bit until I came to terms with who and what I was.

All that time and energy put into putting on a front to others so I could be popular didn’t amount to a hill of beans and in the end; all I was left with was myself. Knowing what I know now, I wish someone instructed me when I was in high school or middle school to spend my time building my life on the rock. That rock is the truth. If you build your life on anything else, no matter how well it seems to be going at the moment, I can tell you two things. One, the storms will eventually come, they always do. Two, while you’re waiting for the storm, you will realize that you are living a shallow existence.
I would like to address the parents and the educators. The youth are the builders. They are the ones who have to put up the walls and the doors and the windows. They are going to do the best job that they can. You are the contractors though. You lay out the floor plan, you provide the material, you offer the guidance. Your job is to guide, not to build. You need to instruct your kids to build on the rock, to be truthful to themselves and to the world. Are there issues with being GSD? sure. But guess what, there are issues with whatever you are. Do not encourage your kids to build up a facade just because it might appear easier, by doing so you are insuring a crash later on in life. You have to ask yourselves an important question; If you had to choose only one, what is more important for your child, or those in your charge, to gain in their adult lives; wealth or contentment.

I will end with a story from my life. About a year ago I reconnected with someone I knew in high school. Back then we spent a lot of time together and I considered him a friend. He was down on his luck and needed a place for him and his fiancée to stay. Being who I am and knowing it was the right thing to do, I took him in even though it meant that I would have to hide who I was yet again. I couldn’t live a lie any longer and on the second night he was there I told him my secret. That I was transsexual. I expected the worst. I mean, here was a guy who was on the wrestling team with me and I pretty much told him that I was lying about who I was the whole time. I expected rejection, but that fear never materialized. He accepted me for who I was. After some time talking, I said, I guess it probably comes to you as a big shock that the big macho wrestler is a transsexual. His reply spoke volumes. He said “Don’t get me wrong, you were good at what you did, but you were never macho. You were never like the other guys.” So all that time I was building a façade, evidently I wasn’t even doing a good job of it. I have come out to several other friends from high school, and not one of them rejected me. Though I was popular back then, it is only now, that I am living the truth about who I am, do I really have friends.

You have a choice before you and I’m not going to lie and say that it is an easy one. You can be open and honest about who and what you are to the world, or you can live a fictitious life and hope that you are satisfied with whatever reward that brings. My only advice for you is a Bible verse. “What good is it for a man to gain the whole world and lose his own soul?”