Hi Aubrey, maybe you're not ready to grieve, and maybe you're not meant to. If I grieve over the neutron bomb of a life I have lived I will never stop crying. So I try to look forward. I have so much to grieve over, some of my own doing, some from my family, society and whomever. The truth is, I think that I'm so fortunate to be alive and walking, after breaking 41 bones over different sports, most of them racing motocross, and a drunken bicycle accident in 2010 where I sustained a 'burst' fracture of my T-12 vertebra, shattering it in nine pieces and leaking spinal fluid. But my crowning achievement was a stupid stunt of trying to be macho at 46 years, 363 days in 2001, jumping off a 70' bridge into the Columbia River with a friend's 17 and 23 year old sons and landing wrong, crushing two vertebrae and fracturing seven ribs. I will go to my grave with a now four time broken back, believing it was a miracle I made it to the surface that day, without floating to the surface face down and dead. I was not a successful male impersonator. I dropped a plank on my knee and broke my kneecap and damaging the tendon, ligaments and severely tearing my cartilage, after seven unsuccessful knee surgeries I found what I thought would take away my transsexual pain and physical agony, opiates. First codeine, then morphine and finally heroin. Addicted to heroin for 13 years I did two terms in California prisons before I found any peace in my life, when I somewhat transitioned in prison. I was a very talented athlete in spite of my knee problems and basketball was my outlet in prison from my gender dysphoria, the racial hatred, and the shame of being in prison with a 153 IQ, surrounded by 983 other human beings on my yard, very few with my education, gifts and the innate advantages of being white in America, but I hated my guts nonetheless. I broke my hand badly playing ball one night and the next day I borrowed a friend's tweezers, telling him I had a sliver. That sliver was being transsexual and I removed it for almost nine months, plucking my eyebrows, shaving my legs and finally finding freedom in prison. I wasn't forced by anything or anyone but gender dysphoria and stress. The bull->-bleeped-<- you hear about rape in prison is exactly that, bull->-bleeped-<-. I'd been bisexual for a long time, but was really becoming attracted to men only and ended up in a relationship with a really sweet, cute, but terribly misguided guy who wanted me to parole with him and transition all the way to SRS. Unfortunately, he was a meth cook and was going straight back to it because the money was so good, but I'd had enough of both drugs and prison and I had to say no. I had no means of continuing my transition with no job, nowhere to live and little hope of either, so I grew back my eyebrows and leg hair and straight back into my self loathing existence of being what I always was, nothing more than a male impersonator. Ironically, I'd almost found peace at 22, when I began to transition in 1977, but being a 'baby boomer' I was taught before anything else in my life, 'what will the neighbors think?' I didn't want to bring shame on my family, but I ended up in prison as a thief and junkie! Now, I'm 58, two days short of living 18 months full time, the happiest time of my life. I can describe events, but I can't really grieve over them. I've lost too much already to grieve anew. I've barely scratched the surface to you today, but maybe grieving is a luxury some of us women can't afford. I love HRT and what it's doing to my body and mind. I'm finally becoming on the outside what I've always, always been in my soul, a female. I think I have it so much better than I ever thought possible on July 13th, 2011, the day after my third suicide attempt. I stopped drinking that day, ordered progynon depot from In House, and vowed to be a woman or die. And someday I'll die, but I'll die as I was born in my heart, female.
