Submitted by Lily (10/22/2004)

My name is Lily, and I was born in the summer of love, 1967. My father 'dropped out' when I was 2, and left my mother and I. My earliest memory of thinking about being female was when I was about 6. I had seen a crude drawing some child had made of a nude woman, and I remember expressing confusion when someone told me that she was different than I was.

When I was seven my mother comitted suicide, and I dont remember much of anything for a while after that. I lived with my grandmother while my father was located in Mexico, and from then on my father and I lived in communes, remote cabins and a school bus. Most of the people I was around with my father were nice, hippy type people, but my father was a raging lunatic, and chased most people away from us. His anger was fueled by alchohol and cocaine, and home life for me was surreal at best.

When I was 14, I was a pretty disturbed child. I met a gay man at the alternative school I was attending. He was teaching a class, and I was being disruptive and self abusive. He was one of the first people to sit with me and try to talk to me about what my problem was, why I was so upset. We became friends, and eventually I ran away with him. We once lived in a remote place, and while I was there, I was able to live as a girl - I had a girl name, wore a dress usually, and I was truly happy for the first time that I had ever remembered. We were there for months, I even participated in the small community there as a girl. Eventually we had to leave though. He was returning to the city and I wanted desperately to go with him, but he made me return home, I think under pressure from my father. I would run away every chance I was able to be with him after that, and finally my father threatened to call the police if we saw each other again.

My father put me into public school for the first time in my life, and I was scared witless at the culture shock. I wanted to be every girl I saw, but I knew doing so mean instant ostracization, and probably a lot of abuse. I was already being well tormented as 'that hippy kid', but I managed to fiind acceptance among the party kids, the other outcasts. I was so dependent on even that little acceptance that I dared not jeopardize it by coming out to them with my gender issues. I did however learn to suppress how I felt with drugs and alchohol.

I did a pretty good job of suppressing how I felt for a long time. I felt it, but it was a secret, somthing I dared not share. No one I had ever met or talked to had felt the way I did, and the only other person who seemed to understand had gone long ago from my life. The shell of being a man had become pretty airtight, and seemed vital to survival. I had seen drag queens, but that image I definetly did not identify with. I wasnt greatly attracted to the idea of gay male sex, and sex with women was awkward, even though I managed to have a girlfriend for two years. She had problems with sex anyway, and never thought anything of my lack.

When I was 22, my best friend died in a car wreck. At his wake, I met his brothers wife. She had been best friends with my friend as well. We were both short a best friend now, so we tried being there for each other. It worked so well, she left her husband and moved in with me. We were immensely dependent on each other in a lot of ways, and eventually I felt comfortable enough to tell her about how I felt about myself. How I had felt for years. She was supportive enough to let me dress in her clothes, and we even went out in public a few times. I was excited and thrilled at the prospect of experiencing even a little of my inner dream. I still had no idea that I could actually transition completely myself, the little I had heard about it seemed remote and barbaric.

Then, the baby came. It was something we had been trying to avoid, was not something we had wanted. She would not abort it, and I would never question her choice. I did what I thought I had to do, and at her request no longer dressed as a woman. I tried to become the best man I could for her. Since her last husband was an utter failure, I resolved to do my best for us both. It was my child too, how dare I presume to put my irrational thinking in his world, or not provide the best I could. I knew what a broken family was like, and I didnt want that for my child.

All my life I had been poor, to some degree. By playing the game of the american dream, I was able to work my way from factories to a well paying career in the computer industry. I finally started to learn more on the internet about transsexualism, and transitioning. The better I did at being a man, the more my inner rage grew, and the more dissatisfied my wife became with me. Soon this combination came to its conclusion, and in October of 1999, I came out to everyone I knew, and told my wife that I intended to transition. I was 32.

I attempted to live with my wife for as long as I could, for our son. He was seven, and took it remarkably well. I did not take my wifes new boyfriend so well however, and as soon as it became clear that they intended to make me support them ALL, I moved out. I could not take that kind of pressure, having gone full time in January of 2000 and started a new job. I worked as hard as I could, but wasnt very good at saving money. Things got done remarkably fast in any case, and it looked like I would have srs and complete transition by mid 2001.

All the conditions had been met. Everything had been paid for, done, and checked off. Everything but the SRS itself, I had to finish paying for the divorce first. I had changed jobs again, and thought I had escaped the fall of the dot coms, my primary job market. Not so, and as soon as I was about to start the surgery payments, my last job ended suddenly. I spent the next year scraping by on unemployment, along with half the city. I had to reschedule my srs. Then again. Finally there was no going on with the fiction anymore; I was not going to get another job, I was not getting srs any time soon.

I felt like I had been thrown off a train. Here I was, a woman! Unable to make that last step, that final piece that would bring satisfaction to my lifetime of frustration. I would have happily been poor again, homeless even, if I had only been able to finish. There was nothing else I could do though, and so I resolved to try and be the gypsy I had been dreaming of anyway. Perhaps a miracle would occur.

I spent a year travelling around the country in an aging vw bus, and it was a fantastic hippy trip. I learned a lot about myself, and how others saw me, and felt about me. Through it all though was a lot of frustration at my halfway state. Finally, I decided on a plan to get the money for srs. I needed something that would make a lot of cash at once, and not be taxed or garnished by any of numerous collection agencies, or legal agents of my ex wife. I travelled back to California, and tried to find a way.

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