This story really begains just before my gender transition.
It was in the last days of my relationship with Crystal that I finally realised that I had to do something about being gender dysphoric, about being transsexual. I could see that if I didn't, one day I'd wake up, old, lonely, unfulfilled, and a man. And all my life I'd never felt like one. In fact I felt that I was really a woman. But until that time, I'd never had the guts to do anything about it.
Crystal and I broke up, and within a couple of months I began my gender transition -- the long process of changing my role in society from that of a man, to a woman(1). Now this is not something which I have ever regretted in itself. It was, and remains, the right thing for me to have done. But at what cost?
Initially I was very conservative in my transition. I kept the same job. I moved from north of the Swan River to the South. I changed clothes and went on hormones. I made the samllest possible changes I could while maintaining the transition as best I could. And slowly, my old life unravelled.
Sometimes it was confronting, and other times very subtle. On the very first day that I officially became Laura(2) I was confronted by my past. I went from work (where I changed from mens to womens clothes) to a StarTrek™ fan club to be greeted loudly by my old name. An honest mistake? Most likely, but there was continual stress of this sort for a long time to come.
And even if at the time these incidents get resolved happilly, it is the repeated nature of them that begins to tell. This was one reason why I left my public service job, and why I left Perth.
Initially at work things seemed OK. I was treated like any other woman except for one small thing -- no access to the Woman's toilets. A small issue? Perhaps. I had afterall, worked there for 6 years as Larry first, so it seemed only natural that they'd be hesitant to letting me in the ladies loo. But the issue wouldn't go away. I felt like my dignity had been taken away, and eventually I understood the difference between tolerance and respect(3). I was being tolerated at work, not respected, and I did not feel secure or safe there any more.
After a couple of death threats (one from an anonymous phone call at work!) I decided it was time to move on.
Sydney
I decided to do a "geographical" and go to Sydney for a few months. This seemed a reasonable thing to do, but proved to be even more stressful. I stayed in a hostel run by the gender centre. It was full of transgendered people, all trying to sort themselves out. Now this ought to have been a supportive environment, but it proved to be the reverse. I got suicidal there.
There were so many `ifs' and `buts' going on in my life at the time -- everything was uncertain. I was making a real effort to resolve my issues, but it hardly seemed enough. But I knew that I couldn't go back to Perth to live, or return to my old job. As it happened, I went up to Newcastle to see a psych. I liked what I saw of the place, and went back for a week to check it out.
After Sydney, Perth was ruined for me. If I went back I would continually be fighting the memory of who I had been with the people that still knew me. All my old habits and history were in Perth. It was time to let go. But Sydney was just too large and noisy. I found it difficult to relax in Sydney. Newcastle on the other hand was big enough (population of 300,000+) to be a "real" city, but small enough not to be intimidating. I decided to move there.
Initially I stayed with friends for three months before finding a place of my own. In the mean time I put in a redundancy claim with the department that I'd worked for. This dragged on for months, but eventually I got it. In the mean time I was living in Carrington and being hounded and harrassed by local youths. I lived in Carrington for 18 months until I moved to Barnsley.
While I was there I started university, had an abortive "romance", and bought a car. Within two months of buying the car I had a car crash! I was on my way to a counselling appointment at university for stress when it happened -- how ironic. It took my climbing a mountain before I regained my equilibrium again. Then I found that I couldn't get Austudy (a govt student's allowance) because I had too much in my rollover fund. I decided to buy a house.
But it took months before I found the right house, and another ten weeks before the purchase was settled and I moved in mid-November. Nothing but stress.
Barnsley
It took me a whole year to settle in. For the first few months I was miserable and lonely. I had just moved from the centre of town to the outskirts, where I knew no one. University had just ened that year and I had a lot of unstructured time on my hands. My only friend was Pegasus, my pet dog, whom I'd got just a few weeks before moving in. When visiting a friend in Katoomba my car overheated and it cost $1600 to fix it.
Also, I'd feeling down and low since last February. The previous December I'd "lost my virginity"(4) at a Xmas party. It'd been wonderful at the time, and I saw the other person for a few times afterwards. But I'd been dumped pretty abruptly, and had been very upset about this. If nothing else, I'd discovered that I couldn't cope with casual sex alone, I had to have some sort of affection with it too. But I didn't resolve it until the following February, when that person gave me an apology.
I had a hormone scare as well. I'd started taking Androcur, which is an anti-androgen. It's supposed to reduce facial hair. I don't have much of that, but I am sensitive about it. But the Androcur seemed to make me even more emotionally unstable. I was starting to feel down a lot, and sometimes have whole days when I would just cry for no good reason. It wasn't until I had my hormones checked and I stopped taking Androcur that I felt better about things. University started again and I got stuck into my studies. I also tried reading Tarot at a local indoor market. This seemed a good idea at the time but in all of the 20 weeks I was there, I only had 3 paying customers. This was very disheartening, because I am a good tarot reader. Another incident happened then that caused a whole series of events. I visited a friend and another of their visitors had rejected me as a woman and considered me a gay man. The issue that this raised (the definition of a woman?) bothered me endlessly to the point of suicide. I resolved that issue too, for the better, and went on to give a plenary at NOWSA about it.
While doing research for my university studies (in visual arts) I came across references to epilepsy and because of my history of being epileptic, decided to read further. I became more and more upset when I kept reading descriptions of supposed "epileptic personalty" that actually matched mine. Was it so easy to predict who I was? In the end I turned what might be thought of as a disadvantage (being obsessive) to an advantage (studying hard). Phew!
Later that year I fell ill with flu, which affected my work for the whole semester at university. Also I tried answering a couple of personals in a queer newspaper in Sydney. I met one correspondent, who seemed a nice guy, but nothing came of it. The other one, though he wrote wonderful letters, never showed, so that was the end of that. Then in November, my car went off the road.
Rego Problems
In the last few years, since my redundancy payout, I'd been living off a combination of my savings, and (when I finally got it) Austudy. But it was not enough, and when it came time for me to re-register my car and pay the third part insurance, I just couldn't afford it. I was resigned to this, but friends convinced me that I couldn't afford to be without a car for long. I went to Centrelink(5) and obtained an advance to pay the costs. One of the last things I did with teh car was try an "Arts" market with a friend. My friend made a reasonable return selling old bits of her work, but I lost $20 trying to do tarot. It was not a good event for me. Two days later as I was driving in to pay the rego, the car had a backfire and wouldn't go at all. That was the end of that. I had to be towed home.
A few days later all my bills came in at once. As it was, I had the money to pay them, but if I had have re-registered the car, I wouldn't have. It looked like the car was going to be off the road for some time...
A slow decline
I would be lying if I said that nothing good happened during any of this. All this time I was living life as Laura, and no longer living a lie. It is an honest life, but so far a stressful one. I write this mid-1999, and in the years since September 1994, I have: changed from living as a man to living as a woman; moved house three times (not counting the Sydney trip); gone from nominally christian to actively pagan; abortively explored my sexuality; left a long term (17 years+) career; started university studies; bought a house (and gained a mortgage); bought a car (and had one car accident); attended 5 conferences; marched in 4 Mardi Gras; been suicidal 4 times; served on 3 committees (The Gender Council, the Broom Closet, and the Hunter Lesbian and Gay Interagency); been severely ill at least twice; and gained a pet dog.
Lots of change, lots of stess. And it all adds up, all 100 blows...
Footnotes
(1) Some other transgendered folk might consider this statement to be inacurate, that we are women inside all along. This may be so, but transition is all about pursuing that role socially.
(2) The deedpoll came through the day before, and I spend most of the day changing accounts and references. The first day for me being "Laura Anne Seabrook Dunning" legally was September 31st, 1994. Before that my name had been "Larry Anthony Dunning". Two years later I finally dropped the surname of Dunning and became "Laura Anne Seabrook". See, I went from being a "LAD" to a "LAS".
(3) Tolerance is where they say they won't hurt you today, provided you stay quiet and don't get in the way. Respect is where this isn't an issue, because they won't hurt you anyway. I know this sounds cynical, but this comes from my experience, not abstract theory.
(4) OK, my first real sexual experience as a woman, right!? Was it different from when I'd been fronting as a man? Yes, but you won't read about the details here!
(5) Centrelink is the name of the Commonwealth department in charge of social security payments. It used to be called "Social Security".