First of all, full disclosure: I’m American by birth but was raised in Canada by my Canadian mother and her British-born husband (hence my love for Monty Python). I grew up there, I went to school there, I even served in their military for 10 years (more on that later). But even though I loved Canada, I never felt at home. There was always this nagging feeling of “I’m an American, goddammit!” and even though my black, jazz musician father had split from our lives when I was knee-high to a grasshopper, I always wanted to know more about his experiences of living in America. He left in the 70’s and moved to Europe where his music was more accepted (“America, love it or leave it? See ya” he always used to say).
I moved to the US from Vancouver in 2009 after Obama won the election, and when Bushism was thoroughly repudiated by the nation. I thought America had finally come to its senses and had cast off the yoke of Republican rule.
Boy was I wrong.
I started transitioning in 2012 while living in Berkeley after the intense feeling of gender dysphoria became too difficult to ignore. What really pushed me over the edge was seeing this speech given by one of the directors of my favorite movie of all time, The Matrix:
I watched that speech several times and I cried. And cried. And cried some more. Here was someone whom I had previously looked up to as a talented director laying herself bare and describing her own life experience as a closeted transgender woman. This was MY experience she was talking about. All the shame, all the hiding, all the fear, all the suicidal thoughts. All of it. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing, that someone so famous and talented was also transgender.
After that I couldn’t get enough. I started finding all kinds of YouTube videos of transgender people talking about their experiences with transitioning, lots of before/after videos, etc. Of course most were stunningly gorgeous so that gave me a slightly skewed version of reality. But it was enough because the prevailing message was just how HAPPY they were. Happy to be living authentically, happy to be FREE of that burning itch that could never be scratched, happy to finally be WOMEN, at long last.
Because that’s what being trans is like. It’s like having a burning itch inside of you that constantly scratches at your brain, nagging at you to scratch it, driving you slowly crazy until you make the final, fateful decision that everything has led you to:
Transition, or suicide.
I had it all planned out already. I had chosen the place. I had determined the methodology. I would drive down the I-80 near Emeryville and veer my car into the supports that held up the pedestrian bridge that crossed the freeway. I would make it look like an accident. But it would be final. It would be all over. I would be free, at last.
***
All my life I tried to be male. Nobody knew about the internal anguish that I was living with. Growing up I hated team sports but in college discovered rock climbing, and I threw myself into that activity as far as one could throw themselves. I competed. I climbed multi-pitch routes in Yosemite. I climbed overhangs in Arizona. I had climbing friends and community. I RAGED IT on the wall at the climbing gyms in my city. My life revolved around climbing. As a distraction, it turned out. Because when I was up there, hanging off my fingernails facing the next move on a 5.12a, nothing else mattered. The intensity of focus, the skill, the determination not to fall and face failure, the ability to look DEATH in the face. It all appealed to me. Yes there were women but it was still a male-dominated sport at the time. And I was fucking HARDCORE. It was the first time I was actually good at something and it really mattered to me. However, this was before I took my Combat Leadership Course where I would really be tested.
I joined the Army when I was 20. It was a Reserve unit and I was still in University, but the idea of having steady employment really appealed to me. But the real reason why I joined was so that I could receive “Man training”. My stepfather always believed that I was weak, a sissy, uncoordinated, and nerdy. And boy he let me know it. He was British so he was raised in the strict educational system of post-war England where you had to be tough, or by God they would beat it into you. So beat into me he tried. Violently. Abusively. With his words and his hands. I was never good enough, never strong enough, never WORTHY in his eyes. So when I could, I left home.
But the world is a cold and cruel place for those of us who don’t fit in. And if I was going to fit in, then I needed some training. So I went down to the Recruiting Office and signed up. I ran the aptitude test and they told me I could pick any trade I wanted. I chose “Communications and Electronics” because I was a nerd and wanted to play with cool tech. I became a “Radio/Teletype Operator R214” and shipped off to Camp Vernon for General Military Training a few months later. And that’s where I learned what I was made of.
What I discovered there was just how wrong my stepfather was. I wasn’t weak. I wasn’t a sissy. I may have been a tall, skinny kid but goddammit, I was STRONG. I persevered. I shot two-inch groupings with the then newly issued C7 rifle (same as the M16A2 but with full auto). I never fell out during ruck marches or PT. I never flinched whenever my drill instructors screamed in my face. I wasn’t an MIR Commando (Medical Inspection Room) like some of the other recruits. I passed GMT and went on to take my QL3 Radio Course, which I passed easily. Of the new recruits at my units, I was the only one that stuck it out and I ended up serving 10 years in the end.
But my Combat Leadership Course. Holy shit. That course nearly broke me. It was the hardest thing I’d ever done in my life, and of the 30 candidates that started it, only 9 of us passed. It was a cold winter in Ontario and after 6 weeks of intense training in garrison at CFB Kingston, we shipped off to CFB Petawawa for a 10 day FTX after three feet of snow just fell.
Ten days of sheer hell and misery. Ten days of snow, frozen rain, slush, mud, enemy forces, getting attacked in the middle of the night, digging trenches, going on recce patrols, leading section assaults, fire and movement, escape and evasion, all the infantry silly bugger shit that us radio operators rarely get to experience. And through it all, no sleep due to attrition. Too many of our platoon kept getting injured, sick, or just plain up and quit. One of our candidates was buried alive when her trench collapsed and we had to dig her out from a six foot deep trench (she topped the course in the end).
But through it all I persevered. I passed the course and became an NCO at my unit a few months later. They gave me a radio detachment to command and I became the best damned Det Cmdr that I could be. Other units specifically requested my detachment for their exercises. I served with the Infantry, the Armoured Corps, the MP’s, and the Combat Engineers. Officers loved me because I always kept a fresh pot of gourmet coffee brewing in my radio truck when it was 30 below. I went back to Kingston and became an instructor myself. I earned a Marksman Level 1 and was one of the best shots in my unit.
I was a badass and it. Was. Awesome.
But that goddamned itch never went away.
***
To be continued
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
Comments are closed on this story.