The Long Journey Home to Me
By Lisa Eve

Being yourself is not always easy, and being someone no one wants you to be is that much harder. My journey to becoming myself was fought on many fronts but the greatest battles I faced were with myself.

I don't remember my childhood well enough to know when I first realized I was different. Fortunately, I have blocked-out most of my early years and if I do try to think back to that time of my life, I feel extremely vulnerable, causing old fears to replace well built walls.
I grew up in a very tense situation, being the wrong color in a rough neighborhood. Girls liked me a lot from my first day of school on and the boys beat me up all the more because of it. The teachers were afraid of the parents so they did noting to protect me. When I got home life did not get much better, it was just another version of loneliness and fear.

One of the few memories I have of my early childhood, is when I was six years old. I was walking to school alone, scared as always, and was flipping off God pointing to the sky while crying. I asked him why, if he saw everything and could do anything, would he not protect me? I had to be very tough little kid and could not show any signs weakness or even being different around others. When someone asks me when I first realized I was different and knew I was really a girl on the inside, I just don't know. I do know that I felt cheated by life as far back as I can remember, being born a boy, but had no idea how to process all those painfully confusing feelings and had no one to turn to for answers.

Most girls like me start dressing in girls clothes at a very young age. We did not have any girls clothes in the house growing up so I had nothing to try on that fit. I'm not sure if I would have, again I just don't know. The first time I dress as a girl, that I can remember, was at twelve - Halloween. (Mom told me the other day, I first dressed as a girl for Halloween at 9, then later at 12. Will look for a pic next time I'm at her house) At eleven I knew I was a bottom, I was not attracted to boys at all but wanted to be made love to and not the other way around.

At twelve I got hooked on Angel Dust and was breaking into the local school and my neighbors houses while they slept to support my drug habit. I got caught at everything bad I did and was always in court it seemed. I got locked up a few times in juvenile hall and stopped doing any school work after the first quarter of 7thgrade. I refused to do any schoolwork all the way to the end of school but they let me pass from grade to grade anyways. I spent the last few months of 12th grade, and my 18th birthday, locked up for something I did when I was fifteen - assault with a deadly and grand theft auto. All that acting out was mixed with a lot of drugs and alcohol so don't remember that part of my life very well, it's all just blur.

The next time I remember dressing like a girl was when I was about nineteen. I became homeless just a few weeks after being released, so dressing like a girl was not really an option. After being homeless for more then a year, I began having a nervous breakdown. My Mom let me move in with her for a couple of months, and her clothes finely fit. By twenty the depression and confusion was becoming overwhelming again and I finely told someone how I felt - my best friend. However, he did not take it very well, putting it mildly, and I quickly regretted telling him.

Its very common for someone like me to over compensate in life to hide our dirty little secret. I was super buff and tough and you just could not see it in me at all from the outside. (There is a pic of me at 23 in one of the comments below) I was a man's man and women asked me out a lot. My friends really looked up to me as far as my manhood went because I always had a different girl friend and most were very pretty.

I confused every girl I dated because they were dating someone who's motivations did not mirror that of other men. They did not like how slow I was it even kiss. I wanted to wait months just to get to second base. I never saw a woman I wanted to sleep with, that was the last thing on my mind. I wanted to slowly fall in love first. I loved to go shopping with them and talk about my feeling. I loved chick flicks and started watching them at least by age five.

I was talking to my high school sweet heart a few years back and mentioned to her that I started dressing like a girl in my late 20's. She had to remind me that I wore bras and pantyhose the whole time we dated - we met in 10thgrade. I had forgot I dressed all the way up at twelve and again at nineteen. I was about forty when we had the talk. It was a bit over whelming having all that flood back into my mind.

I never forgot about this very beautiful woman I saw in my early 20's, walking through a mall I was working at. I was so moved by her I cried. Her life seemed to make perfect sense to me and mine was still filled with self-destruction. No matter how well received my appearance was by others, I continually reinvented my look trying to find something that made sense. I went from black leather and chains with a Mohalk, to a jock, then to always wearing 3 piece suites. I even changed my music and types of friends, again and again, but still only wanted to be in that womans shoes.

It went so bad when I told my best friend at twenty that I told no one again until my wife walked in on me dressed in her clothes years later. I was a full blow Jesus freak and was super buff when we got married, so she never saw it coming. She had never seen me drink and there I was drunk in the bathroom, in a bad wig, too much makeup and sporting a tight white mini-skirt. She stood stunned in the doorway, looking like she just saw a ghost. She then slowly walk to the bed and sat down and started crying. I sobered up real fast. I sat down next to her and asked, "Is it really so bad?" She answered, "No, its not that. Its just you look better in my skirt then I do." Then she really started balling.

After that she let me dress at home but asked me never to tell anyone. I was about twenty-seven when she caught me. Later, when she saw it was more then just fun and games, she changed her mind and I had to stopped dressing for a few years. I threw away all my girls clothes, the ones that were just mine, its called purging. Its normal to get a bunch clothes then later feel guilty and throw them away. I did that four or five times before I gave away all my men's clothes - getting rid of the men's clothes was far more satisfying.

I was so involved in my church and trying to save to world that my marriage suffered and we grew apart. I was never home and went to church as much as five times a week before she caught me. I worked a lot with the homeless and inner city kids. She did not like church. It was not until that I started to dress once again years later, that we became friends again. We had separate bedrooms and did not like each other at all. We became very good friends over time. My dressing like a woman killed our marriage but saved our friendship.

I got her to let me dress around her the second time around by spoiling her when ever I was dressed. Long back rubs and making her a warm bath when she got home from work etc. She learned to want me dressed. The last few years we were together if I was at home, which was all day every day because for being seriously hurt at work, I was dressed as a woman. If I left the house to go to town I dressed as a guy. If I went out of town I was dressed as a girl.



The last time I dressed as a guy I went to rent a movie in our little town. I had on a suite and tie. I always did if I had to dress like a man at that point. I was walking through the parking lot on the way to the video store and some very rough looking kids in their early 20's started yelling, "Fag!" over and over. I was about fifty or sixty feet away as I walked past them. On the way out I walked right in front of them and on purpose - I wanted to beat them up. When they got a good look at me they started yelling, "Dike!" over and over. I got such a kick out of being called a dike, dressed as a man, I was not upset with them any more. I called my Mom and all my friends, happy as can be, to tell them that people, and I use the term loosely, thought I was a woman with no makeup on and in men's clothes.

I then realized there was no more hiding as a guy in places where I was afraid to dress as a woman. Our little town was a dangerous place for a girl like me. I was so scared because I was having a very rough time in public being laughed at and threatened, dressed as a woman. It was nice to dress as a guy now and then to escape all that, the times I did not feel strong enough to deal with the constant hate, but people were far more confused and upset with me trying to look like a guy towards the end. Either way I dressed, it was rough and I had panic attacks every time I tried to leave the house. I refused to go anywhere after that day and just hid at home for over a month.

I was sick to my stomach the last two years I fought living full time as a woman. I could not sleep very long and it was hard to eat. I was so sick from stress that I had to keep going to the doctors for stronger and stronger pills to help with the constant pain in my gut. I also was trying many different pills for my failing nerves but nothing gave me relief. During that last month it finely became too much. I had been thinking about taking my own life for years - and tried once before in my early 20's. Near the end I thought about it all day long. I would repeatedly bring my finger to my temple and shoot myself, but we had no guns. My entire life had become fear and guilt. I felt super guilty because I had four children at home. So I got a razorblade, wrote a note and crawled into the bathtub to finish myself off and escape. I knew if I refused to wear men's clothes in our little town my wife would leave me because she was very embarrassed about it.

I could not kill myself though because of my kids. The week before, a friend told me if I killed myself, I could teach my kids to do the same thing when life got hard for them later on. I had mentioned to her that every telephone-poll I passed on the road, I wanted to drive right into it and was mad as hell that I had air bags. Or if someone was alone and was passing dangerously close head on at me on our little desert roads, I floored my engine. You should have seen the looks on these fools faces as I barreled straight for them - that should teach them to drive more safely.

My kids were and are very happy kids but life can make anyone feel hopeless at times. There was no way I was going to teach them that suicide was ever the right answer, so I decided while sitting there staring at all the candles I set up around the bathroom to just give in and let my marriage die instead of me.

I was a full time mom and had been for a few years at that point. I knew I would lose the kids as well as my marriage so it was a painfully hard choice to make. I have never wanted to be rich or famous, just a parent. At thirteen my clock started ticking to have kids and at fifteen I dropped out of school for a while then got a full time job in a factory to support a pregnant woman I fell in love with. I was on probation for some awful thing I had done earlier, plus was going back and forth to court for another serious crime I had just committed. I knew if I got caught skipping school I would be locked up as soon as they found out but I wanted her child more then anything and wanted to do my part. The baby was not mine, she was pregnant when I met her. She was in her mid 20's but I talked my mom into letting her move into my bedroom because she was living in her van. My girlfriend would not let me go with her to the hospital when she had the baby. She came back empty handed and told me that the baby had died while she was giving birth. She had really sold him before we had even met and knew all along I would never see the baby. The pain of that always stuck with me and somehow added to the fear of losing my four kids to my need to be a woman. Living without my children has brought me lots and lots of tears that have yet to run out. My Ex rarely lets me see them and its slowly tearing me apart to this very day.

It was well over a year, living full time as a woman before I went somewhere when no one noticed I was a Transsexual. I still get made now and then. Getting made or getting clocked means someone notices your not a GG (genetic girl). I lived in that small town almost two years after I went full time. I was alone in our empty home because my family left. At night every time I heard a noise my heart would drop and I would be so scared I would shake. I was threatened a lot, and being in a small town everyone knew about me. Even if they had never seen me, they were likely to have heard about me.
My house was in the foothills, very pretty with a big yard and a payment of only $500 a month. I could not take the hate anymore so I sold it to rent a small one bedroom apartment in LA for just over a $1000 a month - I really loved my house and still miss it a lot. I bought a van with some of the money because I fully expected to end up living in it. Finding work as a disabled construction worker in a dress was going to be up hill both ways, and I knew it.

I moved to Chinatown and I never heard one unkind word in the five months I lived there and went out every day. I moved to Korea town and only one person was mean to me in the two years I lived there. He made up for lost time calling me all sorts of awful things and told me I should be killed etc. I moved back near the area where I lived before in Dec of 2007. I had to come back because I could not afford the gas to pick up my kids for the few short visits a month. Now that I'm close again, its about one short visit months apart.

People think because I'm in California everywhere is safe, its not - far from it. A few years back I was reading that in the year that had just past every hate crime towards TSs in LA county was violent. No other group was at 100% that year. I also read the murder rate for TSs is seventeen times higher then the national average. Most people that get murdered are killed by someone they know - with us, its mostly by complete strangers who just become un-glued for one reason or another. I wanted to drive back-east two summers ago to stay with a friend for a bit but my Mom freaked out when I told her I wanted to across America alone. She did not think I would make it alive to the other side - what a world huh?

I love being the woman I knew in my heart I was suppose to be. I now make sense to myself and can fully grow as a person. I can stop rebooting my persona, trying to find a me that I understand. I love how my kids see me as a second Mom and not a dad, although I don't let them call me Mom out of respect for my ex-wife. I love how my Mom sees me as a daughter and even picked the first name I have now. I love seeing the F on my drivers license - and no the F does not mean I failed, just the opposite. I love getting my nails done and all of the other things I use to only dream about and cry over. There is a lot more good then bad. The good is really good but the bad is very bad.

If you have a question after all this, just ask but be respectful. I know this was very long even though I left a lot out. It's a story that cant be told in just a few words. Not every TS has had problems as bad as I have had but some have had much worse. Many will not survive trying to be a TS in America, many are gone now. Some will look at this and think its all way over blown in my mind. Some will be able to tell you the same story and some have a much worse story - if they lived to tell it.

I love my country very, very much. The day before I bought our house, I went out and bought seven flags. I put my flag out everyday, long before 9-11 happened. I still cant sit when I hear the national anthem and my hand moves all by its self to my heart. Some day we will have a country that is truly free and safe for all - in a general sense of course. I would gladly spend the rest of my life on such a worthy goal.


From the heart


Lisa Eve