As any of you know who have spoken to me personally, my memory sucks. I can barely remember my best friend’s name, let alone their birthday or anniversary.
I have virtually no memories going back before the age of 13, perhaps I’ve blocked out most of them, who knows? I can remember tiny little bits of information, like what toys I liked or what games I enjoyed playing, but as for actual events… only a scant few have survived the morass that is my brain. Even then, most of the memories that survived are negative ones, which is really frustrating considering I know I did not have the worst childhood possible!
Warning: this is a long post. It is full of my heartache and pain. Feel free to skip it if you don’t want to know where I come from.
I “remember” things occasionally, which I do not know if are real or created memories… so for this history, I will attempt to only include memories which I have verified with at least one other source.
I was born in Beaver. This is one of my favorite truth jokes. Everyone can say that statement with tongue in cheek and laugh at their cleverness, but as for me, I was honestly born in Beaver, PA. I have no real memories of living in PA save for I remember something about flower petals and a hill. At around 1-2 years old, we moved to Erie, MI. The only memory I have of that house is popping small explosive caps on the back porch with my full brother. Sometime between then and when I enrolled in Kindergarten, we moved to a tiny town called Newport in Michigan. I have vague recollection of this move, but nothing concrete. Something about transformers and kids who used to live there before us.
No real memories of starting school or any junk like that that most people usually have. I remember enjoying thoroughly playing barbies with one of the neighborhood girls until her parents started asking why a boy was playing with the barbies. That was pretty much the end of that blossoming friendship. At this point in my life my mother relatively frequently told me she wished she had had a little girl and not me. I snapped back at her one time that she could trade me to the neighbors and have their little girl. (She had better toys anyway, so why not go live there?) After this, she only rarely brought up that she wished I had been a girl, but regardless of what she says, this is one of the few things that is imprinted in my head so firmly that it is everywhere in there.
Going through school, I remember I never quite got along with the boys; I always had an easier time making friends with girls. I “knew” that I was a boy and couldn’t use the girls’ room or anything like that, which did always make me a little sad, I suppose. All of my friends got to go in in groups, but not me. When I was in either fourth or fifth grade, the librarian was so happy to announce that the school had just gotten in the American Girl collection books. I loved the hell out of those books. None of the other boys wanted to read them, and only a handful of girls… but I loved them. I used to fantasize about being Kirsten or Samantha. Even Felicity would have been awesome; I did not, however, want to be Molly and have glasses like my older brother did. (Silly, yes, but whatever).
After those books, I fell in love with Anne of Green Gables and Island of the Blue Dolphins. It never occurred to me that people might think it strange that every book I loved had a female protagonist rather than a male. Hell, I never even thought about it to be honest. I just enjoyed reading about women and girls, not men and boys. But alas, there was nobody around me who would have interpreted this as my being female inside… I was just “gay” as far as the other boys were concerned. Which made no sense to me, since boys disgusted me at an almost primal level. When it came to comic books, I read Lady Death and the like instead of Superman and his steroid-pumped kin.
My first real professional heroine that I can recall was Sally Ride. One of the first ladies in space, her book ‘To Space and Back’ was an inspiration to me. It also upset me a little bit, probably because I knew I was not a woman like her. Following her, I envied Laura Bush and Jackie Kennedy… I always got ridiculed for admiring the outfits of the wives.
In Middle School (6-9 Grades) we were given a small number of elective choices, that is to say they let us pick between two classes: Wood Shop, and Home Economics. Needless to say, I chose Home Ec, much to the joy of my male classmates who teased me about this for at least a year. By the time High School (9-12) rolled around, I really didn’t give a damn about my education anymore, and chose mostly English courses because I enjoyed reading and writing. I also took as many Art classes as I could without dropping my gradepoint too much. I excelled in only two things during those years: band and English classes.
I had my first “girlfriend” during High School. It was “appropriate and normal” to have a girlfriend, so I asked out the most demure person in the band, and she said yes. We went out like twice and hung out around school. She eventually told me I was just too perfect and went her own way. What I read into this looking back is I was too much like her, too feminine and demure and she wanted someone controlling and abusive like her father.
After being expelled for reading banned books and frightening the other students with my “differentness,” I decided that I somehow had to prove to the world that I was, indeed, “a man.” I was just tired of being ridiculed and everything else that comes from being different in an intolerant system, I suppose. So I signed up for the United States Marine Corps…. needless to say that did not go too well. I was stronger, smarter, and had greater muscle endurance than anyone else there since I had only 0.5% body fat and had been in the marching band. But, I had never learned the art of running… so when they told me to run, I couldn’t. I watched several incidents that I would rather not repeat to the general public that led me to believe I was better off dead than being a Marine, so I tried to hang myself. This was enough to get me excused from military service with the charge of Fraudulent Enlistment… how dare I not tell them that I suffered from depression.
Following this emasculation and even further ridicule, I fell in with the “wrong crowd” so to speak. I started hanging out with the other social outcasts in the park; the wiccans, and other pagans, as well as the random people who just didn’t fit in with society as per the norm. Through this circle of people, I came to meet my now ex-wife, who showed some interest in me sexually. This was different, so I latched on and we got married. The marriage fell to cinders before it even started building, but I was too self-hating at that point to even realize it. When she finally booted me out of the house, I did some soul searching.
It was during this time that I first thought that I might be a woman on the inside. I had met someone while I was engaged to my ex- who was going through transition, however, and this person was not a nice person. This turned my brain off the idea that this was a truly plausible path that one could travel down and that only crazy people did it. But I did do some research and found out about surgical requirements et cetera. I had made friends with one lovely young woman, who saw the woman in me, and had said that she would be my girlfriend and help me through the transition and be with me afterwards. I was still married to and hoping to patch things up with my wife though, so I did not accept the idea. I pushed her away.
Then I moved back home with my parents after a time, realizing that my marriage was shot to hell. Having pushed away anyone who cared for me in an attempt to stay loyal to the soon to be ex wife, I found myself desperately seeking human contact. So I signed up for a stupid website called hot or not. Basically you look at pics of people and rate them superficially based on their looks. Then they added a ‘meet me’ feature, and it is through that that I met S. I thought she was super hot, even though everyone else only rated her like a 4. So I clicked that I would like to meet her.
Things went crazy, I converted to Christianity, and my ex wife said she wanted a divorce. So I filed, and was awarded the divorce. I was not happy about this, I firmly believe marriage should be forever. But I had S to comfort me, and our relationship had escalated into a sexual one. I forgot all about wanting to be a woman in an attempt to be the “man” that S thought I was. I was depressed, and stayed that way. After a while, I didn’t notice I was depressed, and then I even thought that the lesser depression days were happy times. Amazing how our minds work, isn’t it?
I know now that being with S was probably a gigantic mistake. But she is the one who enticed me to move to TN, where I met Ishti, so I suppose it ended well. The relationship with S was an abusive one, I can see that now. She was not very nice to me, but I thought she was the best I could ever hope to get. She didn’t beat me or anything, but she tossed me aside like offal quite frequently and then when she needed sex she would come back. This reaffirmed in my head that my cock was the only thing anyone would ever be interested in, and thus my hatred of it deepened. But, since I believed that the rest of me was useless, I didn’t even seek help dealing with the hatred, I just internalized it.
After 7 years of this off and on bullcrap, S finally cast me aside “for good,” though she still came back for sex a few times, just never anything more. But she said she was tired of my depression, and tired of being the only contributor to the relationship. Never mind that I was the one who discarded my family and friends to move to where she was. Again, I was the worthless one. Then, I met Ishti on okcupid. She was interested in me.
“Knowing” as I did that women would only be interested if I was manly, this was the air that I tried to put on. I failed, a lot, but still I was a “man,” and she fell in love with me. I believed that who I was being was who I was, and had no idea why it depressed me, so I hid the depression as best as I could, Ishti made me more happy than anyone else ever had. She always asked about me, and how my day was, etc. I had long ago forgotten my desire to be a woman, but it still burned inside me slowly. Whenever we made love, I felt a pain inside, never understanding why. The only times when I did not feel that pain were when I pleased her in ways other than penetratively, details omitted to try and keep this pg13, but let’s just say when I loved her as a woman could love her, I didn’t feel dirty. I did not understand why I felt so dirty, and never wanted to share that feeling, because it seemed odd even to me, let alone someone else.
Then we moved to NJ, and she started working at her current job. They had a ‘sensitivity training ‘ for dealing with LGBTQ members of the synagogue, and Ishti shared what she learned with me. It was like a wrecking ball smashed down all the walls that I had apparently built around my inner woman all at once. I collapsed internally. I was a royal mess for days, and finally told Ishti that I thought I wanted to live as a woman. After that, I started this blog, so you know the rest of the story.
So that’s me, in a nutshell. I’m screwed up, I’m a mess. But I love with all that I have, and I want to learn to love me. This is a part of me trying to do that, by coming to face my history through the true lens of my heart, through the eyes of Chaya.
If you have made it through this post, I sincerely hope you have either questions or thoughts. Please share them with me in the comments. Nothing is too personal, at least nothing I can think of now.
Love and hugs,
Chaya bat Maria
Transcending Chaya 