That was me just over 2 years ago.
I was probably about 280 pounds at 6 foot 2. I was angry, irritable, moody and depressed all the time. I drank a lot. I didn't care one bit about what I looked like, and I wore sweatpants and dirty t-shirts with holes every day. Personal hygiene got pretty lousy as well. I wore baseball hats backward with a ratty pony tail and unkempt goatee. I started to look like Comic Book Guy from The Simpsons. I knew deep down I could never look or feel the way I wanted to, so I gave up and became indifferent to whether I lived or died. Actually, entertaining thoughts of an early grave was something that gave me solace. I was like the walking dead, an empty shell of a guy who did his best to kill off his true essence that could never be expressed or explored, let alone spoken of. Or so I thought.
The years of neglect finally caught up to me in 2011. LIttle did I know that my colon was on the verge of rupturing from extreme diverticulitis, and I suddenly couldn't eat much of anything. There were days that I was doubled over in bed in extreme pain, but I sucked it up and carried on without seeing a doctor for weeks. I became extremely dehydrated and started to live on Gatorade. Then there was unexplained vomiting and bladder cramps, and I began to urinate blood. I felt better some days and held out until a bladder infection became impossible to ignore.
A week later I finally saw a doctor, something I hadn't done in over a decade. Of course I was handed to the worst doctor I've ever encountered. I got a battery of blood tests, urine tests and dumb questions along with a lecture I wasn't in the mood to hear (and with my ADD, I probably didn't actually hear much). I got my antibiotic prescription and was sent home. A few days later, the test results came in. Urinary tract infection with every nasty bug in the world, and severe DIABETES. My heart sank and I cried. All of the years of neglect and self-abuse had finally caught up to me, but the silver lining was that I discovered that I actually deep down wanted to live. If I died young, so be it, but I wasn't going down without a fight, and I was going to fight it hard.
I immediately quit smoking (for good!) and drinking, and began eating healthy with whatever exercise I could handle. I had already gone down to 250 pounds, and my weight was plummeting rapidly. As the antibiotics started working, another symptom occurred- every time I urinated, I'd expel gas from my urethra. This was really scary to me, but my idiot doctor just shrugged it off. I was referred to a urologist, who knew right away what it was- a colovesical fistula. So, if you're keeping score now, I was obese, had diabetes, diverticulitis, a fistula and needed surgery before peritonitis set in, which carries a 10% chance of death, and if you live, a colostomy. The good news was that my blood sugar got low enough that I was able to get off of one diabetes medication almost right away, and by the time I went to surgery my weight was down to 225. I was, in the words of Charlie Sheen, winning.
The surgery was a success. A really talented surgeon laparascopically removed 2 feet of colon, unstuck it from my bladder and repaired the fistula without a need for a colostomy. I rotted in the hospital for an entire week without a shower. I smelled horrible, and that first shower and shave when I got home was the best one in my entire life. I have never gone a day without since. The good news was that I was already down to 215 pounds and my blood sugar was not only normal, it was actually pretty good. I'm pretty sure now I was never actually diabetic in the first place- the chronic infection and Gatorade diet caused hyperglycemia. That doctor damn near killed me, if I hadn't already done so on my own.
Two months later I was pretty much fully recovered and down to 195 pounds. My wife began referring to me as "skeletal", as I have a huge frame that muscles once stuck to. I kept up daily exercise, ate well and promised I'd take better care of myself forever. Something still wasn't right, as my last remaining medical issue was going from a small voice in the background to an angry woman screaming bloody murder. The urge to present myself as female went from something I could ignore and suppress to something that was causing me great emotional pain. Every day I went for a walk, I'd see myself in all of the women around me. I wanted a female body so badly it hurt, and I really wanted to wear cute outfits, makeup and shoes. At this point, I just wanted to scream. I started drinking again. Since my body was getting back in shape, I tried buying nice male clothes that even bordered on androgynous. I ditched the holey t-shirts and sweatpants. I started to pride myself on my new appearance, and began referring to myself as Greg 2.0. I spent the summer of 2012 working construction on my own redesigned kitchen, and I put on 20 pounds of solid beefcake muscle. The excess testosterone caused a jump in the dysphoria, and I started to drink it away. By October, the dysphoria was off the chart. I knew I needed to be a girl sometimes and I wept frequently because of it. I still couldn't really admit to myself that I was transgender and kept going back to my usual coping mechanisms. My wife, liking the new androgynous beefcake rocker look decided one day that I'd look good in "guyliner" to set off my blue-green eyes, so she put it on me after I briefly faked a protest. I will never forget what I saw in the mirror that night- a sad, sad woman looking back at me. I knew for sure I was gender variant of some kind, and could finally start to admit it to myself, but I didn't know if or how I could ever tell my wife. I started drinking dangerous amounts and ended up hospitalized twice. My wife knew something was really wrong with me mentally, and she really feared losing me again. I finally told her the truth as I understood it, as I thought I really had nothing left to lose. I told her that I must be some kind of androgyne or bigendered, and only really needed to present female at times. I finally presented fully femme on the night of Thanksgiving 2012, as I finally shaved my beard off after company left. It felt great, but I knew somehow that dressing occasionally wasn't going to cut it in the end. I began seeing a gender therapist in December who told me that I needed a low dose of estrogen on top of antidepressants and antianxiety meds, as I fit the profile of a late onset transsexual perfectly. If the estrogen made my mood worse, then I wouldn't have to worry about transitioning and coming out, and on some level I hoped she was wrong. When I finally got the estrogen, however, it was like the proverbial magic bullet, and I gradually began to accept the fact that I am a transsexual and needed to make it permanent.
I finally like what I see in the mirror now, and I know it's only going to get better with more time. If a mostly-dead-inside-big-fat-middle-aged-smelly-scruffy-troll-with-a-death-wish like me can turn into my avatar picture, anyone can. And yes, I will continue to work on my appearance until I am too cute for words.
You can do this.
