A Letter to My Ex

Dear Sharon,

I’m writing this, not necessarily to send, but so I can get my thoughts in order before I talk to you. See, I’ve been keeping a secret, and its beginning to feel like lying. I’ve gone back and forth on when I should tell you, with one part of my brain saying “confess! you are sinning against her and against God by not being honest with her!” The other part is saying “Wait! You’ll only hurt her and yourself if you tell her now!”

But after many, many discussions with myself, and after much prayer, I believe I must do this, and do it now.

Here goes....

I’m transitioning.

I’m slowly (far too slowly for my liking) transforming my body into a woman’s,

I’ve tried to talk to you before about this ... incompleteness I’ve had my whole life, about how being male was like being forced to wear a heavy suit of armor that is far too tight and never being allowed to take it off. I showed you the prayer I made called “Dear God”, hoping that somehow I could reach you.

I’ve failed.

But, as one last attempt, let me start with this. You may have noticed how much happier and at peace I’ve been lately, and its because of making the first steps down the road to a transition. I am a happier, healthier, BETTER person now.

And that’s not all. I’m also receiving spiritual benefits as well. I’m more loving, more patient. I have a hunger and thirst to get closer to God like I havent had since the very early days after I was saved.

I know you dont understand this. I know you think its a sin. But I simply don’t have any choice. Just before I started this process I was sitting in the break room at work with a knife at my wrist, and only God himself stopped me from dying that day.

I cannot, I will not go back to that.

I have no idea how you’ll react when I tell you this, but I pray you take some time and think and pray over it before deciding what you’ll do.

No matter what happens, I will still love you and Sam, and I’ll do my best to answer any questions you raise.

A letter from a broken toy

To whom it may concern:

I really don’t want to use your name. For decades, I didnt even remember it. And you might not even remember mine, but I was one of your toys, all those years ago. Only God and you know how many of us there were. I do not know if I can do justice to the havoc you have created in your search for self gratification. But I must try, if only for my own peace of mind. You striped me of 2 and a half years of my life, feeding me drugs to make me compliant, warping my mind to better suit your sick fantasy.

Nor did the damage end when my time with you was up. The drugs permanently damaged my ability to remember and concentrate, and the filth in my mind cannot ever be removed. I am damaged goods, now and until I die, thanks to you. I was a child, entrusted to your care and you betrayed that trust in the most repulsive way imaginable. I believe it was your goal to twist me in such a way as so I would never come forward, but instead blame myself for what you did.

I did just that for decades.

I paid a heavy price for what you did to me. I failed at every relationship I attempted. I spent years fighting nightmares and flashbacks, I flinch sometimes even yet when someone attempts to touch me. That’s your legacy. No court could give you a strong enough sentence, nothing on this earth could equal your crimes.

As a Christian, I must forgive, but I am finding it extremely difficult not to wish to be present when you must appear before God and finally have the masks and lies stripped away from you before you receive justice. Yet I must forgive, and even ask for mercy on your behalf. I have no choice but to leave your fate to Him and find a way to move on with my life. And that’s what I plan to do, with God's help.

A former victim, now a survivor.

A Letter to My Father

Dear Dad:

I wish I could give you this letter in person. I wish we could sit down and talk. We actually have a lot in common, you and me. Both of us have struggled with a sense of worthlessness, although it may have been for different reasons. But, you left this world a long time ago, and I can only grieve for the loss, and pray that you are now at peace. I wonder what you might have been like if you had somehow overcome the suicidal impulse and had been able to choose to live. What would you have thought, to have your youngest son at the ripe old age of 40 something say he was really your daughter?

I hope you would be as okay about it as Mom has been. I hope you could accept me as I am, and support my decision to let the real me out. Of course, its possible it would freak you out, but Mom would straighten you out in a hurry, I’m sure.

As I make my way forward, I find a need to look back, and get some closure, and so I find I have a lot I could talk to you about, but it can be summarized in two ideas..

I forgive you for leaving us, Dad.

But I miss you, now more than ever.

Your daughter,

Dorothy.

Hey, little girl

Hey, little girl.

Right now, you’re 9 years old, and you’ve had to survive some pretty awful stuff already, so I think you need a present.

And here it is.

You are amazing. You’re so strong to have survived what you’ve gone through, you’re smarter than you give yourself credit, and you’re beautiful, even while disguised as a boy.

Yes, I said beautiful. I know what you’ve been told, especially by HIM, but you really are beautiful, and worthy of being loved.

And you are loved, and will be loved, more than you can even imagine at this moment, even when you finally come out and tell everybody about being a girl.

And how do I know this?

Because I’m you, forty years down the road.

And that’s how I know these things, dear.

Now hold on to my present, and I’ll see you in the mirror in forty years.

Love,

Dorothy (the big you).

To Me at Sixteen

Hey, kid.

Its you, about three decades down the line. Okay, once you wrap your head around that, listen up, because I dont have all day here, and there are some stuff you really should know.

First, I know the last decade or so has not been a lot of fun. A lot of pain in our past, even by your age, and yeah, that kinda sucks.

But that’s the past, and right now I want you to look ahead a bit, and see what’s coming.

First, the bullying will stop. By the time you get to grade eleven, it will slow to a trickle, and by the time you graduate, it will be long gone, so you’ve got that to look forward to. As hard as it might seem to believe right now, you’re actually going to be liked one day.

Second, your step-dad. Not a nice guy, but just hang on a couple more years, and then you’ll put him in the rear-view mirror forever. So that’s something to hold on to, when he’s really being a jerk.

Third, you’re going to make some mistakes, some of which will be doozies that will seem like the end of the world, but they won’t be. Some of those very mistakes will help put you in just the right place to receive blessings that you would otherwise never even know could happen to you, trust me on this. So give yourself a break about the mistakes, okay? Failing at something doesn’t make you a failure, just someone who has to try again, and in the meantime maybe learn something someone who got it right the first time wouldn’t.

Fourth, your family. They are going to be with you through all the stuff to come, and will love you when you don’t feel very loveable, so maybe take a moment and make sure you say “thank you” once in a while, okay?

Lastly, the gender stuff. Right now, you’re really confused, and upset by this drive to the fem side of the street, and you’re alternating between indulgence and guilt. I’m sorry to tell you that this is going to be part of your life for a long time to come, but that’s actually less bad than you might think. Some day, you’ll be me, and I found a solution that didn’t even exist at your age, one that has left me more at peace with myself than I ever was before.

So try not to beat yourself up about it, if you can.

So if you get one thing out of this letter, let it be this:

It gets better.

You’re going to have an amazing life getting to my age, and then hopefully many more years after to enjoy some of the perks of being me.

It looks like I got to wrap this up, so take care, kid, and remember to be kind to yourself once in awhile.

You’ll thank me for it.

Love,

You, plus thirty years.

A letter to my step father

Dear Ken,

I had the urge to write to you, to finally end the hold you have on my soul. You caused me a lot of pain, back in the day, and its long past time for me to deal with it. In some ways, you had the odds stacked against you from the day you came into our lives. You were being asked to replace my fallen father, and instead of a couple of normal kids, you were saddled with one mentally wounded boy, and me - a broken human being stuck between genders.

But unfortunately, you didn’t rise to the challenge you were given. You slipped into alcohol abuse, and soon allowed drinking to destroy all of our lives. And then there was the physical and mental abuse you inflicted on us. You caused a lot of damage to me, and some of those scars remain with me to this day. I only hope by the cold light of day you realize how wrong your treatment of us was.

But that’s enough condemnation. Today isnt about opening old wounds, but to heal them, once and for all. And the only way I know how to do that is to forgive you, and ask for your forgiveness. I have allowed resentment to fester too long, and I am quite sure I was far from a perfect child for you in any case.

So I ask for your forgiveness, and I give you mine in exchange. I’m going to do my best to leave what happened in the past, where it belongs, and not let it define me any longer.

So this is me, letting you go now. Good luck in wherever your life takes you from here.

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.

****

Fearfully and Wonderfully Made Chapter 3 - Moving on up

Author's note: Sorry this chapter is so short. I'll post the next chapter tomorrow to make up for it.

Part-way through grade seven we moved to a new house in a different neighborhood. The new house had an unfinished back yard, but my stepfather didn’t mind, as he had two kids to act as free labor in turning it into what he wanted. That being said, he relaxed somewhat after we moved in, perhaps because this house meant he had “arrived,” that we were in the upper class.

The neighborhood literally looked down on the city from a hill, and there was a definite feel of money in the air everywhere. One of our neighbors had not one but two Lamborghini cars parked in his driveway, each of them worth more than a quarter-million dollars ...

The summer we moved into the house my mom decided she needed us to go away for a bit, and signed us both up for a week long camp sponsored by a Baptist church.

I have no idea why she chose this particular camp. My mother was a lapsed Catholic who never talked about God or church or faith, and my stepfather was a serious atheist who hated all religions. But regardless,she decided that my brother would go for a week, then there would be a week wait, and then it would be my turn.

My brother came home from the camp a totally changed person.

As this is my story and not his, all I will mention about his life up to that point is that it had left him filled with anger. When he came home from the camp, the anger was gone.

He had become a Christian, he told me, and he urged me to look at the faith myself when I went.

So I went to the camp filled with curiosity about this dramatic change, and wondered if the faith could do the same for me.

After listening to the councilors talk about Christ for a couple of days, I felt sure that the faith had what I needed, and I asked about becoming a Christian. The councilor warned me that I could become an outcast in this world.

I laughed and told him I already was.

He walked me through the process and I became a Christian.

I wish I could say I heard angels singing, or immediately felt different, but I didn’t, not really. But I did feel a little better about myself, and for the rest of the week a gentle presence seemed to be around me, comforting me.

My brother was happy for me when I came home, and he got us a bible we could share.

Unfortunately, that Bible didn’t last long. When my stepfather found us reading it he snatched away and threw it in the fireplace.
My brother’s response was to bring home two more, one for each of us.

We periodically attended a Baptist church that had sponsored the camp, but it was a long walk to it, so we didn’t go regularly. This meant that we were left to our own devices when it came to learning about the faith, and mostly we just read the bible and tried to figure stuff out on without a lot of help.

Meanwhile, things were only getting worse for me on the gender front. As I entered puberty, I felt myself going further and further away from the feminine, physically, while psychologically I was feeling split in two - one part of me weeping over the woman I wasn’t becoming, the other part desperately trying to bury any signs of femininity as deeply as possible.

But such attempts were failures, often spectacularly so.

When I started getting facial hair, for example, I let it grow as much as it would until I had a full beard before finally giving up on it. Then I tried sports, but I was horrible at them. I broke my arm trying to do hurdles, and that was pretty much the end of my athletic career. That was an odd experience, as it didn’t really hurt right away. I mostly felt numb and unable to use my hand. But the next night I attended a school dance and must have loosened the bone a little, as i suddenly felt terrible pain, so bad I actually passed out, and the vice principal of my school drove me home.

I also tried socializing. I had no social skills, so that was also a failure. I went to another dance, but did not have the courage to ask any of the girls, so I got very frustrated. I had been sort-of invited by a girl, not as her date but just encouraged to go, and so near the end of the dance when the band had played “Three dressed up as a nine” I found her and told her this was her song.

I paid for that, as she spread a rumor that I had danced with a boy, which only made more people aware there was something not quite masculine about me ...

Then the Canadian government created the National Energy Program (look it up), collapsing the Alberta economy, and we soon found ourselves joining my stepfather’s company in fleeing the country and heading for the United States ...

****

Fearfully and Wonderfully Made Chapter 4: The Colorado catastrophe

My step-father relocated us to the suburb of Aurora, Colorado, which was just outside Denver, and we arrived as I was just starting grade nine. It wasnt the first time we had moved near the beginning of a school year, in fact it was the third - first we had moved when I was part-way through grade five, then again when I was part-way through grade seven. Now, once again, I was the “new kid”, trying to fit in when most of the pecking order had been established before I got there.

Needless to say, I pretty much ended up on the bottom.

As I had done in Canada, I hid in the drama room whenever I could, and just tried to survive the school, but it turned out that school was safer than home ...

My stepfather, who had struggled with drinking before, really started hitting the bottle hard. Later I would learn his job as a pilot was coming to an end, which is why he fell further into alcohol. As a result, he became more belligerent, more aggressive, and spent most of his time putting my mother, my brother, and me down.

Then things came to a head.

One night, he swung at my mother, and I snapped.

I went to the fireplace, picked up a small axe, and went after him.

God alone knows how why I didn’t, but somehow, I managed to bring myself to a stop before I swung the axe. I dropped it at his feet, said, “You’re not worth it.” and turned away from him.

He picked up the axe, and came toward me, looking like he planned to use it.

My brother drop-kicked him, and we fled the house.

We went to the nearby church we attended, in the hopes that someone might be there, but no luck. We were debating what to do when my mother drove up and asked us to come home. As we were now pretty cold (It was winter), we agreed.

My stepfather wasn't home, and when he got back there seemed to be an unspoken agreement to pretend the whole event never happened, and life went back to normal.

Of course, for me, “normal” is a very relative term ...

Most of the rest of our time in Colorado passed quietly, with one major exception. One day, on my way home from school, I found a woman’s nightgown that had been left on a fence. (Don’t have a clue how it got there, honest) I decided to take it home, and did something that was either really dumb or a subconscious way of trying to get the issue of my gender out in the open - I asked my mother for a cup of hot chocolate, slipped on the nightgown, and went to bed and covered myself with blankets up to my neck.

Of course, when my mom came in the room with the hot chocolate, she realized I was acting strangely, and demanded I pull back the blanket. When I did, she accused me of stealing the nightgown, which I disputed hotly, and asked me if I wanted a girl wardrobe to go with it.

My life would have been so different if I had only answered yes ...

Finally, our time in Colorado ran out, and we had to return to Canada. My brother had gone ahead, as he couldnt stay once he graduated high school and finished a bartending course, so it was my mother and I in one car and my stepfather in the other as we headed north.
It was almost the last trip I ever took.

My mother was suffering from a cold and had taken medicine which made her drowsy, and my stepfather refused to stop so she could rest. The result was when he pulled out of a access road because the gas station had been closed, she didnt quite manage to make the adjustment, and ended up driving sideways in a ditch, with a barbed wire fence all between us and flipping right over ...

But I guess it wasn’t my time to die, so we safely managed to get back to Canada.

But not everything was roses ...

Fearfully and Wonderfully Made Chapter 5: High school low
Author's note: With the site back up, I'm gonna continue posting my autobiography here. Its a short chapter so I'll post another tomorrow Please Comment!

When we came back to Canada, we had a small problem - the house we had left behind was rented out. So we first went to as series motels before finding a place to rent on the north-east corner of the city until our house was available again. This made going to school challenging, to say the least ...

Three other factors made it even more challenging.

First, for the fourth (and thankfully the last) time, we had arrived after the school year started, so that was strike one, as it were.
Second, the high school had several of the student I had gone to Junior high with, including the girl who had spread the rumor about me dancing with another guy, so that was strike two.

Third strike was that my brother had attended before we went to Colorado, and apparently had had left an impression, to say the least. Rather than struggle to fit in, he reveled in being an outsider, deliberately poking fun at the norms by his clothing and his attitude, which resulted in him getting a nickname.

“Spaz”

Which resulted in me being hung with the label of “Spaz’s little brother” on the day I arrived at school ....

Despite these handicaps, I did make some progress.

I joined the Christian club, the Drama club, I participated in a mock U.N., basically I tried my best to fit in wherever I could.
But I still had struggles. For example, the drama teacher decided to put on “Tartuffe”, a french play from the 1600’s. So when I got a minor role I was instructed to go get a pair of bright tights to wear under my costume , which had a pair of pants that ended at the knees, and also to buy a pair of ballet slippers. For someone like me, you’d think this would be heaven - given permission to wear something rather feminine, but I agonized over the whole thing. Then I made things worse by buying a pair of bright yellow tights instead of the traditional white, which led to me given a role as a clown who played a kazoo badly during a wedding. All things considered, it went better than I feared, but it still resulted in me being much more “visible” than I wanted to be ...

And the whole girl thing hung over my head like the Sword of Damocles, and no matter what good thing was going on, I could never forget my internal struggle. I cross-dressed on occasion, but mostly held on to the hope that prayer and love could cure me of this need to be a girl.

Neither one really worked well. In fact, on the prayer front I ended feeling so despondent I took a bottle of pills to my room and counted out what I thought would be enough to end my life. I sat there, looking at the pile of pills on my bed, trying to imagine taking them.

Finally, I put the pills back in the bottle, and went to sleep with tears in my eyes.

Around the same time, I saw the movie “The wall”, and it had impacted me deeply. I decided to pray to have my walls removed, which turned out to be a serious mistake.

Because it actually happened.

Unfortunately, it turned out I didn’t just have a wall between me and the world. I had a wall between me and my past, and I was far from ready to confront it.

I think I went insane for a couple of days, fighting this internal darkness while my body kept on autopilot.

I came back to myself, and time past ...
****

Fearfully and Wonderfully Made Chapter 6: The Bellion rebellion

From the outside, grade 11 would have looked like a good year for me. I had become part of several clubs, I had participated in a couple of musicals, and I attended church on a regular basis.

But I was no closer to a solution to my gender problems, and it was wearing on me greatly.

I became frantic to find a way to bolster my masculinity, and I held out hope that finding a girlfriend would be a major step forward in that fight.

As if in answer to my need, a young woman who I will call here Katherine decided she wanted company to go to a Seven-Eleven store across the street, and seeing me hanging around, grabbed my hand and made me her escort.

Through her, I got to know more of several members of the Drama club, and at the same time I started hanging around some girls from the Dungeons and Dragons group I had joined the previous year.

I dont remember if I ever actually asked any of these girls out. My preferred method of trying to get them to date me consisted of me hanging around and listening, apparently in the hope that by sheer availability I would move up the list of eligible boys.

Most of the girls responded to this tactic by sharing with me the stories of their relationships with other boys, and two of the girls I had met through Dungeons and Dragons showed me quite thoroughly that I simply wasn’t seen as boyfriend material when one hot day while we were sitting a basement together they decided to take off their tops and pants and hung around in their underwear, and talked me into doing the same.

The fact that I didn’t do anything but blush probably should have been a clue to me about certain things, but nobody will ever say I’m a quick learner ...

The other development on the gender front came about through Alan Kiev .

He had been a friend of my brothers before we went to Colorado, even sending him cassette tapes with messages from Calgary. (I know, it sounds so stone-age compared to e-mail and instant messaging, but hey, it was still the 80’s.)

I met him in person when we got settled in our old house, and he was the one who got me into Dungeons and Dragons which led me to the encounters I have already described. He was an odd person, who often looked to shock people. One example was his name, as he had gone from his birth name to one that used a Russian town as his new last name ...

Then when I was in grade eleven, he shared a secret with me after I confessed to struggling with my gender.

He told me he was a cross-dresser.

He even went out to events dressed, and he had a collection of crossdressing magazines which he gave to me to look at.

It was a mixed experience. On the one hand, it comforted me a little to know I wasn’t totally alone in struggling with being a male. On the other, it became quickly clear to me that whatever I was, I wasn’t like the guys in the mags. They seemed to be focused on sexual experiences, whereas I didn’t get terribly aroused by dressing as a girl.

Meanwhile, the school year continued, and then a very interesting opportunity came my way. I discovered that there was going to be an election for student body president, and at that point there was only one candidate for the office.

Not liking that lack of democracy, I decided to throw my hat into the ring. And for some reason, the idea of me being in the race inspired people. One person made posters with the slogan “The Bellion Rebellion”, and soon my name was everywhere.

I did better than I figured was possible.

They actually had to do a recount, it was that close.

And in losing the election I managed to put a positive image of me in the minds of a large body of my classmates.

Which didn’t make as much as a difference as I could have hoped ...

******

Fearfully and Wonderfully Made Chapter 7: The last hurrah

From the outside, as I began grade 12, it might have looked like I had finally gotten my act together, and that my life was looking up. . I belonged to several groups, I had a certain amount of popularity within my school, and at home screaming and violence had been replaced by silence and long absences.

Unfortunately, I resembled an iceberg - all the really dangerous stuff was happening below the surface ...

The two unaddressed issues - my gender and my abuse - were like weights that dragged me down even on good days.

It didn’t matter what I was doing - continuing my steady if unspectacular academic studies, participating in the school musical, playing Dungeons and Dragons, or hanging out with friends, I was never allowed to forget I just wasn’t like other boys.

Perhaps nothing showed this more clearly than my almost laughable attempts to get girls to think of me as a potential boyfriend.
Perhaps none of these was as bad as one little drama that took most of my high school life to play out ...

It had started in Grade 10.

As I have said before, my strategy when it came to girls was to hang around in the hopes that my sheer availability would make me attractive to them. In one case, that plan actually seemed to be working - one girl and I had conversations that included the topic of love.

I mentioned the idea of using “One-four-three” as a way of saying “I love you” when you couldn’t actually say the words, and at the end of grade ten she signed my yearbook with those three numbers, making me think that come September I was going to actually have a girlfriend.

But in September she changed her mind, and tried to gloss over her use of the numbers, which left me feeling very confused and angry.

To this day, I am not sure what happened between her signing the book and the start of the new school year, but the fact remained that I felt like a vision of a oasis had turned out to be a mirage.

By the end of grade eleven, I had started to get over the hurt, and in grade twelve we managed to re-connect as friends, but it was never as good as what we had in grade ten.

Still, she was as close as I would come to getting a girlfriend while in high school, which considering how things went for me for a long while afterward, maybe that was for the best ...

Time wore on, and I came to the end of my high school experience, but before it was over I had two last memorable moments. The first was the grad dinner and dance. I hadn’t been looking forward to it, as they had set things up so we sat at tables of eight - four couples. I ended up at a table with some of the other drama people, but as I didn’t have a date, the first part of the night was extremely awkward as I sat with an empty chair to my right I tried a sad joke about dating the Invisible Woman, but it was a hard meal to get through, in all honesty.

The dancing that followed was just as awkward, as I lacked the courage or social skills to ask any girl to dance, and I found myself standing against a wall, wishing I knew how to make myself fit in better.

But as the event wore down, the two girls from Dungeons and Dragons who i had shared a day in our underwear with decided they had enough, and talked me into walking home with them. So as I like to point out, I may have come without a date, but I left with a girl on each arm ...

Then it was graduation day. I remember clearly my struggle that day, especially after I learned we would be wearing gowns over our clothes. The idea of wearing a skirt under the gown, of opening it up after I got my diploma and showing the world who I really was gnawed at my brain, leaving me feeling both guilty for wanting to do it and guilty for not having to courage to go through with the idea ...

Then the day came, and my name was called, and the whole place went bonkers. Nobody, not even the valedictorian, got the level of applause I got. To this day, I am not entirely sure why it happened ...

The best way I can describe how I felt was ... lifted up on the waves of appreciation. It was strong enough to lift me past my guilt, past my fears, for one shining moment I thought I saw a possibility for a life.

It would be a long time for that feeling to return ...

*****

Fearfully and Wonderfully Made Chapter 8 - The boy in the box

The summer after I graduated was spent “putting away childish things” as the saying goes. I moved out of my parent’s home and into a small apartment, and had a couple of other big moments as well. The first was my baptism at my church. Despite my struggles with my gender, I sincerely believed (and in fact I still believe) in my faith, and so getting baptized was a pretty big deal for me. Plus, because my church wouldn't baptize “children “ which they considered anyone not an adult, it was in a lot of ways my official ceremony into adulthood.

The other thing I did that summer was less of a success, however.

I attempted to get a job as a performer at an amusement park outside of Calgary, using as my audition piece a dance set to the song “Fat” by Weird Al Yankovick.

I didn’t just bomb, I nuked.

I was bad. I mean, really, really, really bad.

The best thing you could say about the experience is that it cured me of any idea of a life as an actor.

So I tried to find the next best thing, and applied to a local college for a course in Radio and Television Arts, which was to train me in the technical stuff that goes on behind the scenes.

Looking at the course now, I wonder how the others who took the class fared in the field, especially with the changes in technology.
Let me give you an example. They had us purchase a couple of singles on vinyl to learn how to switch between records. I bought “People are People” by Depeche Mode and “Boy in the Box” by Corey Hart.

Considering how vinyl was already being replaced with cassettes, and then cassettes were replaced with compact disks, and then all of the above has been replaced with downloads, I can only imagine how hard it would have been to keep up.

But that isnt a problem I have to deal with, as I failed miserably in the course.

And so, less than six months after the high of applause at my graduation, I was as low as I could go.

Or so I thought ...

I wasn’t the only one in my family going through some serious changes that year.

My mother finally reached her breaking point, and left my stepfather, fleeing Calgary in the process and establishing herself in Edmonton.

The reason why she picked Edmonton is that my brother had gone there some time earlier, but as it turned out he kept a reason to keep coming down to Calgary anyway, as he had started dating a young woman who I had gone to school with. As things turned out, he’s still with her today ...

As for me, once I had grieved for a while over my failure, I applied to the University of Alberta in Edmonton for the Education program. I figured if I couldn’t do, maybe I could teach ...

But even worse things were to come ...

****

Fearfully and Wonderfully Made Chapter 9 - “Black Friday” and other disasters

Things actually started off well.

In fact by the summer break I was fully confident in my ability to finish the course and become a teacher. I went back to Calgary for the summer, staying at a friends house while working a series of odd jobs through a student employment program.

Then after I came back to their house one summer day, and the city of Edmonton had been devastated by a tornado in a day they called “Black Friday.”

I spent the next couple of days trying to get a hold of my mother or brother, but at first the lines were down, and then they were overloaded with people trying to do the same thing.

As things turned out, my brother had literally escaped drowning in his car in a tunnel locally called “the rat hole” , and my mother had also managed to escape harm.

The thing I most remember of the tornado was coming back to Edmonton and going out with my mom, and finding a train engine tossed into a field like a tinker toy.

Then I returned to school, and that’s when I met Toni. She was a librarian at one of the libraries on the University campus, and from the first time I saw her, I was impressed with her. Despite having to be in a wheelchair, she had a radiant smile and a positive outlook that attracted me.

I managed to work up the courage, and asked her out, and to my shock, she actually said yes.

Soon, we were an item, and I had more hope than ever that in finding her, I would also find a solution to my gender issue as well.

I even wrote a poem to ask her to marry me.

She turned me down.

Despite this, we kept seeing each other. She was there to comfort me on the day I finally went and saw my father’s grave. She even allowed me to move in with her, although we had separate bedrooms and no intimate contact.

Not long after that, the schooling thing went off the rails - I started struggling to pass classes, and reached a point where they wouldn’t let me take the last practical class. At the same time Toni developed cancer and lost part of her tongue and the remainder of her mobility, forcing her into an apartment built to help disabled people, and she needed me more than ever, even if she didn’t want to marry me.

For me, it was like I was in the worst of both worlds - I was involved with her too much to actually try and get a girlfriend, but I was never going to be more to Toni than the person who helped her do her daily tasks.

But rather than confronting her on this, I just let the relationship wither.

It wasn’t all bad. Thanks to her, I participated in wheelchair square dancing, which was certainly interesting. For example, I was drafted to be a dancer because the club was short, and we did demonstrations in shopping centers. During one demonstration, I decided to not get out of the spare wheelchair I borrowed for dancing, and I learned first-hand how the disabled are treated. The best way I can put it is that a lot of people assumed that being in a chair lowered my I.Q. by at least fifty points. We even took a couple trips to the United States to meet other wheelchair square dance groups. On one of these trips we were late leaving Edmonton because of a snowstorm, and as a result had to draft every available able-bodied worker in Vancouver's airport to transfer the disabled members of the club from one plane to another.

Finally, one Easter, we had gone to her parent’s house for the holiday, and I heard her parents tell my little niece to “not be a Todd”, and I realized not only was I not loved by her, I was held in contempt by her parents.

I picked up my things, drove out of their driveway, went home, called my brother to help me, packed up my stuff, and left.
So there I was, no relationship, no schooling, and back living with my mother.

The next few years are a painful blur - I went from bad job to worse job, basically drifting without a purpose in my life. You’d think the gender issue would get worse under those circumstances, but you’d be wrong - it stayed at a steady, drip-by-drip-till-the bucket-overflows pace, with pretty close to the same number of good days and bad days.

Then things changed again ...

*****

Fearfully and Wonderfully Made Chapter 10 - “I will love thee better still”

One of my uncles decided that maybe he could give me a break, and hired me to work at the parkade of the international airport as a maintenance person, which I gratefully accepted, when I had a chance encounter that would change my life.

Because I could come in during breaks, I spent some time with the cashiers, and then one of them upon hearing me complain about being lonely said she knew of someone who might be perfect for me, if I wanted to go out on a blind date and find out.

So I went to a restaurant in a local mall, wondering what the heck I was getting myself in for.

Shelia found me, and we had a nice dinner, and then I walked her back to where she was staying. As we walked, we sang “amazing grace” together, and I walked home filled with hope that I had at last found what I was looking for.

At the same time I started dating her, I sought out a pastor to talk to about my gender issues, and he recommended that I marry. He said I could then give my femininity to my wife, and all my problems in that area would be solved.

So six months after our first date, i asked her to marry me.

It was an amazing ceremony. An uncle covered some of the costs, and my brother wrote and performed a song as a wedding march. So instead of the traditional “here comes the bride”, Sheila came down the aisle to the sound of my brother on guitar and singing “I will love thee better still”.

It felt like a fairytale brought to life.

Sadly, the fairytale didn’t even survive the honeymoon. I tried to tell my new bride about my gender struggles, but all I accomplished was make our honeymoon awkward. Then once we came home, she quickly kicked me out of the master bedroom, saying that my nightmares, snoring, and general movement when I slept all made me not someone she could sleep beside.

As if to emphasize our lack of intimacy, a couple of weeks into our marriage I had a cold, and she kicked me out of the house, telling me to stay at my mother’s until I was recovered.

Despite this inauspicious start, I sincerely wanted to make this work, so when she asked me to consummate our marriage, I tried my best.

Not long after, Shelia had two things to tell me. The first was that she was pregnant. The second was that she was in the country illegally. We would end up spending most of the next decade, not to mention thousands of dollars, to try and solve the second problem. As for the first situation, well, I think that deserves a new chapter ...

****

Chapter 11 - A child is born

Sheila had a difficult pregnancy. In fact, when she was about seven months pregnant, she went for an appointment, and the doctor told her that the baby was dead.

She was devastated, but she decided to go back a couple of days later when her regular doctor would be in, and he said there was nothing wrong with the baby. We never found out why the first doctor said the baby was dead ...

Finally, one March day, I was sleeping as I worked nights, but my sleep was interrupted when my wife’s best friend, the one who had set us up on our blind date, showed up at my door, and told me to “get your butt to the hospital.”

“You’re a father.”

So I got dressed, and went to the hospital, where I found that Sheila had almost died during the labor from high blood pressure, and so my daughter arrived via C-section and was in an incubator while she was sleeping the experience off.

As I result, I saw my child before she did ...

We named her Sabrina.

To me, she was perfect, but we would learn she had some ... difficulties ahead of her. She couldn’t have tags on her clothes, she was beyond hyper, she would have troubles with hand coordination ...

Despite these problems, she was (and is) a wonderful girl, and I’m glad she exists.

Not long after she was born, on the urging of Sheila , I bought a mortgage on a house. I was also able to go back to school, this time to be a Licensed Practical Nurse, and it seemed like I had “arrived”, as it were.

But we have come to the part of my journey that’s the hardest for me to relate, even harder than talking about my abuse.
Because what happened next was entirely my fault.

The downward spiral started with me failing the course, but I was able to get work as a Nurse’s Aid, which kept me going for a while. But the unaddressed problems I had - the gender issue, the rape, and top it off a manic-depressive episode - combined to erode what little foundation I had, and I collapsed into myself.

Basically, I shut down, like I had done as a kid.

But now, there were consequences ...

I stopped being able to pay the bills, especially the mortgage, and I only “woke up” when my brother called me to tell me the mortgage people had contacted him because he had been a co-signer on the mortgage.

The mask I had been trying to build was torn away, and what was underneath wasn’t pretty.

My brother arranged to pay back the money we owed, and basically bought us out of the house, giving Sheila the money. She took the money and put the down payment on a new place, and my brother sold the house basically just getting enough to cover what he had paid for it.

As for me, I can hardly describe how horrible I felt. I had badly hurt my brother and had put my family at risk of being homeless.
So when Sharon asked me to leave, I didn’t fight her.

I went to live with my mother, who was taking care of my grandmother in a place in the north side of Edmonton.

And that’s where things changed again ...

****

Fearfully and Wonderfully made Chapter 12 - “Daily Strength”

I was in pretty rough shape when I moved back in with my mother after the destruction of my marriage.

I had let down and hurt the people who loved me, and I really didn’t have a place to put the feeling that produced.

But in several ways moving back in with my mother (and grandmother) was a good decision.

I had been able to transfer my job to a small facility walking distance away, and they had set me up in the basement in such a way that I only had to come upstairs for meals if I wished.

But best of all, I was with two women who loved me unquestionably, even if they were saddened about the mess I had made.

Bolstered by their support, and with my brother forgiving me enough to help get me into Christian counseling, I spent some time on a couple of projects that I hoped would help me get back on track.

One of these was to re-read the bible, but I didn’t just want to read it. I wanted to do more, so I found a pamphlet that went through the whole bible over the course of a year, and to make it even more effective I wrote a page of notes each day on what I read that day. The next year, I was to do this again, only this time instead of notes I would write down a prayer based on what I read that day.

The other project was designed to help me learn better focus and concentration, and it involved a craft called latch-hooking. Its a little like rug hooking, and I would spend hours over the next couple of years carefully hooking threads into place, until I had made several items. One was a horse that I gave to my grandmother, one was a cat I made for my mom, one was a cross with the words “bless this house” that I gave to my brother, and the last one was a picture of Jesus that I gave to Sheila .

I saw this last project especially as an act of faith, and I found myself coming up with parallels between the portrait I was making and the “portrait” that was my life - that from one side, all you could really see was knots, and it isn’t until you look from the other side that you see the true image, and I began to see the difficult times in my life as just threads, and the full picture was yet to be made.

Between my projects and work, I spent time with my grandmother, and was even to spend time with my daughter on occasion, even taking her to my work and letting her meet my patients.

Unfortunately, this quiet time couldn’t last, and after a couple of years my grandmother’s condition got bad enough that she needed hospitalization, and as the only reason my mother and I were living in that place was to look after her, we soon found ourselves looking for a new place to live.

To add to the difficulty, we had acquired a small dog as company, and of course we wanted to be sure that wherever we went, the dog would be welcome.

At the same time, my stress caused a depression that got noticed at work, and I soon found myself being put on indefinite leave, which shortly became permanent.

I eventually found other employment, we found a small apartment, and I hoped I could start moving forward again. Sadly, neither worked out, but I had something going for me I had not had before - I had a support system online.

I had taken to the internet in the hopes of finding a cure for my gender issues, and I had found a support site called “Daily Strength”, but instead found myself looking at the gender struggle as something other than a curse or an addiction to be cured.
And for the first time, I gave that female part of myself a name - Dorothy, although I originally intended that to just be a pseudonym for writing stories.

But, let’s save that for the last chapter, shall we?

Chapter 13 - “A gift from God”

Giving myself a female name marked a huge turn-around in my attitude towards my drive toward the feminine.

Up until that point, when I thought about it at all, I referred to this ... girl thing ... as “She” or “Her” and it usually was with a shudder. As I stated, I originally wanted the female name for writing, something I had thought about doing on and off since I was a teen. I found a place online to publish stories and poetry, a site called “Big Closet”, and began to write a little story called “The Saga of E-Girl”.

It wasn’t much, just based on an idea floating around in my head from reading too many comics as a kid - “what if, you could gain superpowers, but you had to change genders to do it?”

To my great surprise, it was really well received.

So I wrote more.

I wrote poems, and stories, and eventually began to share my life story and struggles with the readers of the site, just as I was with the readers on “Daily Strength”.

I spoke frankly about my struggle with my gender, and especially with feeling afraid of being rejected by family, friends, strangers, and worst of all, by God.

Meanwhile, I was in the middle of my last attempt to repress my feminine side, taking anti-depressants, seeing a councilor, and trying everything I could think of.

I even went to a gender specialist, hoping to be told that of course it was all in my head, that with the right treatment I’d be a man and like it.

Didn’t go that way.

In fact, after our conversation he recommended I begin a transition, and even gave me a prescription for a testosterone blocker.
I panicked a bit, and sought help for my rape instead.

But it seemed like I could no longer shut the door on the girl within, and I agonized about what to do.

Then someone from “Daily Strength” recommended I pray as Dorothy, and see what happened.

That prayer eventually became a poem that I have read in public, called “Dear God.”

And it felt like I got an answer to that prayer in the form of a vision - a vision of myself as a girl, being held and swung around by a man who I believe was God himself.

But I had one last crisis to deal with before things could finally start to get better.

I had a reaction to the antidepressants, and actually came very close to suicide.

I was at work, and someone left a birthday cake with a large knife beside it, and before I even knew what I was doing, I had the knife at my wrist, ready to cut.

Somehow, I gathered enough strength to drop the knife, but the incident scared me enough to make me realize I could no longer hold my feminine side in check.

I went back to the gender specialist, took the prescription, and began to make steps toward a transition. My first step was coming out of the closet to my family, and I went into that series of conversations fearing the worst. My mother’s reaction was to tell me “It makes sense” and not long after bought me a birthday card - “From a mother to her daughter”.

And even though my brother and sister-in-law had (and continue to have) doubts about what I’m doing, they are supporting me the best they can.

And even though my ex objects to a transition on religious grounds, she has continued to let me see my daughter.

For a while after taking these steps, I hesitated to go further. I felt sure I would never pass, and so I agonized what I could do about my situation.

Finally, I could stand it no longer, so I took the next scary step, to start going out in public as a woman, so I went to a thrift shop and picked out a skirt, shoes, and blouse to wear, as well as panties, bra, and hose.

After a false start, I went out for gas dressed.

And the lady at the gas station called me “miss”.

Then I went to a bottle depot to return my empty bottles and cans for a refund.

And when my bag spilled, a young man said “Let me help ma’am.”

So the next time I saw the gender specialist, I got what’s called a “carry letter”, basically telling whoever reads it that I have begun a real-life test as part of my transition, and that they should treat me as a woman.

This letter is often called “the bathroom letter”, as it seems that bathrooms are one place people struggle with having someone like me around.

Except when I went to use a ladies room in a mall after getting the letter, I didn’t need it. Nobody seemed to pay me any attention whatsoever.

The next step in my journey was to see if I could find a job that would be okay with me transitioning, so I applied for a job at a call center. Basically the job was cold-calling businesses and asking if they wanted to advertise in this little magazine that was made available for free in doctor’s offices and medical clinics.

They didn’t have any objections to me coming to work as a woman, and to my surprise the other women who worked there totally accepted me, even letting me come with them on their lunch runs.

Unfortunately, I really sucked at the actual job.

So after three days, I was let go.

So I went looking for a job I might actually be able to do.

I went to an agency that was supposed to help people having trouble finding work, and was all set to start some serious training with them when I got a call from Wal-mart, who I had applied to online.

I went to the interview in my skirt, and remarkably, they hired me anyway.

And once again, the tolerance of my fellow workers surprised me. Not only did they seem to accept me as a woman, I was told by one “I can’t even imagine you as a tomboy.”

Then once I had been working the required three months, I was able to get some of my prescriptions covered by the company, and as a result, I was able to start estrogen.

And eventually, I started seeing results, and the more feminine I started to look, the more ... relaxed I became.

Which I think is a pretty good hint I was heading in a good direction.

I also had been able to use techniques I had learned in rape counseling to help make serious progress in dealing with what happened to me, and the other thing that was helping me with that was some of my writing.

Meanwhile I was actually doing well at work, and after working at a store outside of town for a year, I was able to transfer to a location closer to my home.

Then I went hunting for a church to attend as Dorothy, and lucked into a United church downtown that practiced what they called “affirming”, which meant they accepted me as a woman.

It was at this church that one Sunday I read “Dear God”, and afterward several people approached me to tell me they wept at what I had written.

Which brings me to now.

My journey isn’t over yet, or at least I hope it isn’t.

Its my hope to become what’s promised in the name I have chosen - Dorothy - A gift from God.

But We’ll just have to see where my journey goes from here together, won’t we?

End.

Night Entries, Chapter 1

Author's note. This is based on my actual experiences. It contains frank discussions of sexual abuse and an attempted suicide. Please take care reading.

Dear Diary;

This is my first entry in any diary, ever. So I really hope I’m doing this right. When I saw you, diary, sitting in a discount bin, and I realized I had just enough money in my pocket to get you, it was like Fate, or something.

I guess the first thing I should do is introduce myself, but that’s kinda complicated. I mean, my parents named me Edward Williams, but I have never felt …. right with my name. Or with any other part of my life, especially with being a boy, for that matter.

I guess I’m all mixed up, diary, so that’s why its a good thing I got you to talk to. So what can I tell you? Well, I’m thirteen years old, I live in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, and I got a mom, and a step-dad and a brother named John.

I’ve had a lot happen to me in thirteen years, diary but I don’t think I’m going to have a chance to tell you about it tonight, as my mom will be coming up to check on me soon if she sees my light on. I’ve got a hiding spot picked out, in a drawer in my dresser that I mostly use for photographs, so she wont be likely to stumble across you by accident. I would prefer she didn’t see I have a diary at all, much less one that is bright pink, if I have a choice in the matter.

*******

Dear Diary;

What else can I tell you about me? I’m kinda hoping if I tell you, it will make some sense, because right now, I’m pretty confused by things. Like with what happened to my dad. He died when I was just five years old, and I don’t have anything that reminds me of him. We have no pictures, nothing of his. And nobody talks about him, ever. The worst part is he didn’t have to be dead. He committed suicide, Diary, and I don’t know why. Sometimes, I wonder if he had been here, would I still hate being a boy so much?

*******

My brother is gone for a week, and I miss him. I guess I should say something about him, he’s a big part of my life. He’s about as good a big brother as I could have, and I almost lost him once. See some bad stuff went down, and he went to a crazy house for kids. I’ve had nightmares of that place, which is why NO ONE can ever know I don’t feel like a boy. I couldn’t survive a place like that. I have to pretend I’m normal, no matter what it takes. What bad stuff, you may ask?

Well, I’m not up to talking about that right now, okay?

Anyway, he’s gone to a Christian camp for the week , and I’m going to the same one a week after he gets back. I’m surprised my mom signed us up for one, she’s never had a good thing to say about Christianity or God or anything, and my step-dad, Carl is about as atheistic as you can imagine. Oh well, its a week away from here, which may be her point in doing this.

*****

I don’t sleep well. A lot of the time, I don’t sleep at all. A lot of the time, its nightmares, and I wake up shouting and shaking, and end up with the light on for the rest of the night. But when its not nightmares, its about HER. I cant seem to stop wanting to be her, no matter what I try. I’ll see one of my girl classmates and the envy I feel is like this horrible ache I can’t seem to stop. Funny thing is, I don’t feel gay, you know? I like like girls, but there is also this wish, this need to be one that really messes me up. I must be nuts, and like I said, I don’t want to be put away, so I have to somehow hide this and hope nobody can tell how crazy I actually am.

******

John’s back! And the camp must have been fun, he seems happier than I remember him. As soon as he got back, he started talking about Christ and God and reading the Bible. I don’t know about religion, but its really good to see him smile. Seems like instead of locking him up they should have sent him to a place like that instead.

I guess I’m as ready as I’m going to be to talk about why he got sent away. He got raped, diary, if you can believe it. It messed him up big time, let me tell you. And from what he’s told me, it sounds like the bad stuff only got worse when he was on the inside. So I’m super happy to see him with a smile on his face again. We got the week together, and then its my turn to go, so I’m going to pump him for every detail he’ll give me about the camp. Maybe I’ll have to look into Christianity too, if it makes this big an impact on him.

****

I’ve been thinking hard about what happened to John. The thing is, when he told me, why did it sound … familiar? Like something like it happened to me? Is that why I have so many nightmares? I got holes in my memory you could drive a truck through, thanks to the meds they put me on after dad died, but you’d think I’d remember something like that. But just thinking about it has got me shaking, and I don’t think I’ll sleep tonight.

I have no idea how I’m going to deal with having bunk mates at the camp. I’m scared enough of slipping up during the day with the gender stuff, I wish the nightmares would give me a break.

******

I was raped. I’m almost one hundred percent sure of it. I had a bad nightmare last night, and for the first time, I remembered some of it when I woke up. Worse, the nightmare seemed to indicate my gender stuff played a part in it. So it was my fault. Well, maybe being at the camp will help.

*****

Dear Diary;

Well, this will be my last entry until I get back from the camp. I wish I could take you with me, diary, its helped me so much to have a place where I can be totally honest. With most real people, I just try and fade into the background as much as possible. I can’t tell anybody what’s going on in my head, or they’ll take me away, (Like the song, but much less happy.)

Here’s hoping I can keep up my act at the camp, last thing I need is a bunch of Christian kids finding out I’m anything but a normal boy. I can’t say I know much about Christians, but I somehow doubt they would find it cool that I want to be a girl so bad it hurts. So
I better make sure my Edward mask is on tight, and try and stay out of every one's sight as much as possible. Somehow, that doesnt sound like a relaxing week, but nothing I can do about that.

*****

I’m back, and I’m a changed person, I think. I took the plunge, and became a Christian. The clincher for me was when one of the councilors told me I could become an outcast if I become a Christian, and I laughed at her. I told her I already was one, so what did I have to lose? Afterward, I was a little upset with myself for letting my guard down, but maybe now it won’t matter.

They told me to pray, and that God can do anything, so maybe God will take away this desire to be a girl. They gave me a Bible to read so I could learn about God and Christ and all that, and invited me to come to the church that runs the camp. Its a little far away, so I don’t know how often I can go, but you never know.

*****

My step-father burned my Bible! I can’t believe he would do something like that. The man is utterly deranged. I better get myself under control before I write something really horrible. I’m more disappointed in my mom. Why does she stand there while he’s doing this kind of stuff? When I was little, I thought my mom was so beautiful, and the girl part of me wanted to grow up to be just like her. I guess every kid discovers their parents have feet of clay. Ah, well.

*****

The Bible is fascinating. I didn’t know how you were supposed to read it, so I just started at the beginning and read to the end. Its funny, the little bible I got says some of the individual books were written hundreds, even thousands of years apart, and yet it reads like its one story, or at least it does to me.

My version is written in “today’s English”, whatever that means, and has little stick-figure drawings in some of the margins illustrating some of the verses. It also has a series of maps so I could get an idea where all these stories take place. Its kinda interesting, this little patch of land has been fought over and conquered by just about every empire in history. Egypt, Assyria, Babylon, the Greeks, the Romans, you name it.

But its not all good news, at least for me. There is stuff about not wearing girl clothes, and I don’t know what to make of that. I guess I need to really pray to get rid of this desire, once and for all.

******

I figured I would write down the prayer I’ve been making. It goes something like this:

Dear God, I’m pretty new to this prayer thing, so I hope I’ve got it right. God I want to be good, and not do anything wrong, but I need help. This craving to be a girl is driving me nuts. I cant sleep, I can hardly stand to be around pretty girls cause I get so jealous. You raised Jesus from the dead, so I know you can take this need away from me. Amen.

*****

Its not working. Why isnt the prayer working? What am I doing wrong? Maybe I’m not a Christian at all. Maybe I have to start from the beginning, and accept him into my heart again. I don’t know what else to do. I fall asleep in class cause I dont get any rest at nights.

****

I started over again. I accepted Christ into my heart, again. Maybe now God will take this craving away. See, the thing is, even if I don’t act on it, its still a sin to even think about it. I’m basing that on Jesus talking about lusting after a woman being the same as adultery. And since I’m pretty much always thinking about it, well … I hope it works this time.

*****

I cant do this anymore. I’m going to Hell, and there’s nothing I can do to stop it. I’ve prayed, I cried, I begged, and God wont take this desire from me. I’ve already lost track of how many times I’ve started over, and I feel further away from God than ever.
I’ve even asked Him to kill me, and He remains silent.

Worse, some girl at school is spreading a rumor that I danced with another boy at the last school dance. I deserve it, because I insulted her, because I was frustrated with being at the dance at all, since I lacked the courage to ask any girls to dance. I blamed her, and it wasn’t fair of me. Things are just totally messed up.

*******

I got hurt today. I dislocated my knee, and it still hurts. My mom took me to a doctor, and he gave me a muscle relaxant, saying it will ease the spasms. The rumor is still going around the school, which makes no sense. People would have seen me so why would they believe this story? But its not dying off yet. All this extra stress is taking its toll on me. The nightmares are getting worse, and the gender stuff is beyond painful. What do I do, diary?

*****

I’m ready to end my life. I’m going to take enough of my muscle relaxant pills to stop my heart, and put myself out of my misery. Maybe, since God hates me anyway, he’ll let me go. Goodbye, diary.

*****

Obviously not the end, folks. Please remember to comment

Night Entries, Chapter 2:

This is intense stuff, people. Read with caution, and as always, comments are appreciated.

I couldn’t go through with it. I’m such a coward. I guess I have no choice but to keep on going, even if life makes no sense. I can only hope its a short life, since there doesn’t seem to be any hope for me.

******

I feel like some kind of zombie. I’m just going through the motions, not living at all. I guess it doesn’t really matter. I’ve kinda stopped talking to God, since He doesn’t seem to listen anyway. The other day I actually screamed at Him, I was so mad. But even that didn’t change anything. Just how long will my torment last?

******

My knee feels better, which is okay, I guess. I got to thinking about what happened with my dad and realized it would be pretty selfish of me to kill myself and leave my body for my mom to find after she’s already lost him.

Its getting close to Christmas and the lights look pretty and even the snow somehow looks better.I don’t know if I’m any better, but I’m going to try and survive.

*****

Merry Christmas, Diary!

It was actually a nice Christmas. John is just glowing with his new-found faith. I’m still struggling with mine, but I’m happy for him. As for my gender stuff, well I have a confession. I’ve been crossdressing, “borrowing” my mom’s stuff. I don’t know how to describe how I feel dressed, there are so many different things going on. There’s the guilt, of course. That’s to be expected. But there is this brief moment of relief, like I put down something super heavy I hadn’t even realized I was carrying. I feel light, and free and …

So what do I do about that?

*****

Well, its the last day of the year, so I’ll say goodbye, diary, until next year.

Here’s hoping its a better one.

*****

Happy new year, Diary!

I decided I’m going to do more boy stuff, and get rid of my desire to be a girl that way. I’ve started letting my facial hair grow out, and I’[m going to sign up for Track when school comes back in. Maybe if I look more like a boy and act more like one, I’ll feel more like one too.

****

Well, I’m back to school, and I signed up for Track, so that’s part one of my plan done. I’m also starting to get pretty fuzzy on my face as well. Weird thing is, its coming in red. I’m blond, diary, I mean really, really blond, so how come its coming in red? Ah well, the point is I’ll look like a guy, and doing track will help too. This is going to work, I can feel it.

******

I broke my arm, diary! I was practicing hurdles and I fell over one and broke my left arm. Funny thing, I didnt even know it at first. My arm was numb and I couldnt close my hand, but it didnt start to hurt badly until I went to the school dance. I started dancing, and then the pain hit, and I’m ashamed to say I passed out.
The vice principal took me home, and mom took me to the doc who found the break. I’m in a cast now, and I guess Track is going to be a no go. There is a meet coming up, and I’m signed up for a long distance race, maybe I could still do it anyway?

****

Well, the race is over, and I finished dead last. For a while, I was able to keep up, but my endurance just wasnt up to the task. But the teacher seemed impressed that I tried and that I at least finished the race, so I guess that’s okay. I look weird with a red beard and a cast, but at least I’m not getting called “fag” every day.

*****

I gave up on the beard. It just feels ugly and wrong to have one, I couldn’t look at it anymore. And its pretty obvious I’m never going to be a jock. How am I supposed to fight this need to be a girl now?

****

We’re moving, Diary.

The company my step-dad works for is pulling up stakes thanks to the N.E.P. killing the oil patch, and they are going to Denver. I’ll slip you into my books, and hopefully mom wont look too closely. I don’t want to lose you, it feels like you are a real friend to me, maybe my only friend. Kinda sad, isn’t it?

*****

Hay, diary, welcome to Aurora, Colorado. Its a little bedroom town just outside Denver. Its pretty, and its a lot like Calgary, to be honest. The weirdest thing is, I’m no longer in Junior high. Grade nine is part of high school here. I hate transferring schools in the middle of the year. Maybe that’s a good thing, nobody will even expect me to make a lot of friends. If I’m lucky, I can stay under the radar here.

*****

My mom caught me in a nightie last night. I had found it on my way home, and like an idiot, I put it on and then asked for a cup of hot chocolate. She accused me of stealing it, which sucks. Now she thinks I’m a thief as well as a pervert. Not only that, the tension in the house is getting hard to take. She and my step-dad are constantly fighting. Not fun.

****

My mom hasn’t brought up catching me again, which is good. If she’s willing to forget it, so am I. The worst part of it was that she shouted about buying me girl clothes, and more than anything I wanted to say to her, “Yes, mom. I want girl clothes”. Meanwhile, the tension is even worse around here. I think my step dad is drinking even more than normal, and I’m worried.

***

Diary, I’m going to have to make this quick. I grabbed you on my way out the door, and am writing this while my brother looks for a place for us to stay. Things came to a head, and my step-dad hit my mom. I snapped, and grabbed the axe we use for the fireplace and seriously came close to using it on him. But instead, I just shouted at him that he wasn’t worth it, and dropped the axe. Then he picked it up, and was going to kill me, but my brother drop-kicked him.

We then went and grabbed a few things and left the house. We are hanging around my church, and John’s looking to find if he can get a hold of someone to let us in, so we could stay the night. Can life get any suckier?

Night Entries, Chapter 3.

Well, we are back home. Mom somehow found us, and told us to come home. We did, lacking anywhere else to go. I hope things are going to be alright. I feel so helpless.

*****

Its kinda funny around here now. Its like we all made this unspoken agreement to not mention what happened, but to go on as though life was perfectly normal. My step-dad actually seems a little wary of my brother, so maybe that’s what we’ve needed to do all along - kick his butt, and then he’d leave us alone.

*****

Have I mentioned yet how much I HATE getting erections? Most of the time, I can almost pretend I dont have male bits, but when I get hard, its impossible to ignore, and it sucks, big time. I can’t explain it right, but it just feels so WRONG somehow. Sometimes, the only way I can face the day is to pretend my clothes are girl clothes and that nobody notices or minds. That’s one of my big fantasies at night, to imagine I’ll wake up as a girl and just have a normal day as one. I just do whatever I would normally be doing, except I’m female. Then the guilt hits, and I try and beat back the fantasy. I’m so tired of this strugggle.

******

I know I don’t write a lot about school, its cause I really don’t have a lot to say. It just IS, you know? I’m mostly ignored here, and that’s just fine with me. Much less chance of somebody figuring out I’m not like other boys.

****

My brother got a package from home today. It was a cassette tape from a friend of his. He let me listen, his friend seems pretty cool. John made a tape to send back, and I had to say “hi” on it, I don’t know why. I admire my brother a lot, he’s turning into a good man. But that also is taking him further away from me, since I am not a good man. Most days, I don’t feel like a man at all.

*****
I’ve been dreaming about HER a lot. Sometimes, when I’m getting dressed, I almost see her in the mirror. I don’t know how to describe the feeling, its like.... I watched the movie “Victor/Victoria” and there is a scene where she is broke and hungry and she stands outside a restaurant and watching people eat on the other side of the glass. I’m like that. I watch the girls, and I want to join them, be one of them, and I cant.

****

Had a major snowstorm here, and it was actually kinda fun to go out afterward. The funniest part was walking through a snow drift, my brother and I were stopped by the cops, who asked if we needed help. We laughed, and told him we’re Canadians. Pretty funny, I thought.

****

I don’t know if I’ve mentioned this, Diary, but I love to read, especially science fiction. My favorite authors are Issac Asimov and Ray Bradbury. The only bad part is occasionally, I’ll read something that makes me think of my gender stuff, and then I have to stop and fight with them instead of being able to enjoy the story.

****

I’ve been doing a little bit of thinking, Diary. I’ve got this idea for a story where this kid wishes everyone would go away, and then wakes up to find himself alone in the world. Maybe I’ll actually be able to write it down, that would be cool.

***

My brother has to go back to Canada, since he's now graduated. I'm going to miss him terribly.

***

We’re moving back to Canada. Denver has been okay, but I miss home. Not that I fit in there, either, but I don’t know, its just better. Meanwhile, the gender stuff is getting so bad I honestly don’t know how to handle it. The only way I can describe it is to compare it to that “Alien” movie. I can feel HER pushing from inside me, trying to get out, and I can only imagine the mess it would make if she succeeds ...

*****

Well, its time to pack up, and say goodbye to this place. Maybe the change will help me get through this stuff, cause I’m out of ideas.

****

I almost died today, thanks to my step dad. We were driving back to Alberta, and my mom was sick, and trying to keep up to him in her car. He refused to let her take a rest, and it almost cost us our lives. She was just about asleep behind the wheel, and he pulled into a side road to a gas station, and then pulled back out again.

She made the side road, but trying to get back to the main one she ended up in a ditch after doing like 100 km an hour. the ditch was deep and we almost flipped over, but somehow, she managed to get us back on the road. The car is badly damaged because there was a barbed-wire fence along the ditch, but at least she’s alive. I’m alive too, which I have mixed feelings about. But I guess God isn’t done with me just yet.

****

Night Entries; Chapter 4

Here is the last chapter of "Night Entries". It doesn't have the tough stuff of the earlier ones, and it ends on a hopeful note. Thanks to all those who read and commented.

Well, we’re home, sort of. Trouble is, our house has been rented out, so we cant actually live there. For now we are in a motel, doesn’t that sound like fun? I have to spend like a hour on the bus to get to school, but oh well.

****

Can we get any further from my school? We left the motels and now are in a place literally on the other side of town! I’m on the bus for almost two hours every day!

*****

Finally, in our own place again. It looks like my mom and my step-dad are making up. I honestly don’t understand how she can forgive him so easily. Meanwhile, I had a chance to meet John’s friend Alex, and he seems like a good guy. He’s got this Saturday night session of a game called Dungeons and Dragons, it sounds like it could be a lot of fun.

****
I found out Alex cross-dresses. Its weird, apparently he goes out in public and everything. He even showed me pictures of him in a dress at an event downtown. He gave me some magazines that deal with guys who dress up as girls, and its interesting stuff. Somehow, I don’t think I’m the same as the guys in the mags, though. It sounds like for them, dressing up is just for fun, or for sex. Me, I dont care about sex, and it doesnt feel like just fun. But at least now I know there is some support out there.

****

I had the best weekend ever, diary! My mom and my step-dad went away, so I was alone. Also, my neighbor left me the keys to her place so I could feed her cat for her while she’s on vacation, so I had the run of both my house and hers. So I spent the weekend in a dress, and felt so much better for it.

****

I’ve found some people to hang out with, and I have mixed feelings about it. On the one hand, it feels good to not be totally alone all the time, but on the other, I feel sure that they would reject me if they knew about the girl stuff. Ah, well.

****

I wish I could have a girlfriend, Diary, but what girl would want a guy who feels more like a girl than a guy? Love is a luxury only “normal” people can afford.

****

I need a girl name. All the mags talk about having a girl name, even Alex uses “Brenda” when he’s dressed up. My mom once told me that if I had been born a girl, my name would be Dorothy, so maybe I should go with that.

****

Diary, which me is real? the male me, the one I show to everyone? or Dorothy, the girl who is stuck inside and unable to get out? And if Dorothy is the real me, what do I do about that?

****

Last night, I read about this woman, named Christine Jorgensen, who was actually born a guy and had surgery to change into a girl. I had no idea such a thing was possible! Am I like her, Diary? I don’t feel like the guys in the cross-dressing mags, that’s for sure.

*****

Can you believe it? I’m a senior now. Boy, the time has flown by here. Soon, I’ll be graduating, and trying to figure out what to do with the rest of my life. And How Dorothy fits in with that.

****

Well, well, well. Hello Diary. Its been a long time. I thought I had lost you many years ago. Its kinda funny to read the entries now, and think how mixed up I was back then. I wish I could talk to my younger self, tell her its going to be okay, that although the road ahead will be difficult, she will one day be me, living and working as Dorothy, with friends and family who support her. To think, I could have missed all this if I had killed myself all those years ago. I guess that goes to show you never know what the future holds. But I have more hope for it than I have had before, and that’s good enough for me today. Thanks, Diary, for being there with me. Good night for now.