I feel as though I know what a prisoner must experience when he is about to be released from a long term of incarceration. I can't help but think that I've lived through a 33 year sentence. Hmmm, perhaps that is a bit too dramatic.

As a child I never truly felt I was a prisoner. I was actually given a great deal of latitude as a kid to explore the gender I felt inside. However, slowly things changed.

I remember when I was told for the first time that I
could not run around shirtless.

I remember my father yelling at my mother for not
making me shave my underarms.

I remember getting my period and with it all my hopes
that I would just somehow turn into a boy died.

I remember pushing against my developing breasts and
praying that they would stop growing.

Change after change occurred until I felt conformed - shoved into the pattern that made me female. I felt betrayed by the world and by my own body. It was age 13 that my true sentence began.

Realizing I was placed in a body that was not mine, I began my sentence like any prisoner facing his cell for the first time.

Do you bother marking the days of your sentence if you feel it is a life sentence? One year - two years - a decade - and more.

You live - you find a life that allows you to exist. But whether you mark the days or not, you always wonder how your life might be different if you weren't confined to your cell.

Now I find there may be a way to end my incarceration.

I have known since the age of 11 that there were people like me in the world. And I recall from memory in vivid detail the stories I heard of those who had undergone SRS. But until last year I never truly thought I could be one of those who could withstand all the trials, and make such a dramatic change in my life.

To do so would mean I had to take control of my freedom - my happiness - my sadness. I would not be able to rely on anyone else to make this decision nor could I blame anyone else if it were the wrong decision. Believe it or not, it is not as easy as it sounds.

After years of confinement, you become accustom to the walls of your cell. I was successful in my world as a woman. I was respected and I was even loved. My greatest fear has always been if I become male I could truly have a sense of freedom I've so longed for, but by doing so, I would be isolated by the world I existed in.

I now see that my transition as my parole. I can't help but feel that I'm being supervised while I'm slowly being released from my cell. Certainly if it was up to me I would be injecting testosterone and hoping up on the surgeon's table tomorrow. But there are rules.

Sometimes I feel those rules are there to help me - Like my mother yelling at me not to run with scissors. Those rules slow my racing thoughts and desires. They allow me to gain a footing in a very new world.

And sometimes I feel those rules are there to restrict and frustrate me - I feel like I must find a way to appease the gatekeepers. Jumping through only the required hoops to proceed.

The time between pent up confinement and that long desired freedom is an awkward time. Oddly enough, it is a time which makes me feel more judged than I did before. It is also a time when I must make choices that I may have never felt I could or only dreamed I could.

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Updated August 14, 2001