Letter 3 - My Reality

My Reality

Dad and Mom,

Good day! I hope you’re having a good day indeed. I wanted to try to tell you a little bit about me, and explain a few things, in the hope it will lead to greater understanding. It is my desire for these letters to help you gain insight into what life has held for me. I know this is new to you. I understand that it was surprising. I want to try to help you process what you’ve been told. I want us to have a better relationship, which I hope will result from this.  

I know what we’ve told you was confusing, and difficult to understand. I want there to be clarity where there is confusion. The only way I can think of to help with the confusion is to try to be as transparent with you as possible. It’s a bit of a scary thing to do. I have to trust you to receive what I tell you. I have no choice but to trust you. This is important to me, and I think it’s important to you too. I think you will recognize elements of things you remember, in my narrative. So, let’s look at what my reality has been.

For many years, I knew something was wrong. I knew I was different, but I didn’t understand how I was different, or why. It was a concept I had no way to gain an understanding of as a young person. Though I wasn’t sure what was wrong, I knew things weren’t right. I felt I wasn’t what people thought I was. It was like some sort of crazy science fiction show where time has been altered while some people were traveling through time, and no one knows there has been a change except for the time travelers. To everyone else, nothing seems to be different. But to the time travelers, things are massively different than they should be. Maybe at first, they don’t notice much, and then they notice more and more things that don’t make sense. 

The more I did things that boys did, the more out of place things seemed. So, I tried harder to be into the things boys are into and do the things that boys did. The harder I tried, the more jarring the dissonance. It was at best awkward and was often demoralizing, disconcerting, or even frightening. When I did the things boys like, I felt fake. I felt like I was pretending. I’d hear boys talk about things and wonder why their experience didn’t sound like my experience. It didn’t make sense to me. I felt I must not be trying hard enough. So, I tried harder. Tried to do everything the boys did. This only left me feeling more of a failure than ever. So, I tried harder still.

At a young age, I learned it was best to conform. I learned to do what was expected. You watch people on TV and in person, who were even a little bit odd. You see them being mocked, made fun of, and ignored. Even more, you see it in real life all the time too. You hear people around you use racial slurs. You hear horrible things said about gay people and others. You hear jokes made to mock people who are a bit different. More than once, I saw boys in school or in Boy Scouts who were suspected of being gay ganged up on and punched and kicked by other boys. Being bluntly honest, I was assaulted twice in middle school, for being too “girly”. Gracious, any guy with an earring was even a target for ridicule. 

There was a gay boy who committed suicide when I was in middle school because he was so horribly bullied. He couldn’t take it anymore. The things I heard said in school about him afterward were awful. I never forgot it. So, you learn at a young age what being different really means. You learn quickly, being different is something that cannot be done. You cannot be different, or you’ll regret it.

As my parents, you gave me the option of going to church camp or Boy Scout camp. I chose Boy Scout camp and told you it was because it was more fun. It honestly was okay, but church camp was awesome. I chose Boy Scout camp because I felt I was failing so badly at being who I was supposed to be. I suppose I hoped going to Boy Scout camp would help me be more manly. The thing is, once we were there, I was literally left alone. In a way, this was a blessing. Mr. VanTilburgh, the Scoutmaster, literally let me go do whatever I wanted to do. I didn’t want to go with the boys typically. Most of them hung out at the pool all day. The last thing I wanted to do was strip naked and be inspected by a counselor for bad cuts, etc., and then spend the rest of the day shirtless in front of a bunch of guys. I typically avoided the swimming test, because without passing the test, you couldn’t participate in a lot of the pool activities. So, I roamed by myself for most of each day, especially when I was older. I spent my days hiking or sitting quietly somewhere, reading or thinking. I always made sure I was back in time for meals though. The chapel was a good place to sit privately also.

My favorite toys as a kid? The Lone Ranger action figure with his horse, my stuffed Pink Panther, Army men, and a Big Jim (I think that’s what he was called) action figure. Why? Because with them, I could play with dolls safely. I could let down my guard a bit. There was a toy set I was thrilled to get, called Navarone Mountain. It was a war playset, with lots of Army men. This set let me play with Army men in all sorts of situations and not seem out of place. I felt it was odd though because the playset I got had Japanese soldiers, with the battle it supposedly reenacted being against the Germans. Anyway, I decided the Japanese soldiers were women (because they were smaller), and the American soldiers were the men. The mountain became a large mansion, you see, with 5 floors and an elevator. The cannons came off of the gun mounts, which transformed into balconies. The soldiers? Well, they were guests at a ball. Those guys and girls had all sorts of fun.

 I also had a lot of super tall army men, somewhere between 6 and 8 inches tall as I recall. I played with them a lot too. Those poor guys did all sorts of things, for years. I got them from Grandpa Bell at his auction, and also got a few more at a store at one point. I eventually had to get rid of the Lone Ranger, and Big Jim, but the large Army men were kept until I couldn’t justify keeping them. I used the fact that they came from Grandpa Bell as justification for keeping them until it seemed like I wasn’t being convincing any more, and then they went as well. I resisted selling them for many years because as long as I had still those, I could play with dolls and not look like I was playing with dolls. What’s more manly than soldiers?

I assume the Lone Ranger moveable action figure makes sense, at this point. I used to grab him and David’s Tonto and they’d ride horses together and have sleepovers. I used to construct these huge battlefields with Army men, and in the summer, fight wars over a period of days. I suppose this was the military, already calling to me. But if one was observant, the commanders were usually off to the side, having a quiet social gathering, drinking hot chocolate (not really, of course) with each other while their troops waited. Certain soldiers were designated as women by me too, and those ones never seemed to be killed.

Video games were my friends too. There was a video arcade downtown I liked going to. It was a long bike ride, but still, I went. I’d stop there on the way to the library, or wherever. I always selected female characters in the video games, because with them, I felt more comfortable. I wasn’t comfortable being the guys. I liked being the girl in the game. It felt more normal. When the family was together all us cousins would play outside, and the girls always wanted to play house, while the boys always wanted to play war. I wanted to play house. But I didn’t dare say so, because the boys would have made fun of me for sure. So all of us played war, because that’s what boys did in that time. 

Brian and David always played Army or Marines, but I was always Navy. That, you see, was because the Navy typically didn’t fight up close, but from a distance, and if I had to play war, I didn’t want to have to wrestle and fake punch, etc. Then there were the stuffed animals. I had several stuffed animals, and my stuffed Pink Panther and I were inseparable. That’s because he was cute.

When I was home alone, I would make a skirt out of a towel, and wear it with a t-shirt. I didn’t dare get a towel out while David was home, because he’d tell. More than once, I barely had time to get it off and shorts or pants back on, before you came in the house. Ever wonder why I was often in the bathroom when you came home?

When we went to the Lutheran Store, I would sometimes try to slip away (it wasn’t easy to do) into the shoe section, where I’d look at the women’s sandals and pumps. I didn’t dare pick any up. I did so once, and a woman told me to get out of there. I did. I remember being scared she’d tell you. I guess she didn’t, because nothing was ever said.

One thing I have learned over the years is these things are not at all unusual things for a transgender girl to do. They speak to the internal conflict we experience. We try to figure out what’s going on. We try to make sense of everything.

You didn’t know what I was experiencing because I kept it bottled up. I kept it bottled up for several reasons, the primary reason being I was convinced there was something wrong with me. There had to be! It was my fault you didn’t know. I was terrified to let people know. The few people I tried to open conversation with shut it down quickly. I’ll talk a bit more about this in another letter. I didn’t know what to do with all this.

When puberty hit, things went from bad to worse. My body was doing all sorts of things that were the opposite of who I am. Looking in the mirror went from being uncomfortable to being distressing.  I hated the changes, and my deepening voice made me feel awful. I focused on playing soccer because playing a sport was a very “guy” thing to do. Teen boys are pretty demanding in what they want to see from their peers. I often got mocked, pushed around, etc., because I didn’t live up to the “standard”. So, I tried (sometimes desperately) to be more masculine so I could fit in. I was afraid to do otherwise.

In adulthood, I went into the Army. I felt a pull to go into the military which I didn’t understand. I didn’t know it then, but a lot of transgender people go into the military or become police officers or firefighters or construction workers. We tend to do things where it just so happens people don’t question who we are. Men in the Army are manly, right? Mind you, I was pretty good at Soldiering. I went to Air Assault School when I was with the 101st Airborne, which at the time wasn’t a pleasant or easy school at all. In my young adulthood, I even was part of a unit that made a short deployment which didn’t make the news, to fight an enemy most people didn’t know we fought, and we did well at it. Later in life, I deployed to Iraq twice.

I was given awards and commendations, was the 101st Airborne Division Soldier of the Quarter once and on more than one occasion got handshakes from Generals. I was even named the 3rd Infantry Division (called the Rock of the Marne) “Marne Hero of the Month” for my performance of duty while deployed to Iraq, and I wasn’t even a member of the 3rd Infantry at any time in my career. They were simply impressed with what I was doing. But I could tell I wasn’t like the guys around me. Despite this, it was amazing (even to me) the stuff I did in combat. I did stuff you see in movies. I sometimes found myself thinking, in the middle of something “how in the world did I end up here, doing THIS!?!?” Honestly, if I told you some of the things I did for our country, you probably wouldn’t believe me for a moment, even though they’d be true. This is how my being transgender is, too. It might be hard to believe, but it’s real, nonetheless.

As I pondered all this over the years, I remembered the times things felt wrong and out of place, and what all I had experienced. I started to notice common themes in experiences. This led me to examine those themes, and that led me to ask some hard questions of myself. Then things started falling into place. I came face to face with the issue, which was though I looked like a guy outside, I wasn’t a guy inside. This scared me and made me want to hide. So, I pushed the thought away and told myself I was crazy or mistaken. If you push something away hard enough, ignore it hard enough, you can get to a point where you feel it is going away. It never really is, of course. Eventually, it got to the point where I couldn’t fool myself anymore. For my health, and that of my wife, I had to be honest with myself. So I was. 

So, here I am. I know you think I think I feel like a girl. But this isn’t quite accurate. I don’t feel like a girl. I actually, really, literally experience myself as a girl. Even if at times I wish I didn’t, I do. Even if you wish I didn’t, I do.

When I told you, I was terrified. My hands were shaking, and I’m sure my voice was shaking too. I was pretty sure how you would react, and you reacted much like I expected. I knew there was little chance you’d say something like “Okay, thanks for telling us. Can we go to dinner now?” but I admit, I’d hoped. But, I know you were shocked and hurt, and likely afraid. Trust me, you weren’t as afraid as I was! Unfortunately, when we left that night, I felt like the person I am was not loved by you. I felt rejected.

I realize you quite possibly think I’ve been foolish. I know many Christians say things like “It’s just a choice”. It isn’t, but let’s assume it is a choice for a moment. This would be no different from choosing to be a dental assistant, or to buy a car, or to be a housewife, or to go to New York on vacation. Making a choice doesn’t make a person a bad person. But in any event, being transgender wasn’t a choice. It is said that transgender people “identify” as the opposite gender. This is probably a good way to describe it. But this doesn’t imply I think I’m something I’m not, even though the concept is often mocked in the media. Rather, it means I have identified (figured out) something important. What my body looked like isn’t who I actually was, or am. The only decision – the only choice – involved with this was deciding to no longer hide. When my time comes to go home to Jesus, I refuse to have as a regret that I failed to live as me.

No one makes a choice to be transgender. Despite what James Dobson, Greg Locke, and some others would have people believe, it’s not something people do because it’s trendy or cool. There’s absolutely nothing cool or trendy about perhaps losing your family and certainly facing anger, discrimination, and danger. It isn’t trendy or cool to put your job at risk. It isn’t trendy or fun or cool to have your boss tell you he’s afraid he will go to hell simply for employing you. It isn’t trendy or fun or cool to risk being evicted from your home simply because the landlord doesn’t want to rent to transgender people. It isn’t trendy or fun or cool to have a doctor or nurse refuse medical care for you simply because of who you are. It isn’t trendy or fun or cool to have a hairdresser or barber refuse to give you a haircut because of who you are. It isn’t trendy or cool to have people you’ve been friends with for years decide that you’re not someone they want to be friends with, simply because of who you are.

Have you ever heard of someone volunteering to be a leper? It doesn’t happen. My wife’s family, except her older brother and her sister, have shut us out of their lives. Yet, they don’t know there are more of their own family members who are LGBT (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender), who simply haven’t told them about it yet. These family members won’t be telling them, either, because they’ve now seen how they would be treated. They won’t say anything about themselves, because they don’t want to lose everything. But my wife and I know about their reality, because we know what to look for, and we care enough to see it.

So this is what my reality has been. I didn’t come and talk with you about me because I wanted to cause you grief or concern or embarrassment or anguish. Transgender people “come out” because they’ve reached a point where they simply can no longer stand to live as someone they’re not. It’s heart-wrenching. It’s devastating. It’s a moment in life that I cannot possibly convey the feeling of. It’s something I would never, ever, ever simply choose. I came to talk with you about me because, well, it’s me.  It’s important to me for you to know me for who I am.

I appreciate you reading what I have had to say. I hope these letters are helping bridge the gap. Have a great day!

Addison