Olivia Werth: Episode VII - The Trans (Woman) Awakens

[Deadname Redacted] Werth has 

Vanished.  In his absence, the sinister 

INTERNALIZED TRANSPHOBIA has 

Risen from the ashes of a traumatized 

\child and will not rest until Olivia, her 

true self, has been destroyed.

With the unknowing support of her 

SPOUSE, Olivia Werth leads a brave 

RESISTANCE. She is desperate to 

find herself among the pieces of 

eggshell and help in restoring peace 

and justice to the galaxy

Olivia has sent the most daring 

parts of herself on a secret mission

to the Depths of the Internet, where 

many people are providing the clues

to who she truly is…

The first question anyone trying to write their story has to figure out is where to start.  I mean, I could start with my childhood.  That would be a good starting point, especially in light of all the lies being spread about trans children (just to set the record straight: puberty blockers are safe; rapid onset gender dysphoria is not a thing; kids can know what gender they truly are before they are out of diapers).  But I think I’ll save that for the next installment.  Because I think it makes more sense to start with where this whole beautiful, amazing (terrifying) journey began for me. The broad strokes, at least–there would be way too much detail to include in one post.  Details will come later (I’ll let you decide if that’s a threat or a promise.).

So where did this begin?  What was that one magical moment that saw a life that no longer fit calmly, peacefully, transition into a new life?  If you think that’s how this goes, you really need to keep reading.  For some trans people, I am sure it is just that easy.  But there are as many different transition journeys as there are trans people, and this is not one of those. No, this is a story of a desperate journey to find a map that would show me the way, navigating amongst the evil forces of internalized (and externalized) transphobia to find the path that would cross the galaxy to where I had disappeared long ago, driven into hiding by a overwhelming sense of shame and guilt.

Let us pick up this story on the morning of October 31, 2020.  Did the fact that it was Halloween play into this?  Maybe? It is possible that my mind was thinking about costumes, and masks, and that allowed it to process things in a way to start showing me what was behind mine.  Or it could have just been coincidence, that day being when the stress of the pandemic, the quarantines, and a culmination of narratives encountered over the previous few months, broke down the last of my walls so that I could see who I really was.  Personally, I don’t think the day was important.  But I do think the season was (something I’ll talk about in a later installment).

So, back to the story.  I woke up the morning of October 31, 2020.  Before that morning, I do not remember ever waking up knowing that I had dreamed, let alone remember what I had dreamed.  But that morning, I did both.  And the dream was still so clear in my mind, as if it was desperately holding onto it.  Was it full of exciting adventures, of fantastical creatures and magical places?  Of space wizards and glowing sword fights?  No, it had none of that.  What it had was a boring, normal, life.  I went to work in an office.  I stopped by the store on my way home after work.  I got home and did the kind of things people normally do with their spouse after a long day of work.  If you’re going to remember a dream, definitely the one you’d want to remember, right?  But there was one thing different about the dream, something that made it more fantastical than any glorious space battle I had ever seen across decades of movies.  In the dream I was a woman.

Fantastic, right?  That I, someone who had lived for 44 years as a man, would dream of being a woman?  No, you’re getting ahead of yourself.  That was not the fantastical thing about the dream.  No, the thing that took it into pure fantasy was that I had been happy–truly, fully happy in a way that I could never remember having felt in my waking life.

And don’t think that my brain didn’t jump all over that.  It immediately started on me.  “You are a woman!” my brain started screaming at me.  “You are trans!  This is who you are, this is who you have always been.”

My response?  To tell my brain to shut up.  To insist that it was wrong, that I was not trans.  I could not possibly be.  Why?  No, it was not because I thought there was something wrong with being trans.  I knew enough even at that time to know that being trans was a natural thing.  We are born trans, it is not something we choose.  And who could possibly hate someone  or blame someone for something they have no control over, when it was clearly who they are born to be? (Insert eye roll here.  I’m pretty sure we all know exactly who could do that.  If you don’t, feel free to ask.)

But I kept insisting that there was no way I could be trans, because I knew how society treated trans people.  I knew the stories of Nicole Maines and Gavin Grimm, who had to sue their schools for the right to use the correct bathroom.  I knew the story of Brandon Teena, turned into the movie Boys Don’t Cry, and that of Rita Hester, whose murder in 1998 in Massachusetts had led to the first Transgender Day of Remembrance, a day created to remember all of the trans people who have been murdered over the years, many of them solely because they were transgender.  I heard the stories of countless trans people who lost their jobs, lost their friends, were disowned by their families.  Stories of misgenderings, deadnamings and other microaggressions.  Stories of evictions, divorces, assaults, murders.  Stories of needing to fight just to have the basic rights everyone else was allowed to enjoy as a matter of course. 

So, the one thing I knew about trans people was that they suffered.  And to survive that suffering?  They had to be strong.  They had to be brave.  They had to be survivors, ready to fight just to get through the day.  And I was none of those things.  I mean, I could barely get through the day with myself hating me.  If the whole world started hating me, how was I possibly going to be able to survive that?  Every day, the thought of interacting with anyone other than my spouse left me so anxious and uncomfortable I had essentially become a hermit, going to work then coming home and hiding there with my spouse.  How could I possibly survive if I lost my job, my home, my spouse?  (If only I had really understood why I hated myself, or why I was so uncomfortable, this story would have been much less painful.)

For nine months, I fought this war.  Part of me kept yelling at me that I was trans, but another part kept trying to make it go away, to find some way to convince me that it was not true.  I started leaning into masculinity hard, hoping that it would keep these feelings away.  I kept reading stories about trans people, looking for the one thing that would let me say “See, that is not me.  I don’t feel that way.  I can’t be trans.”

But it quickly became apparent that wasn’t going to work.  Remember, there are as many different transition journeys as there are trans people.  So how could any difference I found between myself and the stories of other trans people prove anything? The only constant I could find was the strength, the bravery, the resiliency, that all trans people had, but which I l already knew I lacked but still felt this.  During this struggle, I saw a video that went viral of an 11 year old girl, Kai Shappley, testifying before the state legislature of Texas, standing up for her rights and those of all trans people.  If that was an 11 year old trans girl, how could I, too afraid to even leave my home, possibly be trans?  So I tried to ignore the feelings, hoping that with time they would just go away, because clearly they could not be real.

Spoiler: ignoring them did not make them go away.  Torn apart, fighting desperately to hang on to who I thought I was supposed to be, all the while knowing deep down that it was true–I was trans.  But I wasn’t strong enough to survive that, I wasn’t brave enough to face that.  Instead, I fell apart.  Thoughts of actively ending my life began to surface again, back for the first time in twenty-five years.  Things got so bad, that I found myself watching the video for “Light Me Up”, the anti-suicide song by Kobra & the Lotus, four, five, ten times a day when my spouse was away, clinging desperately to the lyrics, hoping that this was what my spouse would be saying as I struggled in silence, refusing to open up for fear that saying what I felt would make them real:

Watching you sitting there alone again

The pain is eating you alive, you’re suffering

Wonder if I’ll ever see you whole again

If I had just one wish, I’d take it all away

Don’t let go (don’t let go)

I’ll find you in the darkness

(And it was what she was saying, though I was so lost in my head I could not hear her.  My spouse could see I was spiraling.  But I refused to open up, constantly telling them that I was fine each of the many, many times they tried to get me to tell them what was wrong.  Thankfully, they knew me well enough after twenty-five years together to know that if they pushed further it would go very badly, but I know how much it hurt them to see me struggle and not be willing to talk to them.)

And it just kept getting worse.  By the time we were coming up to the end of July 2021, I had fallen so far that there was nowhere left to fall.  I had reached a point where I was only days away from ending my life.  I had bought myself a few days by reminding myself of my thoughts when I saw Kai Shappley testifying (“This 11 year old girl should not have to be waging this fight?  Where are the adults to do this?”).  If I ended my life now, I told myself, I would die without doing anything to help the fight.  That wasn’t enough to buy me much time, but it did buy me a crucial few days.

One day, my spouse was late coming home and had not called.  A thought crossed my mind, worrying that maybe something had happened and they had died.  I expected a sense of horror to follow that thought, but instead my mind immediately responded with, “Well, then you would be free to begin dressing like a woman.”

And my mind broke.  Relief at the thought of my death was one thing.  But realizing that things had gotten to the point where I could find a silver lining in the thought of my spouse’s death?  I could not keep trying to ignore these feelings.  I had to do something.  I had to tell my spouse what I was feeling.

But that meant I had to know what I was telling them (yes, I know, but I was still holding out hope that maybe I could say I needed help getting rid of false feelings rather than help being myself).  I needed to know if this really felt right.  So, I went online and ordered some things.

It came one night while my spouse was home, so I hid it in the garage.  The next day, once my spouse went out for the day, I went to the one store nearby that I could find clothes that would fit me and bought a dress.  Taking it home, dragging out what I had hidden the night before, I put it all on–wig, breastforms, bra, dress, pantyhose, heels.  Taking a deep breath, I stepped in front of the full length mirror in our room and looked at myself.  Immediately, lyrics from Slipknot’s “Vermillion Pt 2” started running through my head:

She is everything to me

The unrequited dream

The song that no one sings

The unattainable

She’s the myth that I have to believe in

All I need to make it real is one more reason

Standing there, wearing those things, seeing myself with long hair, with breasts, in pantyhose and heels–I saw more of myself in a moment than I had in forty-five years of life.  She was hiding, but I could see her peeking out at me, eyes begging me to find a way to set her free.  So I did the hardest thing I have ever done–I took all of that off  and went back to work, waiting for my spouse to come home.  That night, I sat down and said in the softest voice possible “We need to talk”.  They sat down next to me on the couch, watching with concerned eyes as I sat there shaking, unable to speak.  They took my hands, told me it would be okay, and to just tell them what I needed to say.  And for the first time, I said the words out loud–”I think I’m trans.”  

My spouse sat in silence for a moment, and in a panic I immediately tried to back away, to take back what I’d said.  But they refused to let me.  They, not burdened by my fears and the months of fighting,  recognized the truth in what I said in a way I was still not ready to do.  We talked.  They asked me to dress for them.  We talked some more, about things I thought I might like to wear and what I thought I needed.  Finally, we slept.   The next day, they went out birding again, only to come home that afternoon with bags from three different stores of clothes they thought I would like.  

It would be another two months before circumstances led to me finally accepting who I was and begin taking steps to transition.  But that day, when I finally found the courage and told my spouse, July 28, 2021–that is my rebirthday, the day my life really began.  I had found the map showing the way to find me.  Now, I just had to find the courage to undertake the journey.