By Laura Grace Holtsberry
Take a moment and if there happen to be a few people around you, or maybe you can take time to remember the images of those you know, or maybe try this exercise the next time you can be with your friends; stop and study the faces and the bodies of all those you see. It should not take long to discover how incredibly different they are. We may be similar in many ways but there is no mistaking how incredibly unique each and every person is. This uniqueness even extends into family groups even to those who are identical twins.
However, as you look at them, even upon those voices that are so familiar to you, do you really know them? As we look upon their bodies, their outward appearance, and as we listen to the sound of their voices, we make so many decisions about a person’s worth, their roles and how we shall treat them. Yet to be honest, what we see tells us very little about who this person really is. We see what they want us to see, and if what we see is what we expect to see, then we will pay scant attention to anything else. I am reminded of the Eddy Arnold lyric made famous by Ray Charles “You’re just a friend, that’s all you’ve ever been, but you don’t know me”
What we do see are merely tools of the mind. A body cleverly animated by its unseen spirit and soul that lies hidden behind its eyes. In reality everyone is a mystery of sorts as their very being is hidden from our view. To really know anyone takes some time, a lot of effort, and even more patience. The sum total of our being is not determined by our body but by our brain. Your brain is just as unique and even more special than your body. So assuming you know who a person really is, is an exercise of futility. The very act of dropping your veil of secrecy and letting another into your world can only be done when a relationship feels safe and when you are certain the other can be trusted. Those of us who are transgendered and have this disconnect between our body and our minds go undetected for so long, because letting anyone into our world carries enormous risk. Too often those imagined penalties of sharing have become disturbingly real.
On February 12, 1947, or just a few months past 66 years, a young girl was born to a young family at the old White Cross Hospital in Columbus which has since moved and morphed into today’s Riverside Medical Center. This girl had the same hopes, dreams and expectations as any other girl her age. Unfortunately, nature dealt her a very bad set of cards, a cruel joke so to speak. Her soul and spirit was certainly a girl, but she did not look like a girl, so she was never treated like a girl.
This young girl was given a boy’s name, dressed in boy’s clothing, and none of her toys were made for a girl. When she was asked to fill a boy’s expectations this confused her as nothing seemed to make sense. Her hopes and dreams and any expectation of happiness were dashed. It did not take long to figure out that to act like a girl or to be me was shown disapproval and quickly corrected. I was all wrong, and to be wrong, meant bad, which meant sin, which meant never knowing approval. I loved God but I could not make those thoughts go away, which I thought meant being sinful. The guilt led to a self loathing and a belief that I did not deserve to be happy or loved. I was pretty sure that I would never see heaven, and that was devastating to me.
A girl just wants to be held by her mother and be assured that she is loved, and that she will never have to face this horrible dilemma alone. This is denied to children like me, as we can never tell her what is going on inside of us. So we learn to be quite, and we build this impregnable wall around our soul so that no one can ever see what is inside.
I recall lying awake one night; staring at the bare light bulb over my bed. My little mind was trying to make sense out some new information I just acquired. A few nights before, my mother had been rushed to the hospital; she had miscarried. My father shared with me the news and assured me she would be okay. Then he dropped a bombshell. He revealed I was not the first baby she carried. There was another miscarriage before I was born. When I asked him if it was a boy or a girl he answered “a girl”. I was only five and my experience and knowledge were so limited, yet I figured this was the answer to my life riddle. The first baby “a girl” was supposed to be me, but unfortunately she miscarried, so I had to wait for the next birth. Fate took another nasty turn and I got put into the body of a boy. I figured this was really bad but what was done was done, and I would just have to figure out how to live as a boy. One of those life forming decisions made in the silence of my world, never to be shared with anyone. I did not dare.
Just living as a boy was far harder than I ever imagined. The things they did, the way they thought was completely foreign to me. So fitting into this world overwhelmed me, so even though I had friends, I felt totally alone. I often witnessed other children being so much into the moment and acting so spontaneously. Spontaneity was my enemy. I could not afford to do anything spontaneous; it was in those moments I would either expose my secret or even worse do a thing to be punished for. In my world any child who acted spontaneously without first thinking about it was so irresponsible. A boy would do something without thinking about it and always get the boy thing right. This puzzle vexed me, my entire childhood. Imagine never having anyone to talk to. I searched continuously; with no success.
I was a woman who was denied the use of her strengths and forced into building a life around her weaknesses. My life was hanging by a thread and only I knew how close to disaster, I was. You could not tell or even detect my dilemma by just looking. I was good at doing those things that were expected of me and as long as you do what is expected no one will ever notice the truth.
Neither could you detect my struggle by a lack of success. Even though I disliked my life as a tradesman, I managed to rise to the level of a project engineer and project manager and was on the management teams of some of the largest public works projects in Ohio. Religiously, you would never suspect I was hanging by a thread, as I was on the pastoral team of my prayer group, and held a similar position in our diocese. I helped found a ministry for construction workers and helped start city wide prayer rallies on the State House lawn and later in the Ohio Theater. In my community I founded our civic association.
What happiness I knew, was with my family. I was married with three wonderful children. I delighted in exposing them to museums and to the theater and taking vacations to interesting places. I did not just attend their little league games, I coached them. My fondest memories are of my son walking up from a stream in the Smokey Mountains, remembering how my oldest daughter insisted her name was Tetta because she could not pronounce her given name, and witnessing the delight in my youngest daughter’s eyes as we rode the Figment Ride in Disney World, over and over again.
I was called by my family a workaholic. I discovered very early that you could hide your deficits by remaining active. If you stayed busy enough you could ignore the constant pain of your struggle to maintain your life hanging by a thread. All of these activities were just a constant search for an identity, acceptance and that elusive answer to my dilemma.
I had achieved a measure of success that I could not have imagined when I was young but I could not take satisfaction in any of it. I was haunted by the fact that I was not real, I was a phony. I never intended for my life to be one big lie, I just did what I needed to do to survive.
You cannot live your whole life living on the edge, without it catching up to you. It will; it always does. For some their thread just wears out but for a lot of us it happens with a traumatic event. On the morning of August 31, 1987, I had no clue, that the life I knew, was about to come to an end. As I walked through a building on my project, I turned a corner and stepped into an open trap door, falling twenty feet, head first unto the concrete floor below. You’re never prepared for it and some like me never see it coming, but in an instant your life is either going to end or be changed forever.
If you are a woman trying your best to be a man, a role you were not designed for, you figure out a lot of work-a-rounds and adjustments to make it all work. I call them my “coping mechanisms”. As I slowly awoke from my coma of four days to a brand new world, it became apparent that my coping mechanisms were gone. My life which never made a lot of sense to me before made a whole lot less sense now. I could no longer ignore the fact that I was a girl, but the brain injury took every ounce of energy I had left to survive, so the girl would have to wait as I pushed her back into my subconscious.
I was provided with a suspension of life that would permit me to rebuild my life based on who I was; a second chance. I did not see it that way. In my mind, I looked upon it as a punishment for being wrong. I saw it as God stopping me from hurting others by being a phony.
The medical establishment is great at saving your life, but offered absolutely no help and virtually no warning of this strange new world that I was about to enter. I would not want anyone to be forced to live a life of as a transgendered person, but this new problem was much worse. Together, life was now unbearable, if not at times impossible, I was provided with no options or no new expectations. It was either survive or lose control over my life. I had three young children to support, a mortgage to pay off and a spouse with her own expectations. So I returned to my life hanging by a thread, except that this thread had been broken and retied and was now badly frayed.
In the midst of my struggle to survive, people would come up to me and say that I was so fortunate to be alive that God must have something very special planned for my life. My Ex would get angry if I entertained it. My own thoughts were much darker. I would think, “special” you can’t be serious; this life was far too difficult to qualify as special. I was spiraling out of control and thought that maybe my living was a mistake, a mistake that might have to be corrected. It did however, give me a sliver of hope that maybe there was an end to this hell I was living.
I did manage to survive for an additional fifteen years, enough time for my children to be raised. Then in December of 2002, I stepped into a City of Columbus boardroom for a project progress meeting and fell face first unto the table, my career was over. I was utterly exhausted in my struggle to keep things together; my thread was broken and could not be retied. This was my third chance to get it right and I figured this could be my last chance.
My company assured me that with my brain injury medical history, getting my disability benefits should be no problem. They were wrong, as they had no idea how misinformed the medical and insurance industry was about the nature of a brain injury and how impossible those systems are to navigate if you are brain injured. I was about to enter a three year hell, trying to win my benefits and rebuild my life.
In the meantime, I lost my marriage, my family, my career, my financial security, the support of my company, my friends, my doctors and my integrity was called into account. I was accused of faking my symptoms and was even escorted out of my own doctor’s office. I had lost all hope and was trying to formulate the perfect plan for my suicide. I had to face all of this alone, with only myself and my youngest daughter still left in my home and she was pregnant.
Yet what at first seemed to be just one more problem saved my life. My new grandson, who I adore, and my daughter needing me was all that I needed to keep fighting.
My life was finally turned around by three amazing women. Evie, my psychologist taught me about the importance of living your life in truth. I had to finally accept I was transsexual and I was brain injured, fact, not shame or guilt. She then helped me resocialize.
Mary, my neuro-psychologist who specializes in the treatment of brain injury rehabilitation, taught me about organic behavior. First I found out that my symptoms were not unusual or odd but classic symptoms of a frontal lobe injury. She reorganized my whole life by shrinking it down to level I could manage. She removed things from my life that were problem areas and I did not need to do, she emphasized those things I could do well and gave me strategies to work around my deficits. In a very short time, she gave to me a life that was far beyond anything, I thought possible. She also helped me win my disability claim.
Suddenly my thread was being replaced by a chord. She then cautioned me; I had one more problem to address. I was really a woman, and unless I finally dealt with this problem, everything she corrected would become undone. The brain injury left me unable to handle the stress; I no longer had the option to ignore it. She could not help me with that problem as she lacked the training.
Fortunately, I had been just introduced to Meral, my third angel. She also verified my diagnoses of being transsexual and again all of my symptoms were classic. I found out that I was not alone but there were thousands of others with stories just like mine. I was soon on hormone therapy and starting the difficult transition from man to woman.
I was now living a life supported by a stronger chord. For the first time ever my life finally made sense to me, and I finally knew life without pain. I had no idea how painful it was trying to keep my life supported by that thread, because that is was all I ever knew. I had to live life without it, to be able to see it. My life was now filled with promise and hope; I had the capacity to give and to love like never before. Yet there was a new problem. It is one thing to discover who you are and to be that person but you quickly find out that others have to let you be you.
A common sign you see is “All are Welcome”. It is then very upsetting when you discover that all does not necessarily mean all. When you object, you get the reply, “Well of course this does not mean you.” There always seems to be an exception.
We fought and added our support for the equal rights legislation in congress a few years back only to be removed from the bill. I was a Lion and an officer and was led to believe I had their support, but was later forced out of the club. My family said they loved me, but I have been banned from family events. It seems like people always find a loophole, to exclude us. It only takes one evil person or a change of leadership, to justify their fears and to provide the loophole. We live in constant fear that things may be good today, but will it last?
The answer to that question is becoming more positive day by day, yet change comes so slowly. It is hard to be patient when you are living it, but patience is still required. I had discovered that as I became more comfortable with who I really am, the opposition around me fell into silence. Peace comes only when your inner sprit discovers and lives in peace. That living as me is so much easier than living what others wanted me to be. Living as me required no thought, and living in the moment and being spontaneously was actually fun. I learned that all that I am, all my gifts, and the reason I was created always had been laid within being who I am. My life is a gift to be lived and to be treasured and to give. I have also learned to have life you have to be ready to lose it. Lose it all. The life I had was not life at all.
Yet what was true for me is true for everyone. Very, very few of us ever live the life we were created for. Very few of us have ever discovered all of the gifts we have been given. So we live our lives without meaning. It is easy now to see why so many of our lives are hampered by dissatisfaction and depression.
My life is now supported by a strong chord, yet many over the years have begged me to return to my life hanging by a frayed thread. They did not seem to care or understand when I told them that I could no longer bear the pain of living on that thread. I used to live in a constant tug of war of trying to live my life on that chord while others tried to pull me back to that thread. I had to take a step of faith and break that final tie to that old frayed thread. The result; was peace.
I have no idea what burden you carry, it will be different from mine, because you are a unique individual; there is none like you in the whole world. That uniqueness is your gift. As Saint Francis of De Sales said, “Do not wish to be anything but which you are and try to do that perfectly”. Or as I have read somewhere, “Do not wish to be another Moses, Einstein, Mother Teresa, Steve Jobs or whoever you admire. God already has one of those. What he really could use is a “you”.
©2013 Laura Grace Holtsberry