2005 was a wonderful year. I found the excitement of a new love. The romance and adventure are the things novels are filled with. Being with someone that makes you feel alive and appreciated, is an enchanting experience. I now have the desire to embrace the hope and dreams of a new life. There is nothing better than having someone special, love and accept you, for being you. Being in a relationship is hard work. It takes energy to maintain so that it is not taken for granted. Anything truly extraordinary does, doesn�t it?
I can say that after working through some of these difficulties, I have a better sense of who I am. Love does not define me. It makes me a better person as do the relationships, if you take away from them, the lessons life offers you. I have learned a lot and yet there is more to it than that. I want to grow, to become a better, more rounded individual, capable of a relationship with God, with the Love in my life, and with my children.
Life surprises me as this �journey� continues. I see every day differently and await the exciting challenges that come with new direction, hope, and happiness; even when that happiness, is with myself. I have come to understand that you can not place all of your hopes in the possibilities of someone else�s life. You have to go out and live life. By doing so, you can create your own contentment. Other people enhance that feeling but it is a wonderful base to work from.
Work, though still an important part of my past, is no longer the focus of my life. I would like to do so many interesting and fun things. Things that, some free time, lessened commitments to work, and to my children as they grow up, may allow for. A return to college is in my future. A friend helped me understand, and to place this into perspective, for fulfillment of my life goals.
I guess a little background is necessary here, for me to put things into perspective for you readers.
I am a 47 year old single-parent of four children, two step-children and one adopted child. My kids range in age from 22 years of age to 12 years old; all in all, (4) girls and (3) boys. Several of them are adults and living on their own and doing well. I still have (3) children living at home, in shared custody. They are the most important thing in my life.
I am also a 25 year veteran police officer, in the Capitol of Silicon Valley. Currently, I work a patrol assignment. I returned to patrol duties almost two years ago, after many years working Investigations. My experiences are broad and some are of note in one context or another, but that is not what this page is about nor is it, who I am.
There was a time in my life that being a police officer was �who I was�. About (7) years ago, I began to examine the issues which were causing me internal personal pain. I used police work as a defense, or distraction from dealing with my issues, which I have been aware of all of my life. Finally, the conflict that I was hiding became too great and was making the rest of my life unbearable. Something had to be done.
At age 40, I began actually addressing my issues. To say that this was the most difficult thing that I have ever done in my life sounds like a clich�. In this instance it was not. My issues were life threatening, just as any acute medical issue would be.
I had suffered from Gender Identity Disorder (GID) all of my life, and since my earliest awareness, vaguely tracing memories back to four or five years of age, but firmly seeing myself as �gender-different� at age ten. Being �gender different� loosely translates to, knowing that your emotional identity and your sense of body image are different from your anatomical birth gender.
While I was born with male genitalia, I never felt myself to be male. I tried for years to �deal� with this issue. I was taught that it was socially unacceptable, and life threatening to have these feelings in a world that was not accepting of transsexuals, so I learned to conceal them. As a biological male, I had relationships, married twice and had children, but none of those things changed the way that I felt. Over time, the pain of gender conflict became life threateningly painful. After many years of �trying to do the right thing,� I came to understand that some drastic changes needed to me made, for me to survive.
After years of serious deliberation, I came to the realization that I needed to merge my emotional gender, with a surgically corrected anatomical gender. I had been in gender therapy for many years. I understood the issues, better than most psychological professionals. With formal counseling on gender issues, my own research and education, and with knowledge, that this was the only course of action which made sense, I transitioned from male to female in early 2001.
My Father and brothers effectively disowned me, as did many of my �friends� from work. Some of this, I attribute to the way that men and women make and nurture friendships. Men�s �friends� are generally other men. Being a part of the �Boy�s Club�, so to speak was a privilege and once I transitioned and came to work as a woman, I lost that �status�. The positive side of this was that I built new and more rewarding friendships during this life-path, which will stay with me forever.
I was still working detectives at this point and had to deal with different challenges and obstacles, relating to my change of gender. My co-workers, has concerns about restroom and locker-room issues, as well as my interaction others. Some people were accepting, but others were not. This caused problems, some which still exist today. For the most part, I went to work and did my job, trying to stay out of the lime-light. There were people that I had counted on as �friends,� that disappointed me. Still others that I hardly knew have shown their friendship and sincerity. You learn who your �real friends� truly are, in times if crisis.
While this experience has been painfully emotional, it was the best things that I could have done for myself. The pain of GID, left as I immersed myself into this new gender role. In some ways we trade one pain for another. I lost by best friend and a marriage to this conflict. To say that I did this without grief is an enormous understatement. Over time, that loss lessened. It took years, but things do change and there is light at the end of that tunnel. Happiness became an everyday experience; not only an occasional occurrence, as had been the case, pre-transition.
In October 2002 a group of transgendered law enforcement officers were brought together to discuss employment and related topics, thus T-COPS was born. TCOPS is an acronym for the, Transgendered Community of Police & Sheriffs. Officers from around the world, met in an Internet forum to provide support, bring and share perspective, and offer strategies to address employment, familial, and personal issues.
The membership of TCOPS, include federal, state and local law enforcement professionals. They are officers, constables, agents, or deputies, and command officers within law enforcement agencies. Our members hail from the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and the United States. The men and women of TCOPS are dedicated public servants, who risk their lives daily, to protect our communities. They deserve your respect and compassion, for their service. I, for one, have a profound sense of pride for the official and unofficial members of this unique assemblage of law officers. We have a webpage located at http://www.TCOPS.org.
In November 2003, I traveled to Phuket, Thailand and underwent gender reassignment surgery. It was not what made me a woman, but it did make my anatomical gender official.
I returned home, changed in body, but basically the same person, yet there was room for introspection and growth. At work, restroom and locker room issues were conceded, most of my co-workers use the proper name and pronouns, but some are still unyielding in their stubbornness. I find it humorous that the public always get it right where my second family can not seem to move past this label some seven years after the fact.
My Father and I began speaking again in later 2003 and were having semi-regular contact by the middle of 2004. My children have had problems dealing with the �loss� of their �Dad�. I have tried to mend bridges here and have had a surprising amount of success, though it is not at a level that I would be comfortable with. It is one of my life goals to rebuild and renew these relationships. They will not be the same as before, because I have redefined myself. It may however, come to be the loving, caring reciprocal relationships that we had before they knew of my GID.
My hopes for 2006 include, being around my family more, exploring retirement from the police department, and my future after this job. I want to go back to college. I am interested in writing fiction and non-fiction, history, foreign languages, forensic psychology, gender studies, anthropology, and sociology. My hobbies and interests include; reading, genealogy, foreign travel, listening to music, guitar, scrap-booking, and art.
