the blue bike, walmart, and the montreal canadiens of 1993

Hi

I was in walmart today and wow I went into shock and barely could stop the tears from flowing down my face when I was a young girl with a very pretty blue bike. The incident gave me an immediate flashback of when I asked my mom for a girls bike that was baby blue just like the one I saw the girl pushing at walmart today. 

What did I think? That will never be me but it could have been me. but in my family if they really knew who I was and I had told them I would have been punished via corporal punishment more than I was already receiving at home. I am unsure of how my friends would have responded in the 1970’s since there were no known lesbian or gay children at the high school.

The only time I had ever seen girls like me was on the television where a tennis player Renee Richard came out to tell her story. I was quickly corrected by my mother that she was a he. So I know how my family would respond to such a “freak” in their family.  My brother asked me I was listening to that queer on the radio? I was listen to Elton John and when my brother made the comment my father laughed.  I said I just like his music. So it was not hard to conclude what others in my community and family would think or do to me. 

Then immediately after I walked passed the girl I headed to the sports section of walmart because I was looking for a foam football to use to stimulate my brain and use my left hand.  I know what I am trying to do but at 55 yrs old I am running into a time issue that no one can beat. I am trying to recreate my childhood so I can move forward and experience what I should have been encouraged to do as a child and this would include using my light hand to play baseball.  I even remembered today that I use to try to use my left hand to throw the baseball.  Every experience opens up doors to the past and that is hard to deal with in the real world while simply completing such task as shopping. 

I and others will never know my true potential because I was denied a childhood of growing up a girl because I am different.  So the way I talk, walk, think, act was directed by my family and society to the point I did not care what you did to me which left me clinically depressed to the point I ran away to the marines. That is not the action of a sane person but one that isolated and moved out of their parent’s home because they were not wanted nor respected.  This is why respect to this day is so important to me.

So I know now that I talk much softer, walked more feminine and my  mother and father actually not only told me but coached me and made me change the behavior to a more acceptable male type. I threw the baseball like a girl my father would say and he would taunt me so finally I got so pissed off I threw it as hard as I could and he would say there you go.  So I did boy things with so much anger behind and the anger and hatred was motivated by my father and mother who demanded  male characteristics.  Basically this is where I began to love to play football, baseball and basketball just to beat the men and that was the real goal.  None of this was necessary and the older I got the more I isolated because the more I understood who I was even in my mid teens.  Once I was able to buy my own stereo because of working I lived most of my time at home in my bedroom listening to music.

The key to what I was thinking was in the songs I listened to for example Helen Reddy’s “ I am woman,” Olivia Newton John “ Mellow,”  Kiss “ flaming youth” and most of all the Runaways with joan jett “ cherry bomb.”  I was in my own world most of the time and wore women’s thongs. I would hide the thongs and put the thongs on in the school band room restroom.  The only time I did not wear my thongs at school was when I had gym that day and I changed into no underwear to made the trip home so I was not caught with women’s thongs on at home.  I knew who I was as early as 13 yrs old and before that I knew I was different but I could not put my finger on it.  Then at 14 yrs old in 10^th grade biology we studied about transgenderism and then I knew I was not alone. the puzzle of who I am was solved but what to do was another issue about it. 

I think over and over how much more effective I would have been if people would have accepted me?  we will never know because the time is lost forever.  People say to me you have today but if I had been born with a vagina or in my teens to have surgery I could have felt between my legs long ago.

I know why I masturbated so much over the yrs before hormones and the answer is very simply it numbed the pain. I would go into my fantasy world and I dreamed of being with a woman but oddly enough not as a man. I thought for yrs that I thought of myself in my fantasies as a man but I did not.  So today I have no masturbated for nearly one yr at this point and why? I know what is between my legs is not a vagina and I don’t care if I ever have sex again until I have surgery. the only possible scenario I can conceive is pleasuring a woman but then how could she please me as I cry and cry?  This is a fucken nightmare and people wanna think that hormones make it all better. Hormones make it worse because you now know that your body and brain do not match. So you want surgery and will do what you need to do to get it and that means you will consider prostitution and that is where I am today.

Everyone says no no Rachel on prostitution. Have you any idea as I cry how bad each day is and the pain is worsening by the day exponentially.  How and what do I use to cope with this enormous pain? One word food and I have gained 80 lbs after losing over 100 lbs in my initial stages of hormones. now I need to lose most of the 80lbs to have surgery to be on the safe side to ensure the best possible outcome of surgery.

But now my face does not match a feminine imagine etched in my brain so I plan to have srs, facial etc so I can at least look somewhat feminine.  This is a nightmare unlike any I have even read about.  The lies and down playing what hormones does to the body by the trans and medical community is insane.  It is a fact you are in the fight of you life where others have failed, attempted suicide, committed suicide but above all never talk to anyone publicly after any surgery.  what is sane about any of this?

I am going on and on and I need to somehow focus and move forward while the hormones increase by the day or second while funding surgery and planning  a life after surgery.  this is why others have failed or they have decided to not talk. I can understand that the whole process takes so much emotional energy out of you that you simply have nothing left. So when the next girl starts her journey she is starting from scratch just like you. That is the sad part about the trans community and to that I have had responses it is the best we can do. I say we can do better.  The problem is I am carrying a cross that is so heavy that one day it may crush me and I could mental break or attempt suicide. anyone that thinks this is not possible is not looking at hormones from a realistic prospective.

I am looking for things to motivate me but the depth of this challenge is unlike anything in sports or sales etc.  It does remind me of the montreal canadiens hockey team in the 1993 stanley cup playoffs. In the playoffs the canadiens won 20 games and 10 of them were in overtime and what is so special is the team won all of this overtime games which is a record number in the playoffs. But in the final series with the Kings (los Angeles)  in the second game we were losing and the coach for the canadiens asked for a call on the kings player’s stick that was too curved. If he was right it was a man advantage for montreal if he was wrong it was a one man advantage for the kings. He was right and montreal had a one man advantage but the coach went for broke and pulled the goalie to give the canadiens a two man advantage. The canadiens tied the score up with seconds left and won the game in overtime. this is how my life is now where I am going for broke every day and when I go for surgery I am pulling out all the stops ( my goalie) and praying the surgeon in Thailand can stop the emotional pain and win this battle in the last period of the game of my life. I have no other option at 55 yrs old but to go for broke.

Thank you

rachel