Five years ago this week, I thought I was finally on a path after completely overturning my life.
And then I wasn’t.
As had occurred in January, 2013, I found myself torn in half because my identity changed against my will—this time in the opposite direction.
In January, 2018, I experienced the onset of the healing I’d needed since 1968. But, because I’d addressed my suffering by turning my life on its head, when this miracle arrived—I don’t know that it was an actual miracle, but I see it as miracle-like—the timing of it was so absurd, so disturbing, that it hurt as deeply, and was as confounding as when I was crushed in 2013 to the point of being suicidal.
At first, I didn’t know if I could trust it. The supercalifragilisticexpialidocious of late 2013 (referenced in the memoir excerpt, above) was, well, super, but it didn’t last. And, when it ended, I crashed so badly that I sometimes wished I’d never experienced it. So, when it happened in 2018, I didn’t know what to make of it. I didn’t trust it. I was afraid of what it might do to me.
Nowadays, the change I’ve experienced over the past five years is so profoundly wonderful that I no longer want to talk about those days. Or think about them. Or put them before anyone to remember that they are my history. (Note that I’m refraining from using the word for what I was—the word that rhymes with man-slender.)
Yet, that’s what I’m doing with this piece. Why? Because, one thing never changes: I’m built to speak. I need to educate, because there are a lot of people outwardly smiling as they silently suffer, and the rest of us need to remember that.
Regarding where I am now, and how I view the years from 2013-18, I wish they didn’t exist. I wish I still had my old, pre-2013 life. I wish I was a pastor in a congregation. I wish I’d never had to upset my children, my family and friends, my fellow Christians, with my shocking news.
I wish I could erase those years so that I wouldn’t experience what I did at my class reunion in 2022, when certain people seemed unpleased to see me and didn’t want to engage me in conversation.
And I wish for other things in my altered life that are too personal to describe here.
There’s more. In the church, where Julie and I have now been for three years, how do folks see me when they learn of my past? Very slowly, I’ve informed people as I’ve gotten to know them. A few have read my memoir. Surely, word has spread, as it did about my having been a minister. (“Wait just a second! He had been a minister and this, too?!“)
How do my family and friends view me these days? Do they see me as Greg, as a guy, as a regular person—all the ways I want them to think of me—or are they not able to forget those five years, what I did to myself, how I lived, how they saw me when I was that other person?
I still have no regrets as to how I dealt with my gender dysphoria. Yes, I wish I’d not had to take every step in transitioning—physical, medical, legal, social—but wishing is not the same as regretting. The attitude I’ve had, since I adjusted to the miracle, remains the same: I had to go through every step to arrive at the conclusion.
If I had stood still, I would have experienced no movement, and I would have remained stuck in the conflict that was causing me excruciating mental anguish. I very likely would have killed myself.
I compare what I undertook, and where I am now, with those who’ve gone through diseases and injuries and other extreme changes to their lives: they couldn’t deny their circumstance, they had to deal with their circumstance, and they have to live with the result of addressing their circumstance. So, please don’t read me as complaining about my lot. I’m enjoying the greatest overall health of my life.
Grasping where I was, and where I now am, is one of the two reasons I once again live as the happy-go-lucky person I was before I grew ill. The condition that led me to be suicidal, that drove me from the work and people I loved, that ultimately turned me into a joke and disgrace and sinner in the eyes of many, was one that was handed me against my wishes—no different than a person’s being stricken with life-threatening cancer. I learned all that I could about my malady and, with Julie, addressed it carefully and methodically.
As some like to say, “It is what it is,” I’ll bite: It was what it was. The best I can do with it is what I’ve done: educate others about this mysterious, vexing condition. I’ve filled my blog with pieces addressing this from every possible angle, written two books on the topic, and educated groups in person.
The larger of the two reasons I feel so good these days is because I feel right. That was the miracle, the conflict finally being resolved. Permanently—well, five years running.
I feel correct. Whole. The struggle is gone. My mind is healthy.
I’m happy, because I’m healthy. Wholeness of mind allows a person to accept other circumstances he wishes didn’t exist, such as those of which I wrote above.
For exactly fifty years, I was conflicted with my sex and gender, my body and brain, the life I had and the life I thought I should have. For five years, stricken with debilitating gender dysphoria, figuring out what to do about it, then addressing it, overturned my life. Now, for five years, for the first time since I was ten years old, I experience myself as fully male. (That was me you heard exhaling a huge sigh of relief.)
I always was an emotional person. Now—wow—I’m sooo much more emotional. When things happen as at the class reunion, they hurt me deeply, and then they cause me to hate all I endured, and then they make me long to be able to erase my past.
Thankfully, the negatives are far outnumbered by the positives. I am mostly happy, because I’m healthy. And I have the three things my final therapist told me every person needs in order to enjoy life: love, good work, and plenty of fun.
In the months after my gender dysphoria resolved, many asked, “What if it returns?” I won’t try to kid anyone: I held my breath that first year. The second year, I was able to settle in. Now that it’s five years in the past, my memories are fading as to how profoundly it tortured me.
If the healing that finally came to me was a water to wine caliber miracle, then I say, Thank you, Lord Jesus.
If the healing was the result of my transitioning, and finally getting my hormones into a place that works for my brain, then I still say, Thank you, Lord Jesus.