My name is Alicia Dawn Lewis, and this is my Introduction. It begins as an excerpt from my memoir, "Jon, Jen, Alicia, The Diary of a Transwoman"
At first the idea of writing this was terrifying. How do I begin? Where in my life do I start this story? There is so much to tell, and every word of it defines the person I am at this very moment. So I guess I can avoid the deeper aspects of my life for a while and start with the basics, who knows, maybe the rest will just come naturally...
"I was born Jonathan Dean Lewis, Jon Lewis for short, and since my first memory I knew I was different.
The first time I made friends with a girl as a child of four, I knew that I was supposed to be just like her. We had all the same likes and interests, the only difference between us was that she could express these traits and I was aware enough to know that I could not.
I grew up with three older brothers, a younger brother and father who was a severe alcoholic up until just a few years ago.
My Mother, as beautiful as she is, is also bi-polar and a undiagnosed schizophrenic which she proudly flaunts along with several intensely narcissistic characteristics.
My father is also misogynistic, and very old fashioned in his regards to women and their roles in society.
Once when I was about age fourteen my father had gotten a few drinks in him and decided to impart some of his alkie wisdom unto me. "Son," he said pulling me aside from the girls I had been hanging out with in my bedroom at the time, " Listen to me, All women are crazy, you understand? Don't waste your time ever trying to understand them, it is a lost cause. Use them for what they are best at, let them give you children, but never make the mistake of putting them before yourself. And remember what I said." He had then hit me with his gigantic right open hand on the back of my head hard enough to make my brain rattle and my eyes water, and he pushed me away from him requesting I grab him another beer as I headed toward my friends waiting for me back in my bedroom.
At various points in my teenage years my fathers alkie words of wisdom haunted me and became a source of despair for me, especially when they regarded women. It was terrifying to see females through his eyes, especially because he didn't know that he was indeed speaking to one during our little father son chats.
It was his words that at first prevented me from seeking the help and guidance I knew I needed. It was his words that sealed my decision to never tell a single living soul that I was a girl trapped hopelessly in the body of a boy. And in my adult life to this day, it is his lack of words that still make me doubt my choice to accept myself regardless of how anybody views me.
I spent a lot of my childhood and teenage years secretly researching thing like hormone replacement therapy, sexual reassignment surgery and societal acceptance and points of view on people like me.
Even by age eight I had accumulated extensive notes on these subjects, notes which I kept hidden inside of board games stored in the top of my closet. It was the culmination of this knowledge that allowed me to define myself as transgendered, formulate a plan of action, and decide that I could never tell my family just who I really was.
By the time I was sixteen I had decided just before graduation that I would disappear as soon as I was legal, cut all ties in my life and transition into the person I knew I was supposed to be. It was a crude sort of hope that I clung to with all my strength, it provided hope, and allowed me to function socially at a very distant sort of half capacity.
Then I met a girl, we fell in love, and I began to think that maybe there was another way. I began to think that maybe I could accept being a man as long as this girl continued to value my masculine over compensation as her world, and as long as she was with me every minute of every day; that if I indulged her femininity just maybe it would satisfy my own intense longing and desire to be viewed and treated the way I felt. My source of hope changed, and the facade I had created solely to survive grew into a monstrous entity that locked away my true self in the deepest, darkest part of my soul.
When I was nineteen I trusted this girl, whom I was engaged to by then, with my darkest secret. Almost immediately she betrayed my trust, she told my family, running to them with this secret under the guise of looking for advice. Then when my family confronted me, refused to accept it, and made me promise to never pursue a course of action to remedy it, she was still not satisfied.
She aimed to hurt me the way I had hurt her by telling her that in essence, Jon, the man who had captured her heart, was just a work of fiction created by what society regarded at the time as a sexually confused and identity challenged, mentally ill persona. She felt that something had been taken from her, and was committed to taking everything from me in order satisfy her sense of loss. She damn near succeeded too, but first:
Even though I loved this woman intensely, it was not my love for her that caused me to confide in her. It was the look on her face when she saw me begin to fall to pieces and lose my mind more and more every day, with no obvious reason or explanation. It was that same look of alarm and concern on her face that seemed to whisper, "till death do us part in sickness or in health" and "if you let me in I promise I can help you, I promise we can share the weight of whatever it is that is killing you, I promise..." that, on my worst day, caused me to finally break a 15 year silence and tell her just who and what she had fallen in love with.
The words, "I am Gender Dysphoric, and I'm supposed to be female" hung in the still air just after I uttered them, and of course, they wiped away any semblance of concern from her face, instantly replacing it with something that resembled loathing, disgust, and pain. Everything changed the moment those words left my mouth and traveled past my tear soaked face to hang in the air over both of our heads. Everything fell apart, the pieces of my life began to rain down around me and it would be ten years before I attempted to put them back together again.
Of course as I had tried to hide the pain of what it was that was killing me, so did she, but that look of loathing on her face grew a little more ever day just as my look of despair had my entire life up until that point that it had become as plain as day. I had tried to hide the pain of what I was experiencing for most of my life up until it began to manifest itself physically. Then there was no more hiding it, no more denying what I always knew and swore I'd never admit. As I had tried to hide it, deny it, pretend it didn't exist, she now tried to do the same.
Of course at first, when I was forced to out myself to Jessica, there were promises made. She promised that my disorder and desire to transition wouldn't change anything, that our love was still as complete as it had ever been, and that she would support me along with my choices unconditionally.
She lied, I think, because the lie comforted us both for a miniscule moment in the beginning of my long journey towards self acceptance. It was this lie that wrecked my trust in people for the years to follow, it was this lie that caused me to destroy and abandon everything I had worked for and enjoyed, it was this lie that made me a reclusive shadow who looked back at her past with a blank stare for many years after our relationship fell before me in a burning heap of lost hope and shattered dreams; and it was this lie and her broken promise that caused me to slice open the veins in my left arm when I turned twenty two in hopes that all of the pain I kept inside would just bleed out of me while I lay there in a pool of my own blood thinking that maybe in another life I would find happiness and peace..."
Today is the 28th of January 2015, and I have been on Hormone Replacement Therapy for Four months, Two weeks, Six days and roughly Fifteen hours. I am a Male to Female Trans-woman and I am currently thirty years old.
Sadly the excerpt above was only the beginning of the struggles I endured over the many years that came after my relationship with Jess ended, but I can happily say that while those struggles are now beginning to fade into memories of someone else's life, I am a stronger person for them and intensely proud of the fact that I am a trans individual.
Just in the last six months alone I have learned to fully accept myself and find the resolve I needed to truly know myself. There have been a few tragic things that have happened since I started transition, as it seems that while Jon became Jen, and Jen is growing into Alicia, I will always be beset on all sides by tyranny.
Unfortunately that is a part of all of our lives, and each of us are at some point are forced to confront it. This last time, on Christmas, the events I was forced to endure almost ended this story before I found the will to begin to share it. But in a last ditch effort I broke the remainder of my self imposed restraints and reached out with all of my heart and soul in an attempt to find the help I needed, the consolation I desired and the personal connections I have been starving myself of.
I've learned to face that tyranny now even though I still flinch under its gaze, and in doing so I've been gifted with two incredible sisters that make me want to find the joy in life while I journey out of the shadow of madness and into the light of reason. I hope my story can inspire, or allow others to connect as I have. I hope that I am not misguided in my purpose, and most importantly, I just hope.
(Thank you with all of my heart and soul Big Sis and Lil' Sis for seeing something in me that I thought was dead and buried years ago. For refusing to let me leave without a fight, and for introducing me to the woman I have kept locked away in the recesses of my darkest reserve. You two made it possible for me to say that I am Lici, and I am proud! Sisters! Always and forever! With all that I am and ever will be I love you both beyond what words can convey.)
