Fearfully and Wonderfully Made - Chapter 2 - The “dead kid”

The first two years after my father’s death were filled with a quiet sadness as we tried to move on with our lives. The only significant development was with my gender. I had apparently shown some signs even before kindergarten of being far from a typical boy, and this only accelerated as I entered elementary school.

It was sometime during this period, for example, that my mother came home to a house filled with girls playing Barbie, and her recollection is that she could not figure out which one of the “girls” was her son...

I also recall wondering why I was continually being sent to the boys’ side of playground at recess, and coming to the conclusion the adults were simply crazy...

Then my mother decided to take my brother and I to a child psychologist to help us deal with our grief over losing our dad.

Unfortunately, this turned out to be a very bad move ...

I won’t mention his name here. He may still be alive, he may be dead, but for any of his patients who haven’t come forward I will just call him “Dr. Smith.”

I don’t know for sure what he did with my brother, my brother doesn’t talk about it, and my own memories were mostly repressed for years, but this is the sequence as best as I am able to put it together ...

In my first session with the doctor I told him how I felt like a girl, that I identified with my mother and hoped I could grow up to be as pretty as her.

That turned out to be a mistake.

On my second session, the doctor gave me something that made me very relaxed, and then presented me with some female clothes.

In my drugged state, getting into them seemed like a wonderful idea.

I think he took my picture, but nothing bad happened that time.

It was on the next visit that the horror began.

For the next two and half years, I saw him once a week, becoming more and more degraded with every visit until I had almost no humanity left.

I became little more than the “toy” he wanted me to be.

There is a clinical term for what I did during these years: disassociation. I retreated from the horror, crawling inside my own head until I all but disappeared. I became, as I would put it in a fictionalized version of my life, "The dead kid."

Then my mother remarried and we moved to a new home. In the process my “sessions” stopped.

And at first I actually missed them.

I had gotten used to someone else making all my choices and I no longer knew how to make them for myself. I was a robot going through the motions while waiting for instructions.

Slowly, very slowly, I got better.

Part of what helped me recover was being able to go out to my grandparent’s farm, which was north of Edmonton. Almost every summer and Christmas holiday until we went to Colorado was spent out there, and it was pretty close to the perfect place for a kid. It had a friendly German shepherd to play with, horses to ride, and a large area to explore to play in.

Plus, it had my grandparents themselves. My grandfather was a strong, loud guy, but he made it clear that as his grandchild he would do nothing but love me, and the same was true of my grandmother.

As for dear “Dr. Smith”, I cannot say his fate certain for certain. My mother believes she heard he was arrested for child rape, but if such a case happened, I can find no record of it.

But things weren’t all rosy. My stepfather became increasingly belligerent and controlling. I approached puberty with dread and I was being beat up either at school or on my way home almost every day. One of those times involved twelve people against me.

Then there was an incident I cannot forget. I was on my way home from school when I saw some of my usual tormentors, but this time they had friends. Friends on bikes. Friends with knives, chains, and baseball bats.

I ran for my life and somehow managed to get to my door ahead of them. I called the police and then I did something rather stupid - I opened my door and told them the police were on their way.

Most of them decided to take off. Five minutes later the police showed up as the last of the gang slunk away. The policeman told me I should have stayed inside, and to just call if they attacked me again.

It wasn’t until he left that I realized he had been calling me “Miss”....

Then there was my relationship with girls. There was one girl in particular I had a crush on in elementary school - she was beautiful, confident, and a fun person to be around, so I decided to see if I could get closer to her.

I decided my strategy would be to leave notes for her, and I signed them “Little Neutrino” , after a song by the band Klaatu that my brother had gotten me into. Then, after a couple of these notes, I brought in the album for show and tell, to (I hoped) reveal myself without having to go public with my feelings.

It... didn’t work out that way.

Her best friend came up to me afterward and asked me about the song. I was so flustered to discover that this girl had shared the notes I didn’t know how to respond, so I retreated.

I didn’t send any more notes.

About the same time, I was tested in school, and the test came back with some interesting results. I was reading at a university level, but I couldn’t spell very well.

The school decided the best thing to do was allow me to have an adult library card, which allowed me to spend a lot of my time reading.

A habit I am still into even now...

Then part-way through grade seven, we moved, and life changed yet again.

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