Rebeka Kastler's Story of 9 Lives

Well where to start.....hmmmmm this is really a tough choice. How's about at the beginning? Sounds good to me dontcha think??

Before I start there are certain parts of my life story that I don't know if I'll ever be able to write about or put them into words. There are also certain situations that I have left out because I am still recovering from those incidents as well as still trying to come to terms with some of my past. There are just some things I will not mention out of respect for others. 

Coming up with this part of my website really took some effort for me to sit down and try to put together. I have dreaded putting this together because to do this part of my website I really had to sit and think about what I wanted to talk about and what I didn't want to talk about. It was a really tough choice for the simple fact that it was going to be published on the internet. I got really worried about who would read this. I mean some of you that are visiting my website are strangers and it is a tough thing to tell total strangers your life story and your most deepest and intimate thoughts. Some of you are people I know and some of you that read this are the people I'm about to tell the whole world our experiences that we've shared. Some of these thoughts I've never even told my closest friends. Some of you that do read this ARE in fact the people in my life that meant the most to me and this is my "Story of 9 Lives", in case your wondering I deleted the first one completely by accident and talk about getting mad at oneself. I was beating myself up for days over that one little press of the delete key. I will have you know I toasted a keyboard in the making of this page because of all the tears and grief that I had to remember through out my life. 

In 1972, a bouncing baby boy (that's me) was born in Lakewood General Hospital to a very young couple, Bruce and Michelle B Rife, when I was born along with my sister, there was something way different with our tiny lil bodies that most kids would pick up on later in life and torture me for having. Least that is the way I perceved things when I was old enough to react to them. I was born with a funky lil bone disease that not too many people have heard of.. My parents already had one child. She is two years older than myself, her name is Kimberly, she also has the same bone disease. It was and still is a major part of our lives. 

The name of this disease is called Multiple Hereditary Exostoses or for all you medically minded people Osteochondramatosis. For those of you who don't know what it is or have never heard of it Multiple Hereditary Exostoses is characterized by growth multiple exostoses, which are benign cartilage-capped bone tumors that grow outward from the metaphyses of long bones. Exostoses can be associated with a reduction in skeletal growth, bony deformity, restricted motion of joints, short stature, premature osteoarthrosis, and compression of peripheral nerves. The median age of diagnosis is three years; nearly all patients are diagnosed by twelve years of age. The risk for malignant degeneration to osteochondrosarcoma is increased particularly with age, although the lifetime risk of malignant degeneration is low (~1%). A few years ago when I had my corrective knee surgery, I was part if that 1%. I was devastated and it just confirmed everything that I was thinking about transsexualism. I was in the wrong body period.

Ok now... This baby boy AKA me, if you haven't figured out was born deformed as was my sister two years earlier. As I grew and aged, there were a few things that I was noticing early in this world. I noticed that I was not like other children, I had these big bumps on my tiny little body. The other boy's and girls didn't have these things on their body. Why were they on me? That is the question I kept asking myself. I also noticed things with my parents were not good at an early age and I blamed himself for all the troubles in their marriage because of how I looked  physically. No father in his right mind would want a boy that he couldn't play catch with and do guy things with. I really didn't notice I had a father til I was like 4 years of age because when I was born, there weren't a whole lot of happy times according to my mother during that period of her life or my life for that matter. I don't remember much about my life til I was about 5 or so. I was ashamed of the fact that my family wasn't like all the other families in the neighborhood. I felt that my dad didn't love me because of this bone disease and to a certain extent I still believe that as well because as far as I am concerned, he put up with me and tolerated me to a certain extent. Now when I came out to him it was like a stake in the heart that sent him overboard but that is another tale for another time. I noticed that my father was abusing his mother and it really made me cry a lot and it also instilled one thing that I continue to fear...physical violence. One night my mother left myself and my sister with a baby-sitter and went home to deal with my father after my father decided to run amok on the streets of Cleveland. She promptly according to her tales and recollection got beaten rather severely with enough injuries to garner a visit to the hospital not on one occasion but numerous times. I remember feeling devastated because at the time he thought, "Where is my mommy and how come she hasn't come back for me yet?? Did she abandon me because of the way I looked???" Well after recovering from the beating she promptly packed myself as well as my sister and left my father. Over the next eight years it was just the three of us trying to make it in the world and I being the baby still hated the way I looked physically.

So here I was a little boy with all of these questions I loved my big sister mainly cause she went out of her way to stick up for me when I was little and I loved my mom cause she was the only person I knew that would take care of me at such an early age. But... she wasn't around as much as I liked because she was busting her ass trying to raise two kids and be a single parent at the same time. I now understand a lot of what she had to do to keep us, her children safe. I still had a lot of questions about life. Most of my questions were mostly about why I looked and felt the way I did. I didn't understand why others were so mean but I soon found out that children are evil creatures but thy don't know any better... that is why society calls them children. I felt lost inside. I didn't understand why the other kids that I went to school with teased me. In my mind the little boy felt like a freak of nature. It seriously affected my outlook on a lot of things and it was very depressing for me, things were starting to clear up a little. Kids are the most innocent people on the face of this planet no matter what they do or what they say because they are being brutally honest with one another. Anyway it was the three of them living in a duplex in Parma Heights, Ohio. It was a neighborhood that he grew to love and enjoy because it seemed that the kids that lived around the block accepted him for being him. All in total there was about 40 kids in the circular block that he played in, that is a lot of children to play with but I still had to content with the teasing at times. Some of the kids knew that I was different and that I was small as well as frail and at times they stuck up for their friend when someone bigger was giving me crap. It really got to me and the slightest thing would set off the boy's temper.

At about this time in my life my mother started dating a guy that was young like her and that had his head on straight and he seems to make a decent living. It kind of shocked me at first that this guy was trying to muscle in on what the three of them had. My mother did her best to provide for children and there were more than a few times that they lived off of Kraft Macaroni & Cheese. My mother was needing something more and this is something I didn't understand. What she needed was companionship and I really despised that fact that this guy was trying to do whittle his way in the door of our cozy little home. I was very young and didn't understand much about what was going on or what it meant to older people to have a lil companionship. I had my toys and stuff. I was a kid, I lived a semi clearly defined life. I went to school, came home did my homework and was about the door by 5:30 goofin off with my friends down the street. After a little time, I came to accept the fact that this guy was here to stay but he had other questions, like is this going to  be his new father?? Do I call him dad or do I call him by his name?? Ah such simplicities in life making decisions. I decided that he would call him by his name and I didn't want to break my promise to my father when it comes to him keeping the title of Dad. Well the title of Dad in my mind when I was younger went to my real father and nothing would change that til I grew older and realized how much of an asshole he really is. Her boyfriend was perfectly ok with all of this. But no matter how much I thought about his father, I always wondered why he never came around to see me. I loved my father dearly even with all the shit that he put the three of us through. I later found out that my father moved out of state to avoid having to pay child support to my mother. At this point in my life I just learned another important lesson. No matter what actions that you take there is an equal and opposite reaction. I also learned that my father had a lot of growing up to do because he made his bed and refused to lay in it. Again I felt lost in my own mind?? Who and what was I?? Why was I having these feelings of torment?? It was something that would turn my rage to a boiling point at times.

Well at about this time I was just about the age of nine or ten, cute as a button but felt horrorible inside. The man that his mother was seeing wasn't going away, his sister stayed home to play most of the time and the I ran around the neighborhood because I just loved the outdoors. There was woods in back of some of the houses that they went and got lost in and played in all the time. I loved the woods because that was my safe pace. So solitary, so peaceful, so quiet. I could actually think, when I would get lost walking in the creek with no shoes or finding new paths in the woods to explore. I loved it. My mother knew where he played most of the time and with who. She didn't have to many qualms with me getting lost in the woods. While in the woods my best friend and I would talk and play different games. The woods were such a solitary place. No one around for miles. The two of two of us, we got to know one another in a very close way. I absolutely adored my best friend and loved him immensely. It was like we were inseparable. As we grew, we played with one another's bodies and explored something new to them. SEX! Oh there is that word and let me tell you it was about to turn my  world upside down. Whenever I was with my best friend, I wished that I was actually a girl. I enjoyed the feelings of another person touching me, caressing me, holding me when I needed to vent my frustrations. After all my Mom was working a lot, my sister in my mind was a tattle tale so I couldn't tell her anything. I hated girls at that age so... go figure. It's that whole brother sister love hate relationship thing happening. If someone screwed with either one of us on an individual basis, they would bond together like glue and defend one another at times when needed. This guy that was now in my life that was dating my mother would never understand my feelings and to boot I didn't trust him. I only trusted his best friend. Those were some of the happiest times of my life even if they were turbulent times.

Well the time came when my mother and this guy she was now living with went out and bought a new house. That meant that I had to start from scratch again and that I had to put up with all the crap again. I was direly opposed to moving but I also knew that it was a lost cause to fight the issue. I was also opposed to sky blue and ruffles, it's so tacky. I was afraid to leaves my friends and the safety of where I lived and the bubble of happiness. Well that time came, I had to say my good-byes to everyone of my friends and playmates. It was a tearful situation when I had to tell my best friend. I was devastated by having to move because that means that I had to leave my best friend behind. The one person in my life that actually made sense and made me feel like a real person when we were together. When I was older and after I moved back from New Orleans, I didn't know the future between us but I would later find out that my best friend that I loved like no other would be ripped away from me by a couple of people that I once knew and called friends. Well the moving day was here and my great grandmother & grandfather drove up from Sandusky to help, my mom's boyfriend as well as some of his friends & family came over to help them pack up my little world and move it to five miles away. I thought my life as it was... over. I was leaving everything and everyone I knew because I had no other choice in the matter.

Well I  along with what was now my family moved to this new house away from all his friends and playmates. I only had my sister to play with the entire summer as well as ride my bike cause the family had moved just after school let out. I was depressed. I had a beautiful backyard, a field in back of the house and in back of the garage. We had a little playhouse type building that was big enough for them to play in. I absolutely adored the playhouse. Well eventually that summer ended and the dreaded first day of school came into being. I dreaded the first day of school in my new neighborhood. At least the school was around the corner so it wasn't as far as what I was used to when it came to walking to and from school. Well that first day of school really sucked. He felt out of place, no one came up to me and said welcome or anything. They just all looked and stared at me and my messed up looking frail body. They all made fun of the way I looked physically, the way I walked. Through out the 5 years I went to that school everyone thought that if they were to remove the stick from my ass that I'd start walking normal. It wasn't my fault that I was the way I was, blame it on mother nature and god cause the bastard played the cruelest joke of all on me. And people wondered in my neighborhood why I didn't go to church. But it still hurt my feelings to the point where it made me cry a lot inside. I tried to keep it inside but sometimes he couldn't help but start crying in front of everyone. I was screaming out for attention as well as hurting inside and no one recognized or tried to help me. They thought it was all a ploy to garner attention. The rest of my classmates labeled me a crybaby til the day he got into junior high school. A reputation that was sealed forever with the kiss of cruelty. I still didn't understand why they were being so cruel to me. I eventually made it though the school year and was pretty much miserable 'til the day I graduated from the 6th grade. During that time though I did make five really good friends, the kind of friends that will stand by you for the rest of your life. Well that didn't happen, the time thing lasting forever. Eventually time broke the friendships that they had and so did girls. All of his friends now had girlfriends but yet no matter what he did or said, he was the one singled out as the freak and no girl in their right mind would want to be seen with a malformed freak of nature such as myself. Gawd when I was a kid, I had issues!  

I liked girls from the stand point of their beauty and there were a few girls in the neighborhood that I looked up to but... again they saw the freak. I know it sounds selfish but that is what I thought.. Sometimes I would secretly pretend to put myself in their shoes so to speak just to feel normal. I did want to have girlfriend just so I could fit in but that really never happened til after high school. I liked girls but sexually from an early age they didn't fulfill the being I was but I also had to try and fit in. I thought to myself, if they found out that I likes boys that the neighborhood kids, they'd string me up and god knows what they would do what to me. At this point I was preying for the sweet sweet relief of death. When it comes to finding someone to share my life with like a lot of the people I used to know have found, I always come out on the loosing end of the battle. And the pattern still continues to this day. I'm nice, I'm sweet and I get a lot of compliments on my beauty but in everyone's mind, Rebeka/Sean is everyone's best friend but not good enough to share special moments together. 

There is one person that I told my secret to, one kid that was one of my best friends and that was in this little coterie of friends. He told no one else because if he did, he'd be outcast even more within the neighborhood I lived. He was a good looking olive skinned Italian boy that was actually pretty good looking in my mind. They were playing around downstairs one day and one thing led to another. They saw each other on and off 'til when I got in high school and even then we'd sometimes drive off after he got his first car and go get high and mess around a little. Now I won't tell you that I only liked boys but I liked both by the time I reached junior high, there were more people from all around the city. People that I used to go to elementary school in both the places I lived. I was really relieved to see them because I figured that a lot of them remembered me and they did and we got along great actually. I really liked this one girl and really wanted to be her friend, I thought to myself that she looked like a nice person to get to know. She had beautiful long blonde hair, a little taller than I was, blue eyes and braces. A perfect vision of beauty incarnate. Her name was Kirsti, and she was polite but also thought that here was this little geek with zits all over his face. Yes boys and girls puberty hit with a vengeance and with it came a serious case of acne. Well things with her really stayed like every other relationship that he'd ever had with friends. Kristi never talked to me that much and thought I was a freak. I cried hard in the park when a friend of mine pulled me aside and told me what was going on. I would later find out that this friend who used to go to elementary school had a decent friendship with her would play an instrumental part in a devestating loss in my life. Midway through the school year it was found out that the current junior high school I was going to was about to be shutdown due to finances and stuff. Well anyway, throughout the school year after finding out what Kristi's true feelings were I kept to myself and tried to get to know this girl as a friend 'til her she started going out with the school bully. This guy was already shaving and he was 15. Some say that he flunked the year before otherwise he might be a grade higher than those in the class. One day this guy pinned me against the lockers and told him in no uncertain terms to stop bugging his girlfriend. To stop coming over her house, etc, etc, etc. Just then did Kirsti walk by the boy and grinned and walked off. I learned a couple of lessons that day. The first lesson, do things yourself instead of having others do it for you. It is demeaning to have others opinions of you if you don't because you have just shown weakness because you dealt with a situation you should have dealt with on your own instead of pawning it off on someone. The second lesson was  a very valuable lesson. DTA. Don't Trust Anyone. I was really hurt that she did such a thing. Looks as if my reputation from elementary school proceeded to follow him into Junior High. I attended school functions such as dances and stuff and tried to get along with people but I felt really in my own skin. There were people that were trying to be nice to me because they felt sorry for me. Meanwhile when I wasn't at school I mostly stayed by myself going down to the woods to clear my head. It was the one and only constant in my life where I felt safe. I could go there and cry alone without interruption and release my tension and vent as much as I needed.

That summer I decided that I wanted to get a pool pass and I did. I saved up my money and hung out at the local pool all summer. It was a nice break from the monotony that was my life but a few local kids that I knew from school also did the same. One of them made a significant impact on my life because he introduced me to a band by the name of Dire Straits. All of a sudden I had this massive attack of interest. Because something beautiful just popped into my life and became a lifetime mistress. MUSIC!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Shawn Beaushene & Frank Romano, were instrumental in that department.  where ever you are... I don't know how to ever repay you for that gift of enlightenment. BTW as a happy note. I made my mom jealous that summer. She said that I had a killa tan going on!!

 One day I was in the woods feeling like the world had abandoned me when I met a bunch of older folks, older by a few years. These people were in high school and I also remembered some of them from Junior High. I was in an area void from anyone for about two miles and low and behold they come up on me, and I heard them coming so here I am trying to pull myself together and a girl asks him why he was crying. I am of the firm opinion not to pussyfoot around and I told her how I felt, she gave me a big hug. She was really cute, I remember her name was Lisa but damned if I can recall her last name. She lived across the street from the woods I liked to go trouncing in. She used to hand out Brian Bullis, Scott Bennie & some of the other people that we're alil older than me. She lived on the corner of Malibu Street and Pleasant Valley Road. After her and I went off for a walk and talked a lot, we got back there to where everyone else was and they people their accepted me whole heartedly even with my deformed body. It felt good to have a little acceptance in this world for the first time. That afternoon was a afternoon of great enlightenment. They completely understood how I was feeling. To put it mildly I was completely shocked and dumbfounded. I couldn't believe my luck, I finally found a group of people that I felt comfortable with and that could relate to him as well as his feelings. Thye only SHITTY feeling was.. they were alil bit older than me. Little did the boy who was now in his teens know that he had just made friends with the motleist group people in Parma Heights/Parma. He also recognized a few other guys were people that he'd scene around his neighborhood but really didn't know. It was kind of refreshing. I learned another lesson in life. Your true friends don't care about how you walk, how you talk, how you dress, etc., etc., etc. For the first time in my life I felt like a person and no one was going to take that away from me no matter how much trouble I got into when I was growing and making my mark in life. By now the little coterie that had formed started deteriorating and a couple of his friends moved away. The good part is that he could still see them at school.

The summer had ended and it was time yet again to go into a whole new place and meet more new people. The young man had to start over in a new junior high that was about fifteen miles away. I showed up that first day and some of the old staff that was at my previous school was at my new school. This made things a little easier to transition into. I looked around me and all of his friends had girlfriends but yet here I was left out in the cold at the age of 14 when it came to finding someone who I could really get interested in to share at least a little part of my life with. It made me take a close look at myself inside and I could only come to the conclusion that the cause no one wanted to go out with him was because I was deformed according to some of his classmates. Damn this reputation of mine, I thought to myself, I so hate being who I am and I am so tired of this bone disease, it made me even more angrier when it came to my temper and if someone said something malicious about it, it was like a pin that popped a balloon. I'd loose it literally. That year a few things happened that were good. It was a constant struggle for myself when I thought about the differences between the sexes. I wanted to fit in with the rest of the other kids but yet I also admired the girls and was also jealous of them at the same time. I was attracted to woman but also I was attracted to men as well. It was so confusing at times and with such a complex thought, one can see the issues that were involved from an adult stand point. It was going through my mind, "Am I heterosexual or homosexual", I didn't even know what bi-sexual even was. I often thought to myself couldn't there be a compromise?????? No No No, was the answer in my mind. I thought to myself even back then, if it's found out that I liked guys that I would get ostracized for my efforts as well as get my ass kicked in the process. There was someone that I used to go to school with who I thought had a lot of guts because everyone questioned his sexuality. I still wonder to this day where my lil friend from the old neighborhood I used to go to school with is at. Tim Barr if you ever read this... I would really love to talk to you at some point if we ever see one another again. 

Meanwhile during all this time when I was little boy living in the old neighborhood all the way up to Junior High whenever was home alone, I'd actually dress up and pretend that I was a beautiful princess and that my knight in shining armor would come get me a on beautiful white unicorn and take me away. I'm sort of still hoping that will happen one day. This wasn't a sexual need, I just wanted to feel normal and be normal and that was the only way I knew how. Growing up I learned to hide things from my friends and family very well. I became very adept at the art of deception and lying. To this day some of my friends can't believe that I was keeping such a hidden secret so well hidden because they really thought they knew who I was and it turns out I was far from what they knew. Was I teenager that was lost in the fantasy of  love? Yes... call me a hopeless romantic. Was I just someone that was not a part of normal society? Yes... at the time I had no idea what a transsexual was let alone the meaning.

Well time came for school to end and I had a semi-decent year at Junior high school and was looking to the summer to goof off and instead I ended up working that summer prepping ball diamonds and working the concession stand at a local park with some of the city workers. It was good work. I enjoyed it immensely.  After I'd get off work, I'd go swimming at the local pool and then go home. I was getting a killer tan even more so than the summer before plus I was I n good shape but I still felt weird inside. Kind of like I was uncomfortable within my own skin. I had yet to find a girlfriend and w as beginning to ever wonder if I was ever going be a part of a normal life. So far all I have scene and known is depression. Constantly questioning who and what I was starting to get to be a daily activity with me. The only time I felt normal was when I was in in the safety of my own room playing dress up. Well just about a month before the start of yet another school, I was involved in a pretty bad accident that happened on my way to work. I was riding my bike over to a new location my boss wanted me to work and it was a decent ways away, a really long bike ride and that is something I was always up for. The longer the better because during the ride it would help clear my head. I wasn't paying attention and from out of no where I got hit by a car breaking my leg in two places. Now when my parents ended up at the hospital, I thought that he was in serious trouble. Not only did I have this bone disease but was I going to be able to walk again. I thought to himself after his head cleared and the doctors had put me back together, what now is going to happen in my life?? Great I have to put up with more ridicule and more torment from some of the assholes that have been giving me shit for the last 5-6 years. This will add only more fuel to the fire. When in all actuality, it didn't. Most everyone that the I was going to school with knew that I had a summer job and that when I up and disappeared, rumors began to circulate, that I had moved away to live with my father or something. I even heard rumors that I died. ieven heard that I had overdosed.. I WISH  In all actuality I ended up breaking my leg and w as struck in traction for three and a half months on my back because the cast that the doctors had put on my leg was not working. The area by my ankle for some reason was being rubbed raw by the cast. Very painful indeed, I eventually healed and was homeward bound. 

I was so glad to be back in my own bed but during those three months. My parents trashed my room and used it as a spare bedroom for laundry and stuff. I came home and I crashed for at least two days. I went home just before October of '87. I didn't care, I was home and just wanted to be left alone so I could re-adjust back into life. I learned a lot about my life and other people while in the hospital. The hospital also gave me direction as well because I was the only 15 year old that I knew that had a great grasp on medical terminology as well as the fact that I learned and got rather proficient at learning the different techniques as well as when're a need should go in a human body to set up an IV, give a shot, etc. I didn't realize until later in life after I thought to myself for a few minutes, I've done all this research on transsexualism as well as gender study, why not put some of what I know to good use. I guess after my accident I didn't want to concentrate that hard so I got interested in Auto Mechanics. After about a week passed, I got the energy and the strength up to go back to school. I called the school and mentioned to the administration that I was back and that I would be attending. What a change from what he was used to. Wow, the halls seemed to be endless. The school seemed to be huge, bigger than he imagined. It was a totally different beast, that this was something that screamed you have arrived to the big time. A lot of the people he knew took a double take, not used to the fact that he had broke his leg. That all the rumors we false and that something traumatic had happened to him. They were VERY understanding indeed. I was liking the attention I was getting from everyone mainly because I think they realized I was human. I wasn't used to everyone being so nice to me, I was use to everyone treating me like a freak of nature. Maybe things would change after all and they kind of did. After it had sunk into the others in my class that I didn't move and that I wasn't dead, things were a little different. At times I didn't know how to react to it. During this time a lot of the girls that I knew took to me as being a friend, someone that they could trust and talk to. Someone that was sweet according to all the signatures in my high school year books but again still no girlfriend to make me feel like I fit in with the rest of my classmates cause there were some that were in very committed relationships. I so envied those girls. I liked the idea that he had so many friends now that trusted him enough to tell him their secrets and thoughts. I was still hiding and still fighting with my  sexuality at the time so it didn't matter to him me anymore about finding someone to confide in. All of the girls confided in me and for the time being I was content with that. I constantly had his nose in a tablet that he scribbled thoughts in. People really did notice him too much that first year back in school. It was mainly cause I was walking around on crutches for 5 months. During that time had met some really wonderful people that were much older and I happy that he had finally gotten to see some of the people he used to hang around with in the park and party with when I was still in Junior High but eventually all that would end. When I go to Valley Forge there were alot of people I was lookin forward to seeing.. Frank Romano being one of them, he was no where to be found. You  know that movie The Weatherman? When Nickolas Cage says fuck... that is exactly how I felt... Fuuuuuuuuuuuck.. It was very good to see Lisa again but she had a lot going on at the time with her at home and I never got to see much of her after that. 

Eventually things that school year went back to normal like when I was in Junior High. Some of the older people in the school thought of me as a really talented person that could write as good as I was with arts & crafts. I really liked the crafts classes as well as History and English. During all this time I struggled when not in school with who & what I was sexually. I hated the body I was in cause all my friends that were girls were really starting to develop. My jealousy was at an all time new level. I talked like a guy and walked like a guy, but when I was around my little and of friends that were girls, it was like a gigantic sorority. I felt like I had come into my own. I hid the fact from everyone in my high school that I was having a conflict mentally and emotionally. I don't know whether or not some of the girls picked up on this or not but... oh well. They never mentioned anything to me about it. Inside I was miserable, I sometimes it showed and sometimes I didn't. I still hadn't gotten a handle on my temper and I got in a few scraps with idiots that liked to give me a hard time, but after the school found out what I did to a couple of people for teasing me, no one really fucked with me after that. I'd ball all that anger and emotion that I was getting and just explode on the person. A few times I got in trouble for fighting. Afterwards when I'd skip a class to try and get my head straight, he'd go find a quiet place within the school and just cry. My quiet spot in high school was the Automotives Garage. Yup things were coming full circle and he could see that his reputation that had followed him his entire life for being a crybaby was rearing its ugly head once again but none of the people he knew seemed to mind that, they still stuck up for this puny 4'9" 100 pound shrimp. In some of my friends minds I was a good and  caring person. I had a knack for putting myself in other peoples shoes to give them advice etc. If they only knew the extent of the damage it caused me a lot of the time I don't know if they'd have confided in me anymore. I worked hard and screwed off even harder but I was still asking myself one question that had been eluding me, I still didn't understand why other people were like this to me. He thought it was their own social insecurities that were making them act like a total buffoon. I tried to fit in but was still outcast.

As time went on I fought more and more with the demons inside and my true feelings. I was still afraid of coming out to telling someone his true feelings. I still liked girls, I liked and admired their beauty but he also wanted to embrace that beauty. I wanted that beauty. I wanted my brain in their bodies if that makes sense. I can deal with the emotions and all the baggage that comes along with being a girl but yet I also still liked guys and there more than a few good looking guys that he went to school with. The dilemma, if he told someone all of this, what was going to happen. There was only a couple people in the school that were gay or bisexual that he knew of. And I HATED the way other people treated them. I withdrew more & more til one night I had decided to go out and get some attention. I got the attention I wanted but at the same time I was in deep trouble with my parents. With what I did, it was pretty serious and it involved me being picked up at the 1st District Cleveland Police Station. Talk about scared and tired, well the next morning I was sat down by my parents and they asked what was going on. They asked a flurry of questions and made some ultimatums as well that I was going to have to abide by. They brought up the fact that they knew of my crossdressing activities but they didn't understand what was going through my bra, they shocked me because they told me that they had known for some time. They were confronting me with this now for my own good. They asked him if he wanted to be a female and I classically denied every thought when it came to crossdressing and how far it went. They knew what was going on and it wasn't hard to keep things from the. I said no I didn't want to be a girl. They were offering me help to change into a girl. I was blown away by that. The fact of the matter was that I so wanted to be a girl it hurt. After being grilled for a few hours, the three of us decided to go and see a therapist for this. If I had my way, I would have rather not gone to go see a shrink because I only knew that they sat there and asked you questions about how you feel, what the trouble may be and said interesting why don't you tell me about it. Well when we all went to the therapist, I completely denied everything and said that I was normal guy with a girlfriend and everything. I totally snowed the therapist  of the denial I was in. I basically told the therapist what he wanted to hear. That experience looking back was a serious cry for help, yet I didn't know it yet cause I was stupid and blind to the truth of the matter. I also didn't want to open up a whole new can of worms to deal with at school cause then I'd get the same treatment that the few people who were openly gay as well as bi-sexual. That is a can of worms I would not have lived through at such a young age if I opened it. I knew kids my age were cruel and not adult enough to deal with the whole GLBT issue that I was facing. I would have surely found a way to kill myself if I did transition at such an early age because I knew most at my school could not accept it. 

After that happened I withdrew even further into my bubble of life and in addition to my writing and music, I had added another love. My love for mechanical things. I had a knack for fixing things that were mechanically based. I understood the principles and I also watched the guys in black jackets that said "Senior Automotives" since the moment I started high school. They had the best cars, and most of all NO ONE MESSED with any of them or the Juniors that were taking Vocational Automotive. I dreamt about the day I would be in their position. Everyone liked the guys in Automotives. Talk about another outlet for acceptance. I eventually reached one of the two dreams. Wearing that black jacket. This is the same year that my father came into town to visit for Christmas and bought me my first complete set of tools. My dad and I had long talks about what I wanted to do with my life and I told him I wanted a simple life in where I can make a simple but honest living. I think my father was quite pleased with that but he had NO IDEA of my gender conflict because that was something my parents and I never mentioned to him. From there I kind of took over the family garage his toolbox and his garage only got more cluttered. The only thing that belongs to his stepfather in the garage was the lawnmower, the rest belonged to me. It was my new little place to where I could concentrate, get high and clear my mind because all of the places that he used to go and do that were being bulldozed over and homes were being built. During high school I still had displayed a mean tempter that would snap at the drop of the hat as well as having to fight my own inner demons with my sexuality and what others thought of him and expected of him. I was making a decent living and was buying most of my own food and stuff but there is always from what I see as a time of reflection. I consider this lil look into my life just as such. A reflection of the changes in me.  

The time was fast approaching for my senior year and my life by this time was a myriad of emotions and problems stemming from all directions. My fight with his own sexuality, my ongoing fights with my parents, my  withdrawal from everyone, some of the things my step father did, the amount of time that I spent alone, the constant teasing, there was very few things in my life that I had considered a positive by the time I had become a senior. I had a group of people that he I to hang around with but most of them were out of high school and were musicians. My temper was getting worse and no matter what I did to try and curb it, it would eventually get me more trouble. Whenever I got angry during shop class, the teacher would tell me to go out and have a cigarette and chill out. Mr. Sirl was my one and only saving grace and one of the few people that the young man looked up to in my life since he was a little kid. I knew that when I was little he owned the towing yard where all the cars where. I would sometimes go back there and just sit in the woods looking at his house. He had everything. He was the epitome of success, he was a teacher, he ran his own shop, was admired and well known within the community. If one of his students screwed up somehow, he would be there to help them out with no questions asked and usually was the first one to know about it. Well sure enough I screwed up and my temper snapped. I was walking through the shop on my way out the door and was having a piss poor day when I saw someone that had pissed me off for one reason or another. I walked up to the person grabbed him by the scruff of his neck, dragged him outside in back of Automotives and threw him into the brick wall face first and gave him a warning of what I was about to do. Nothing was made of this incident and Mr. Sirl understood as did the rest of the class that if you got on my bad side, bad things would happen. The next day I was called into Mr. Sirl's Office, he sat me down and wanted an explanation for what happened the day before. The old man, that's what all of his students called him, old man, old man Sirl, he had a plethora of nicknames. Anyways I explained the situation and it was left at that. A few weeks later another person that was my automotive class was trying my patience to see what kind of rise he could get out of me and I also noticed that some of my tools came up missing. I went out for a cigarette to cool off and left it at that. When I  was walking to my car that afternoon to leave, I noticed said person that was giving me shit earlier in the day and asked him what the hell is his problem was. Well for whatever the reason it wasn't good enough for to accept and I proceeded to get in yet another fight and this time got in serious trouble because of it. Not only had I hurt the person that deserved what he got but I also was hurting emotionally and physically. No one saw me for about four days, I needed to have some time to himself to figure out what was going on. I came to the conclusion that I was seriously fucked up emotionally and that my personal life sucked cause he had to live up to others expectations. The school administration had heard about the fight through the grapevine and called me into the office and asked me what happened and I told the vice principal the truth. That the reason no one has seen me for a few days is because I had never felt some much rage. I told Mr. Malone that I had blacked out during the fight and don't remember much about the fight. I also told him that I scared the ever living shit out of myself because I had blackout and I needed to seriously think with no one around to bother me. I know what I was doing but it didn't excuse the fact that I wasn't in school for 4 days. I just went to work and stayed with a few friends. I knew what I was doing was right because what if it were to happen again. What were to happen if I couldn't control myself. Those were the thoughts on my mind, school was the absolute farthest thing on my mind.

All the teasing had gotten to me and I couldn't take it no more and just exploded. Well with such a major concern of anger, both of us knew it was a major problem and left the situation open for me to come back for help when I wanted it. I never took up Mr. Malone's offer. I do wish I did thought. It could have saved me a lot of heartache later down the road. I was afraid that since I was one of Old Man Sirl's students, that the black eye of such an incident such as myself would ruin the friendship that myself and Mr. Sirl shared. So I kept to myself for the rest of the year. I had very little friends that I cared about in that high school but the few that I did have I was really overprotective of. Lisa Thomas was about the only one that I trusted implicitly only because had been friends since they were thirteen and it was getting to the point where she was my best friend period. I decided not to go to my high school prom and I also decided that I wasn't going to go to commencement. I wanted to go.. I really did.. but the person I wanted to take (Lisa) already had a date. It didn't bother me much cause I drank myself into a stupor that lasted for 6 months. I'd go to school and afterwards.. I'd go home and crack the beer chest in the garage. The beginning of the next school year I was asking around as to the where whereabouts of my high school diploma because I didn't receive it in the mail. I went up to the school and inquired and was told that I owed money to the school. I was like what money. I told them that they had better check their records and that they were wrong, things got heated and the Principal got involved. I told the principal who was my Assistant Principle Mr. Roberts,  to basically go screw a pooch and was banned forever from stepping foot on school grounds ever again. I hate to say this but I really hope that man has since died because he had NO right what so ever to contact my parents about the disagreement that we had and in the end I was correct. I didn't own ANY money to the high school. I never received an apology for the way I was treated. I do not have any respect for that man. I showed him respect for four years of my life and this was my return investment. I so loved Mr. Laurenzi. He was the living embodiment of what a school employee was. He cared about the kids not the politics or the money. He always managed to make things work. Mr. Roberts, from what I understand drove that school into the ground. Since then I have repeatedly broke that order since the time of graduation 12 years ago. I still have yet to tell a major force in my life what and how I feel and how much the thoughts of his opinions have guided my life to this very day. Things tend to change over time I've noticed but feeling don't.  I have come to terms with a lot of things but, finally telling Mr. Sirl that I'm a transsexual after all of these years... I'm scared I really am. Because he was like a real father to me. He was the only man that showed interest in my well being when I was in high school. I sometimes wished that he was my dad. I'm really scared to tell him what is really going on in my life these days as well as a few people that really meant a lot to me when I was younger. The other two people I'd like to talk with again are someplace else now. I don't know whether or not they'd want to talk to me.  I've extended the branch a few times and I never got anything back from them. 

After graduation, things at my home were deteriorating rapidly. I  was looking for a job constantly with my step father on my ass for one thing or another. I was seriously was out everyday looking for a job but that wasn't good enough for my stepfather, he thought I was a complete bum even though I had held some pretty good jobs as a mechanic. I also wanted to go to college and eventually did. I went to the local community college for one full term and ran out of money to return the next semester and yet again my stepfather got on my ass to find a job. I was in college now. I was a grown man trying to get an education so that I wouldn't have to sling a wrench like Mr. Sirl did for so long. I outgrew that expectation. During my college semester I cracked at the books hard. One day, it was on Mother's Day as a matter of fact that things took a serious turn for the worse that ripped my family in two. It was Mothers Day and the family was going to go out to a movie and dinner. Well the rest of the family was told to get dressed cause they were going to go out. I was dressed very casually with what he considered to be comfortable. I was in no mood to get all dressed up just for a few hours of entertainment. Well my stepfather took this as a slight and started throwing me around despite the plea's of my mother. I said no to my stepfather and he snapped, barging into the bathroom and proceeded to beat on me. I was 18 at the time. A year after the police incident I noticed that the police incident was the beginning of troubles between my mom and my step father.  I received a fat lip and a few minor bruises for my efforts of denial. Not as bad as bad as what my step father got. His stepfather was singing soprano for a few days and he walked out of the fight with a bloody nose. Well anyway, I ran to my room and just totally flipped out and trashed my room and promptly left to go next door to call the police. No one was ever going to lay their hands on me again period. When the police got there they sat the two of them down outside on the lawn and said this was a crappy reason for family members to be fighting, we were both explained the severity of the situation if I chose to press charges against the stepfather, he'd end up in jail for domestic battery. In the end I chose not to press charges and that was a seriously big mistake because as soon as I chose not to press charges kicked me out of the house. So I called up one of his best friends that towered above my step father to come over and get me immediately. I was a total mess. 

My friend Ravage came over and saw the situation and I was very surprised that Ravage didn't beat the snot out of him. I at the time was 5'1" and 125 pounds, my step father was 5'7" and 180 pounds. There was a distinct advantage that he had over me and I was lucky enough to get out it with as little damaged as I did but the implications afterward are what really tore things apart between my mom and her husband. A week later, I called the only person I could count in such an emergency situation, my real father. I explained the situation to him and all of what had been going on and stuff and he loaned me the money to grab a suitcase full of clothing as well as a plane ticket and I moved to New Orleans. A city that captured my heart almost as much as Cleveland did. I said good-bye to my friends for now and told them that I didn't know when or if I was going to be coming back if at all. I seriously tried to tried to contact Lisa so that she knew about all of what was going on and after I landed in New Orleans, that was the first person that I called. I called her and explained everything and that he was sorry for any pain he might have caused or worries that she had about me. We sat on the phone for hours talking and it was very soothing to hear her voice. My last memory of seeing her before I left was with Ravage, the three of us went up to Pleasant Valley Junior High, a closed down school I used to go to. There was bleachers there still even though the school had been closed for five years. I wandered off to let Ravage and Lisa talk and told I em I wanted to be alone. I walked down there to the bleachers and I remember feeling very lonely. I do remember that day as one of the first times I actually wanted to cut myself. I just didn't have anything to do it with. All of this loneliness was just too much for one kid to handle especially since both of them knew that things at my house were rapidly deteriorating. I think we became closer friends because of this. I was down there in New Orleans six months and to tell you the truth I would have loved it if I could have brought Lisa down for a vacation just to get her away from the books and stress of work and stuff. One morning after coming in from work, I got a phone call from Lisa and she could barely talk. I was kind of shocked at the news she told me. I fell down to my knee's that day. She told me that Mickie's fiancé went on a rampage with the her daughter there and her daughter witnessed her father, Mickie's fiancé stab and murder her mother. I really wish I could have wrapped my arms around Lisa so that I could comfort her. I was 1,.200 miles away and I felt so helpless. I wish I still had a picture of Lisa to show you how special she is but I don't. I can't find any in my yearbooks.

I liked Mickie a lot as a friend. Who knows I might have stayed down there but I knew that I was needed in Cleveland. The death of Lisa's best friend Mickie, really hit her hard. All three of us where very good friends through out high school. When I called my dad who was now working in Ohio again, I didn't know what to do. I felt numb and he told me something that I have NEVER been able to forget. He told me "Sean, your at an age where death is a constant. There isn't much you can do but accept it, grieve and get over it. The best way to remember those that you have lost is to remember the happy times that you both shared." I do know I'd like to move back there sometime with the person that I will eventually find to share my life with. There was one thing and one thing only that got him me to Ohio after had I left and that was the passing of my great great grandmother. Without thought I was on the next plane to Cleveland, I called Lisa, I was a total basket case. I told her that I really wanted to see her, that I needed to see her. I flew into Hopkins Intl. Airport and was met by my mother, sister and my mothers new boyfriend Bob. By this time there was so much mental abuse going on my former house by my step father that his mother finally divorced him and moved away from the house where all the problems started many years before. She packed up my sister & with the help of Bob found a very nice little apartment in Rocky River. That night I promptly made a few calls to meet up with some friends because he wanted to catch up on things. I was even was able to catch up with Lisa and give her something that meant the world to me. I wanted to spend alot of time with Lisa when I was Cleveland cause I didn't know if I would be able to do it again. I managed to talk my mom into dropping me off at her place and when I saw her I gave her the warmest biggest hug I could cause over the last two years my life had fallen apart, my great great grandmother just died and she was all I had left in my eyes. I gave Lisa the only thing that my grandmother had willed to me. I still hope that she still has it and thinks back to happier times. We laughed about gettin lost tryin to find my mom's place again. I had given Lisa, my great great grandmothers church rosary that she used on a daily basis. I don't know where Lisa is at cause we lost touch but she'll always have a special part in my heart and will always be welcome in my home. I have always cared for that girl a lot more than what she may interpret but I do care about her family as well as her child, I've always been concerned about her welfare and general well being. The day that I got out of her car I fucked up when we went to go see Mickie's grave... I never cried. When I came back into town for my gram's funeral.. I didn't have any tears left. I was also tryin to be a rock for Lisa to stand against. She's such a special person and friend that all she had to do is say the word and she'd have anything she needed. I walked out her door after that and have kept in scarce touch with her. We had a falling out a couple years later that still hurts me but that was my screw up. I really didn't know how much of an impact that last time I saw here would have on me now that I reflect on it. I ran off with tears in my eyes cause once again.. my heart was broken. I have lost contact with her and one day hope to tell her all of the wonderful things that have happened to date and tell her I was stupid. There are so many things I want to say but I don't know if it's the right thing to do. To tell her how I feel about her as a friend, how much I really do appreciate her and her friendship. I really genuinely love her for the person she was. She was always my concious.. whenever I was about to do something stupid.. she'd always pull me aside and quit being such a dork. All these things go through my head at a million miles a minute. Sometimes I have a hard time even focusing.

After my return to New Orleans I didn't have much of a life except for working and I threw myself in to my work trying to get on with life. I didn't know what to do because another force in my life that meant lot to me was no longer there to help guide me. And I have to admit, I feel guilty because during the 2 years that I lived in New Orleans, I didn't write her one letter, yet she always managed to send me letters. After about six more months of feeling lost and with the current state of things at his dad's house deteriorating, things were getting intense to say the least. My step mother was working, I was working and I also had to worry about  my little brother and sister. I didn't want to see what happened to me as a baby happen to them but it eventually did. It really tore me up to cause I thought that my father would get things right the second time around but he didn't. My father had decided that after he was laid off that he was going to accept an offer from one of his former employers to move back to Ohio. So I had to make a choice and it costed me dearly. Did I want to stay there in New Orleans where I was making a decent living and continue to guess as to who I was? I had no clue what the future held or who was going to emerge from it. The other choice, did I want to move back to Ohio and hitch a ride with my stepmother and father. I chose to go back to Ohio and after some searching, I found a job at the airport that I enjoyed. But deep down my feelings kept coming forth so after a while of trying to work things out, I decided it was best to part ways with the company because many of them were very homophobic and at this time in my life I wasn't sure what I wanted. Also during this time is the part that I mentioned earlier where my decision to move back to Ohio cost me something dearly. my best friend when I lived in New Orleans killed himself. So hear I was my great great grandmother died 6 months prior and now my best friend had decided that to escape all of the torment and garbage going on in his life that he'd rather hang himself than go on with life. I rally hunkered down because I didn't hesitate. I was on a plane within two days for the funeral. I was racked, my mental capabilities were so far gone that I really felt numb inside. I didn't want anyone of my friends that he knew that he was back in Ohio to know I was back. I wanted to try and start over. I also avoided a few people best as I could because I knew they were looking for me. And one friend in particular was kind of miffed especially since that friend was Ravage. After I moved back and all the trouble with my family was resolved. Things were the same and I felt like I had let my friend on a massive level. I still think that and I haven't talked to him lately but... HE DOES KNOW and has BEEN HEARING rumors that Sean is now someone completely different. I have given permission for a friend of mine to give him my phone number cause I eagerly await his phone call. I'm scared shitless to. I don't know what I'm going to tell him. I really don't. Eventually he let his friends know that he had moved back and that he wanted to get a start on life before contacting them. I also hoped they didn't hold anything against me for bailing on them like the way I did to New Orleans. I had to do what I had to do to keep a roof over my head as well as for my own personal sanity but now... sanity is irrelevant at this point in time cause I've come to accept the fact that I'm insane and that I don't think like normal people do.  

Eventually after I moved to Cleveland, the job market got tough once again and I decided that I had to go elsewhere and I moved with moved to Columbus with my mother after my sister moved out on her own. I didn't screw off or go out very often but I did receive the following bad news before I moved. It was worse than bad, it was devestating. One of my best friends when I used to live on Independence, my first friend. He had a girlfriend and was expecting a baby girl on the way.  Well it happened sixth months before her birth. I was out getting away from the books and I ran into an old friend, Steve Holmes from the neighborhood I lived in when I was about 7-8, we lost touch but when we got into high school, we were pretty decent friends. I was at the mall with my friend Ravage and his girlfriend. He told me three days before it hit the newspapers. I told him to get me out of the mall now, when we got outside I collapsed against a wall. Now, there was the beautiful blonde angel I referred to as Kirstie, well my friend back then Eric McCray was the one that told me the bad news about her and her opinion of me. Little did I know that Eric McCray would play a huge part in my life. I'm still numb when it comes to Adam's murder. The three men that were arrested for the crime caught me off guard. I wasn't expecting it to be PEOPLE I FUCKING KNEW!!!!!!!!!! Gawd I was pissed and heartbroken. Adam had a great job as a Parts Manager at Murray's Auto Parts and was getting his life together with his soon to be wife and the birth of his daughter. The three men that were accused of luring Adam to a secluded ball field in Hinckley Township and beating him to death. Prosecutors claimed Grodek, then 20, of Parma, planned to assume Rodgers' identity to avoid prosecution for desertion from the Army. None of the 3 defendants got the death penalty. Prosecutors agreed to drop the capital charge against Grodek in exchange for a guilty plea to aggravated murder and other charges. He was sentenced to life in prison with no possibility of parole for 30 years. McCray, 22, of North Royalton, was convicted of aggravated murder and kidnapping. But the jury did not find the killing to be premeditated, sparing him from the death penalty. He was sentenced to life with no chance of parole for 20 years. Martin, 22, of Parma, agreed to testify for the prosecution and was allowed to plead guilty to involuntary manslaughter, aggravated robbery, kidnapping and obstruction of justice. He was sentenced to 11 to 50 years in prison. That topped it, I don't know if life could get any worse. My great great grandmother, Mickie, a friend from school and Lisa's best friend, Tony Simoneaux, my best friend from New Orleans and now Adam was gone. I was a total basket case. I had to get out of town because there was too much anguish in Cleveland form me and I didn't know how to deal with it. I at the time was very suicidal but the only that kept me going was the thought of the lives that I have affected and how they would change after they were to hear of my suicide. I had greater opportunity because I was in the same city where there was a Big Ten College. OSU and I took every opportunity to check that place out. I started going to broadcast school after numerous jobs around Columbus. I really like Columbus but it was little to big for me and my tastes. I also missed my friends in Cleveland would occasionally pop up for a weekend. When I was living in Columbus, I managed to find a job that suited a college student going to school. I got a job as clerk at United Dairy Farmers right down the street from my apartment. I had my first real close run in with death and it pissed me off. I was working as an intern at a radio station and I had to play with my schedule a little bit and one night, one of my friends that also worked there was going to take my shirt for my and we'd switch and catch up later with the rest of the schedule. Nothing like playing "Let's juggle the work schedule".  I had a shift that night at the radio station and was coming home. I stopped into work to see how things were going and made a deal with Brian to do this every week. We'd just have to juggle our schedules. Well the next morning I got up and was on my way to school when I noticed that the store I worked in was sectioned off with police tape and that there was NO ONE around and that the area was a crime scene. I immediately got back into my car, headed to school and just as I was pulling into school, I heard on the morning news what had happened. I was devastated. That could have been me and that fucking should have been me. Five deaths within a period of 16 months time. I was beginning to think that death followed my every step but he was too much of a pussy to take my life. I was afraid to even get to know anyone because I was afraid that they'd die. At this point in my life I realized that the Catholic faith I was supposed to be having faith in was seriously FAILING me. I did occasionally prey and when warranted read the bible. That is when i found Paganism & Wicca. I haven't picked up a bible since my great great grandmothers funeral. I still have in my possession the bible that belonged to my great great grandfather who had passed just as I was going into the 8th grade. I preyed to the goddess as well as stuck my nose in ever book that was wiccan/pagan related. 

About this time I really started to look hard for places in Columbus that were GLBT friendly so that I could venture out and figure out who I was. I didn't find any and that really upset me a lot because I thought well gay got to go somewhere but is the GLBT community that far underground in Columbus?  I didn't go out very often but when I did I liked to let my hair down. All this time though from the time I was a little boy, I was still struggling with my temper and other inner demons. I was not very good company while he lived in Columbus. I was always feeling bitter about someone or some situation that I was being put into because of school. I seriously wanted to graduate first in my class but I ended up second next to a girl named Anna Janowitz. This enraged me further with more and more jealous for the female species and yet I had never let out one feeling of what I was going through and my thoughts to anyone. I  seriously wanted a job in the radio industry and eventually worked hard enough to get an internship as well as a job offer when I graduated. Well things came to a head again and it was time for me to strike out on my own, I did. And the price I had to pay was, I starved for my efforts but it was a humbling experience. It was the best time in my life. I had my own place, my own life, a full time job that I loved and worked hard at, the only problem was that there was this city boy living in the middle of a fucking cornfield. I was happy yet miserable at the same time because I  knew that I could reach and get hired in the Cleveland market.  thought to myself, gawd what a homecoming that would be and it eventually happened. I proved everyone wrong and managed to grasp a little ascertainment of peace with some of my past cause I was proud of the fact that I was a fulltime radio personality. Everyone thought that I was going to be a dirt mechanic forever. I did it, I proved everyone wrong. I was so proud of myself. No one in my graduating class to my knowledge did what I was able to manage to pull off. It was my dream to return to Northeast Ohio and be on the one radio station that I got introduced to by Shaun. My favorite radio station WMMS 100.7FM. It was dream and I got to live it but somewhere along the line things got really cloudy. I still had all these feelings toward my sexuality and stuff. I was very complicated cause now I managed to put myself in a position where I know that I will never be able to come to terms with this and it drove me up a wall. I threw it and flaunted it in the face of every person that he used to go to high school with that gave me a hard time or picked on me. Here was this little gimp freak of a deformity that attained more success than anyone in his high school class. Well after I spent sometime in a cornfield being miserable for about a year, I was offered a job in Canton working for my uncle's family business. It was more money and less hours than what I was currently working and I had also sent a tape and resume to a rock radio station in Akron, 97.5 WONE was about to become his home for three and a half years before we parted company due to no possibility of job promotion. I continued to work various jobs around Canton to make ends meet. Out of the blue one day I sent in a tape and resume to WMMS just for shits and giggles, I wasn't expecting them to call, but to my dismay when I got home from work that evening I checked my answering machine. The powers that left a message on my answering machine and in less than two months I was back on the air in my home town of Cleveland, Ohio broadcasting throughout Northeast Ohio. It was short lived but it was still an accomplishment that my teachers and friends could be proud of. Then WMMS was bought out 2 months later and I was shit canned from my dream.  It really fucked me up til this day because it was so out of the blue. It knocked A LOT of wind out of my sails. Then the thoughts of guys and make up and hair REALLY STARTED TO HIT ME HARD LIKE A BRICK WALL!!!!!!

There is an important lesson that be learned, everyone is expendable in a business environment even if they do have a contract with their employers. I also learned during this time that one should be themselves no matter what they convey or how they are construed. It was easy for me to get lost in the radio personality that I had become. I had helped WONE win an Emmy award my first year at the station for best medium market rock station in the country. I also proved all my critics wrong with my ratings. I was number one in my time slot for two years solid. I had even beat some of the air personalities in Cleveland even though I was based in Akron at the time at WONE. It barely broadcast into Cleveland but where I use to live in Parma, it was good enough for me. Most of the success that I achieved was from word of mouth. No matter what I did though he wasn't happy with myself inside. I had become a monster out of control. I was tired of being something I was not. I was just a simple person that wanted to be what h had always wanted and during my time in radio. My dreams got clouded by other dreams. I one day decided to throw it all away and take a break from broadcasting to get my head on straight. It was after I had gotten fired from WMMS that the I really started having some serious health concerns in regards to his bones as well as mentally. During my time as on the air I grew to get really paranoid about my personal life and my privacy. For good reason too I was at this point in my life dressing at home and just staying there enjoying the sanctity and safety that I had yet when it came to girlfriends I had one but I always questioned whether or not she was with me because me as a person or if she was with me because I was a local celebrity. I knew corrective bone surgery was in my future. How I'd manage to come to terms with my sexuality after all of this would be a modern miracle. 

My problems started beginning when I was still at WONE but because of my three and a half month stay in the hospital, I decided that I was going to bite the bullet and tough it out plus I didn't have the health insurance I needed to get the surgery done. Well my problem got so bad that it is hard to explain exactly what was happening but to suffice to say whenever I sat down or got up my knee locked on me. I would have to watch how I sat and got up,  depending on how I did that, I could lock up my knee and dislocate it at whim and to pop it or put it back in place was like knocking in a separated shoulder. During this time that I was having health problems is when all my  feelings towards my gender really started to bubble to the forefront. I  was now strongly attracted to men even though during my stint at WONE, I met a nice young woman that was great but she wanted more than what I was willing to give. I adored her immensely and we grew together and we still talk to this day. She is a gigantic force in my life. One morning I came to a few realizations. Realizations that might crush her and her hopes for a future with me. I could not have children like she wanted plus she had no clue of the other side of me at all. I hid from her completely as well as I hid it from all my friends years earlier. That morning I was getting up to get ready for work and I stopped for ten minutes and just looked in my bedroom window and I glanced down towards my bed and something snapped. Here is this gorgeous girl in my bed yet I wanted a man. I felt so guilty. I don't know if anyone can comprehend how guilty I felt because I was misleading this girl. Tracie was sleeping like an angel, so soundly, so innocent, so beautiful. The feelings of anguish overwhelmed me because all of a sudden I got wickedly jealous of her and her beauty, the shape of her body, everything in general. I asked myself if I truly loved her anymore and oddly enough the answer was no. It took sometime to withdraw from the relationship had because I wasn't sure how to go about telling her all of my feelings. I eventually chose to tell her the way I always told people things when it came to my feelings. I would write them down on paper cause it as very hard for me to relate to people on a one on one basis. So I wrote a song.  When I was with her I was somewhat happy, but there was a feeling that was not fulfilled. Over the next couple of months we slowly parted ways. Tracie is still a reckoning force in my life and we're pretty good friends these days.

I fought these feelings for almost my whole life and now was the time for them to come to the fore front. Now one must understand that in the past when I was a young man and when I was dress, I felt natural, it was not a feeling of sexual desires that drove me to be Rebeka. I felt normal when I was her (Rebeka) and it was time to come out and tell other people. All of my life I had imagined that when I looked in the mirror that I was the little princess. I enjoyed the feeling of a man's touch  I enjoyed everything about being female and the funny thing is that it felt normal for me when I experienced all of these sensations. All I ever wanted to be is normal, to fit in. Well it all came to a head one day, I could not live a lie anymore. I was willing to give it all up just to be happy and who could blame me? I was trying to come to terms with how I was going to tell my family as well as some of my friends. I was deafly afraid of coming out to my mother. I would be lying if I said I wasn't worried about how they would take all of this. It's not everyday that your son comes up to you and tells you he wants to be a she. It happened on a clear autumn day, my mother was visiting and helping out with a few things around the house. It was first thing in the morning, she was checking her e-mail. For months now I had been giving my family subtle hints with my changing of my appearance so to an androgynous look. The day had come to clear the air, to stop living a lie that was making my life so miserable. She took a breath and made some coffee, and I told my mom that I needed to tell her something really important. Well once the coffee was made and I knew that I had my mothers complete attention, I took another deep breath. I had butterflies in my stomach, sweat in my palms and tears welling up in my eyes. I said "Mom I have something to tell you about me and it's something major that will alter life for this family as we know it. I have been having certain feeling and certain issues concerning something in addition to the time I've had trying to correct my health problems. This whole feeling is just sinking in and I have been trying to come to terms with my sexuality since I was about seven. Mom, I'm in the wrong body. I have been researching something for something for about 7 months now to help me understand who it is as well as what it is I am. I think that the best way to tell you is to show you something. Mom, I am transgendered." I started breaking down and went into the other room to try and calm myself but before I did, I typed in http://www.alysons-attic.org/. I walked into the other room and I braced myself for the worst and started to cry for fear of the unknown. Will my mother disown me? Was my mother going to confront her and say " Why are you killing my son?". It was my biggest fear, the tension in the air was so think you could cut it in two with a dull butter knife. Well after about 10 minutes of trying to calm myself, I walked back into the kitchen and prepared myself for what was about to happen. My mother was smiling, looking at the computer screen and drinking her coffee, kind of with a very content smile. I noticed the look on my mothers face and wondering what was going though her mind and all I could think about was all the questions and preconceptions that were running through her head about the transgendered community. My mother turned towards me and said "That no matter who you are in life, what gender you are, how screwed up you are, I will always support you in any of your endeavors no matter what they are or where they take you. I've known about this since you were about the age of ten. I just knew that it was your decision to come forward and I knew eventually in time you would. Everyone in this world has their own way of dealing with things and their own time frame to do things in. I thought you'd have done it when you were in high school but I was wrong." .

I broke down and cried for days after I finally came out to my mother. Now that I had broken the ice and that my sister had long known, how was I going to tell my mothers boyfriend, my stepfather, my father, my little brother and sister as well as my stepmother and the rest of the family. I made a major step towards healing myself as well as my soul. Now to the next step of telling the rest of her family. I thought about this long and careful for a few months on how I was going to accomplish this task. I had always thought that my family and friends had the right to know up front and at least an explanation for my unusual behavior. After I came out to my mother, I started the arduous task of moving once again from Canton back to Cleveland because all during this time I was also talking with doctors to schedule surgery for my knee to fix that problem as well in December of the very same year. I had a lot to do and not a whole lot of time to get it all started and after the surgery. I was hoping to get my life back on track, somewhat. But I also knew that it was never going to be the same again. And that was more than perfectly fine because I had come to the conclusion that living a lie in deep depression is very hazardous to one's health. The time for knee surgery was coming close and I had already started to tell some of my family and I had sat my sister as well as my mother down and had numerous talks with them about how hard this was going to be on the both of them and that I might have to burn some bridges with others within the family. I was perfectly ready to accept the consequences of my actions. This arduous task was going to take a lot of time as well as desensitivity and work on my part. I had been working on my immediate family for a few months and started to go and seek help. Meanwhile my knee surgery went well and was expected to make a full recovery. What the doctor did was remove a piece of bone that was an extra calcium deposit that had been a sizable amount of bone that as interfering with the way the muscles where were laying. The muscle would sometimes overlap that bone causing it to lock the knee joint and dislocating it. Well now that that problem was corrected all I had to do is heal, I could in the meantime start back to work on my plan of attack with telling my family & friends. The next big challenge in my life was to tell my friends, I was still unsure how I was going to tell my step father and my fathers side of the family yet. I stewed over how to come up with a plan to do that in the upcoming month few months.

It was a cold December morning and I got this phone call from my sister and my sister wanted to know if she wanted to go to St. Louis with her for a weekend getaway to go and meet with their friends that belong to a non profit organization called The Camarilla. The Great lakes Region of the organization was planning a very elaborate celebration to ring in the new year. I didn't say yes at first but after talking it over with my mother. I told her that I would go. I was also still trying to finish the move from Canton to Cleveland, working on a plan to tell her family and now I had to come up with a way to tell some of her friends within The Camarilla. Well time was coming and I first approached my friend Mindy for guidance. It was a tough decision for me to confront and finally tell her friend Mindy, I told her everything and Mindy's reaction was not one of surprise or shock but one of happiness. Mindy filled me in on a few things that she knew about and she had mentioned to me that she already had a friend that was very much in the same boat as the me and that person in the same boat was someone I knew, she mentioned to me that I approach the person that Mindy was talking about and she if she could help any. It took a few more months to find the right time to get in touch with said the person Mindy told me about to talk to her about all of this. The time came for me to go to St. Louis with her sister and mother in tow. I had my leg in an immobilizer, I hopped in a car with Mindy as well as my  mother while my sister drove to St. Louis with two friends. It was a two car caravan. I was looking forward to seeing some of my friends again from across the country. The trip driving to St. Louis wasn't all that bad. It was actually very nice and there wasn't that much snow and ice on the road the entire time they were gone that weekend. The place that they were all staying at was called "Henry the Eighth" or something similar to that. I got to the hotel and was glad to get out of that car and stretch a little bit. It was an absolutely beautiful hotel all done up like a French Chateau on the outside and on the inside in the main lobby area it wasn't too bad but there certainly was a lot of woodwork that was absolutely gorgeous.

  The rooms were ok, nothing to write home about but just the buzz in the air about the festivities planned were absolutely amazing. The very same night that we got there they we were to go to a place called the Bevo Mill for dinner, this place can best be described as a place where they hold wedding receptions and events like that. All of the people that came for the event came mostly for the meal that was being served. It was a three course meal and it was absolutely amazing food. Meanwhile while the meal was being served, everyone went on with their role-play as scheduled for Vampire The Masquerade. It was rather interesting to watch the others and the lack of conceptuality that they had for this because this whole weekend was supposed to be about social grace. It was a rather eye opening experience for myself. While at dinner I ran into someone that I had met on a previous trip to St. Louis the year before for another one of these regional events. Her name was Samantha, I called her Sammus for short. Well most of the weekend they had spent alot of time together in character and out of character catching up on old times as well as talking intimately about a few things and I explained to Sammus that I was about to make a life altering change to my life and that I wasn't ready to tell her yet but eventually I would. I needed to do this in my own time to come out to her. I also cornered a few other friends and mentioned the same to them and that it would probably happen sometime next year at a major event. I had made alot of new friends as well as got to see alot of old friends from around the country, I was content for the time being. The weekend was ending and I had to say good-bye to St. Louis for yet another year. A week and a half after I got back from St. Louis, I was dealing with doctors, coming to terms with being transgendered. and trying to find some sort of support or help. I had already found a whole plethora of information on the topic and book marked many things. I had started to go to TG Gallery Chat and met some local people to talk to about all of this and explained her situation to them online. I made a ton of friends and found even more information which had really pleased me. It felt like it was all coming together that I was finally finding information and letting it all out. I spent numerous nights in bed crying myself to sleep trying to think of what my life would have been like if I was born a female. I finally started taking to some of the girls advice after asking many a question in the chat room and started to piece another part of my soul together. The most important thing that one person can do for oneself is love and respect themselves. Well with all of what was going on and dealing with social services, the government and their paper machine, dealing with Mom on a continual basis, the stress really started to get to me until one night I was being bombarded from all around. I froze up, I left the room I was in and hobbled into the other room to be alone and to cry..

I started to cry within the confines of my own room and for the first time in months & felt safe. I still felt lost and it was the fact that it was finally hitting me. The fact that I was transgendered and that I shouldn't be ashamed of who I was shouldn't impede on her happiness. I made a phone call to Sammus in Chicago and was hysterically crying and was trying to calm down. Sammus asked what the problem was and all I could mumble out of my lips was "help me Sammus". I was turning into a vegetable because of the panic attack that I was experiencing. I never had one before but I got to understand them very well. After about 30 minutes of trying to calm down, Sammus was finally able to ask me what was going on. I replied and reminded Sammus about that life altering talk that they were supposed to have. The time had come for the realization of this to finally set in and it was an experience within itself. It hit me with the force of a wrecking ball because what was about to happen was unforeseen. The wrecking ball had completely shattered all inhibitions that I might have had in telling the rest of my family and friends. At this moment in time all I wanted was to be normal. There was no turning back, this is something that was an absolute necessity in my life. Sammus proceeded to very carefully ask questions and try to get a grasp on how serious the situation was and for shits and giggles laid out a tarot spread for her. What Sammus found from that tarot spread absolutely amazed even her. I had purposely held back some information from Sammus to see if all of this was really true, Sammus in return took each card and explained it one by one. The spread had said that there was alot of feminine history within past, almost all of it was feminine. That there was some serious health concerns and that there was currently alot of inner turmoil. Well anyone could have figured that part out just by the hysterical state that I was in. After I stopped crying, Sammus went on to tell her a few things that really only she knew about because she had never told anyone some of these thoughts and memories. Sammus described a nightmare with a dragon in it, that it was constantly haunting the girl. I remembered that nightmare because it still haunts her to this very day. In the dream according to the young girl, the dragon was in a cave with all of its jewels, & bounty scattered about and there was this fair brown haired maiden in the middle of it all passed out from the sheer shock of trying to deal with the monster. It was like the monster was trying to suck the life force out of girl with all of it's might but no matter what, it couldn't finish the job. Eventually the girl after what seemed months and years in the dream crawled out of the cave and recovered from the punishment the dragon inflicted. She also went on to tell myself that my life force was older than most. According to Sammus, she counted somewhere in the range of over thirty five past lives and most of them female dominated. Sammus went on to use two different tarot decks and it was very close to the first read. There were other things that Sammus mentioned that really hit the young girl in the head repeatedly that no one knew of. It was really starting to hit home for the young girl. We were on the phone for most of the night and eventually had to say good-bye. After I got off the phone with Sammus, I started to cry again but for the first time in years it wasn't tears of anguish that I was letting loose. It was tears of joy and happiness. The conversation with Sammus had alot of deep mental effects on my psyche. All of it was starting to make alot more sense to me.

I was on finally on my way to healing my soul one piece at a time and a major void had felt like it was finally starting to be repaired. Well over the next six months I had three major projects to work on. And all of them very important to myself but one thing at a time because t he plan of attack was to come out to her friends later in the year at ICC 2000 in Cleveland as well as over the holidays confront the rest of her family. There is reason for my madness and a massive plot was about to be unveiled to make sure that by the end of the year I was going to be on my way to transitioning, something I should have done when I was 16. I was working on two things at once. The third was more of a test, if anything else. First over the next few months as I recovered from knee surgery, I needed to amass a decent wardrobe and did so with the limited funds that were coming in. I already had a decent closet full of clothes but there were a few things missing from the fray. I was in dire need of a winter coat as well as winter clothing, I was also in need of some very casual day to day wear and some professional type clothing. I scoured the city for three to four months going to local area thrifts stores, Kmart's, Targets, and other retail outlets. Anything with a really good sale going, I was there for it. I finally found a therapist that was willing to work with me and willing to help me get to where I needed to be mentally. It took awhile to find a therapist because of health insurance restrictions and the path that I was about to go down was not covered by most plans. It was funny how I came to find this person that I started to go to. First, I called The American Society of Psychologists & Psychiatrists, something like that. A lady there at this office looked into her rolodex pages and this women gave me a referral. I was referred to a woman by the name of Carol Putt, Ph.D.. She was a clinical psychologist, I eventually needed to find a psychiatrist as well to put myself on at least some sort of anti depressant. My temper and general mood were improving but also at the same time she was trying to keep things in check and by my own will and without medication. While I was going out and meeting as well as getting to know people in the T community, I was also looking for a support group and to her dismay and disappointment, the places she found had specific criteria or they wouldn't answer her e-mail. Talk about disheartening. All I could do for support in the meantime is go and hang with her TS friends. At the same time I was getting out and getting to know some of the local girls in Cleveland and struck up friendships with alot of the girls. I was trying to take a break from the safety cushion that I called The Camarilla, the only people that I associated herself with for a few years, and finally getting on with finally starting a personal life outside of The Camarilla. I had my fill of backstabbing and whining so a small hiatus sounded like a good idea but it was something that was going to have til after that major event she mentioned to Sammus. Things were finally starting to turn around for me after so many years to trying to understand, fight and hide her feelings.

It was the night of the Conclave kick off party and the Cleveland chapter that I was working with on Conclave was hosting a party as well as a game. She didn't care about the games as much as she was looking forward to finding her friend Mindy and sitting down with the person that she had mentioned to her. The girl in the same boat myself, I was nervous. I wasn't sure how this person was going to take to me coming forward to her and asking for help. The person that I was about to find out about had went to insurmountable odds to try and hide things and keep things secret from all her friends as well as family, much like I was doing. I all of these questions for her about hormones, statistics, websites, places to go, support groups, etc, etc. The person that Mindy mentioned, when she did mention her to me vaguely, I had known all these years and it really surprised me and hurt me at the same time because this person didn't trust me enough after all these years. I also tried to seriously disassociate myself with the Cleveland people mainly because it was getting back to myself that somehow they found out what was going on in my personal life and they were teasing me when I wasn't around. That's really adult of someone to do in this organization I belong to because the normal average age for members is from 23+. That severely pissed me off and the few times that I did go to local games to get support and help for my Conclave Team, no one wanted to volunteer. That also stung a little. The fact that these people that I got to know where giving me shit behind my back after all the years of being a loyal friend and trying to help out others in the organization it was coming back to bite myself in the ass. I know when to cut ties but since people were counting on me. I decided that I wasn't going to quit so easily on this convention.

The time had arrived, Mindy told me who the person was that is in the same boat as me. I went right up to her and pulled her aside and said we need to talk and I mean right now.  My friend started to get really bitter about alot of the stuff that she was going through at work and all I could do is try to listen and offer what little common sense I could. It was breaking my heart that she had to go through all of this and the only reason that she was confiding in me is because I told her that she isn't the only one going through it. It was a very disheartening experience that left me  to think a little bit more about who I was but she always managed to come back to the same conclusions. I learned something from all of this. No matter what you do and how nice you are to people, their opinion of you still doesn't change no matter what you do for them or how much you bend over backwards to treat them the way you would want to be treated. I tried to explain all of how and what I felt to my  friend and in return, her friend was very negative in regards to talking with other *TS peeps* about the whole acceptance thing when it comes to work and other things.

 I continually talked to her about all of the stuff she has had to put up with, especially from family & friends as well as coworkers. I was trying really hard to listen to my friends problems. I  told her friend how long I had been fighting these feelings and how long I had been researching the subject of being transgendered online and all of the information that I had found but I wanted to find out more about herbal supplements because I was at least six months away from getting on real female estrogen's. My friend started telling me about the causes and the effects that herbals and real estrogen's could have as well as some of the drawbacks of hormone replacement therapy. She also told me to start looking up the Harry Benjamin Standards of Care as well as start looking for a psychiatrist. I mentioned that I had found someone that is looking into finding myself a referral for a psychiatrist.  I didn't mention the fact that it was my psychologist that was doing the footwork for her. One day I got a phone call from my friend asking her to come to a game in Cleveland so that the two of us could talk and so that the two of us could spend a little more time getting to know one another. She also mentioned that she had a surprise for me and I racked my brain trying to figure it out. Well I decided that I needed to get out and went to go meet her friend. The game was ok but I still felt like an outsider to everyone around the Cleveland chapter. This was the Camarilla for Christ sakes, one of the most loosest group of people that I have ever known and yet they were all standoffish and cliquish, huddling in their little group prolly plotting to kill my character, which was fine by her because they wouldn't like the consequences if they did try to do that. I was starting to get used to the fact that most everyone didn't like her in the Cleveland group mainly because I left them and started her own chapter after being an independent member for a while. Eventually I started taking female over the counter supplements and continued to take them for almost six months before I was approved to start hormone replacement therapy

A year earlier I had committed myself to a major event that The Camarilla put together every year called Conclave or ICC. It was something myself and others including my biological sister had worked hard to get to come to Cleveland. I was in charge of Guest Relations, it was my job to come up with places for the members to go when they weren't gaming and to see the city of Cleveland. I also had other tasks that I had to accomplish with the job description of my position. I also had to contact the Cleveland Convention & Visitors Bureau and get packets of information well as maps and other assorted information for. There was numerous things to get done and alot of them I depended others to do as far as setting up a game plan for certain activities. And for the most part I pulled it off especially with all the personal problems I was dealing from my mother and my sister. I hadn't even thought of how I was going to tell my fathers side of the family but that was the least of my worries. I needed to concentrate on getting this convention together and making sure that it was possible to pull it off with the limited staff that I was able to recruit. Meanwhile I tried to keep in touch with her new friends in the Cleveland T community, but it was hard for me at times to get out to see them because of my workload, the prepping for the beginning of my transition to FT as well as trying to find a therapist to help me and deal with other demons and trying to organize a convention. The pressure to pull all of this off in a timely fashion seemed like an almost impossible task. I had a plan, a plan of massive proportions. I was going to finally come out and tell all my friends at Conclave about my  transition and the fact that I was coming out so that weekend was very special to me because of all the hard work I was putting into it. It was going to mark a new beginning for me. A month prior I was looking forward to playing my favorite character at ICC when he was abruptly ganged up on by others at one of the local Cleveland games. Talk about pissed off and heart broken, now I had to come up with a new feasible character within a month and it just so happened that I had one in storage at the time and all I had to do was contact my friend Ken Auchmann and work out the details. It was a concept that I had thought about almost a year before when one of her concepts was almost killed by another gamer that wasn't even at the event. It was a transgendered concept that Ken found to be interesting as well as one that fit into his family line. By the time Conclave rolled around everything was ready. All of the requested material had been delivered to the hotel. I had my bags packed and my stuff ready for the big national convention that I had been part of for the last two years and the big day was finally here.

There was alot of pre convention type stuff that needed to be done and everyone was going on about their duties as was I. I asked a few people to help her out with preparing some packets of information as well as transporting all the paper and supplies down to the area where table and staff would be stationed. Myself and few other people busted ass to get everything set up because I already knew most of my staff wouldn't get there til the next day. The first few hours of the pre convention set up and coordinating with hotel staff sucked. If it wasn't one thing that I couldn't find it was another. The first day was exhausting. I was tired but with all the adrenaline rushing and pumping through my body, I didn't feel tired. I was excited about seeing some of my friends and was really nervous about coming out to nine hundred of my best friends in the world. I finally got some dinner and retired to my room for the night. I  was there all by my lonesome for the first night. All of these thoughts were racing through my head. How was all of my friends going to accept this change of mine from what I used to be into who I now was turning into. How many people would accept this and how many of my friends would abandon me? Who would be pointing fingers at me behind my back? My head was spinning full of questions til I dozed off to find out the answers in the morning. As morning was pulling forth from the sun over the horizon into her room, I woke in a slow haze and went into the other room to get something to drink and try to wake up. I hastily made coffee and headed back into the bathroom to start a bubble bath, and grabbed my coffee once it was done. I soaked in the tub, sore from the previous days activities. Today was the day I thought to myself, a new beginning. I eventually got dressed and headed out to meet The Camarilla members that were descending on Cleveland for their national convention and there was a serious buzz in the hotel by the time I got up front. I walked out her door and walked down the hallway, grabbing a water in guest services and hit the main doors to the lobby. It was packed, people starting to arrive by the truck load literally. It was amazing seeing so many people trek across the country to come to one massive LARP with god only knows how many parties afterwards after the gaming was over for the evening. I walked up to the front desk and asked for a run down of people that where in the hotel so far and I asked them to run a report for me every hour so that I could keep track. As I headed down to the Guest Relations Table, I was running into alot of friends that I had made over the years by traveling to their games. It was good to see them again and they were kind of shocked at first but after enough explaining and enough private conversations about what was going in my life, they said that they would support me irregardless and have. You have no clue how much that meant to me. I chitchatted my way down the corridor to the table and started putting out the information that I had collected and all of the various flyers I made. I was all smiles the entire time even though I did see a few people snicker. I put the bad encounters in the back of mind and went on as if it was business as usual. It was over all a very good experience. By about four in the afternoon I pulled aside a few people that were making the announcements at the welcome rally and explained the situation to them and ask they refer to me by new name and they pretty much had said that all was under control and that everything would be handled. At about five in the afternoon everyone was being shuttled down into the main hall for the welcome rally. It was going to be interesting for those who didn't know but I wasn't worried when my name was called and introduced. I just stood up and waved and sat back down. no harm done, no laughing, no ridicule, nothing happened that was negative as I was expecting the worst. The welcome rally lasted a whole 30 minutes and by now I was about to fall asleep so I left the table and put one of my crew in charge of the table and left instructions to close down at about seven p.m. I also left them my room number and a radio incase they needed me for anything but to call on her head assistant because I was going to go take a nap for a couple hours. I wandered back to my room in a haze from exhaustion and as soon as I hit the bed and pillow I was out for about the next three hours. The gaming portion of the convention was to start at about seven p.m. but I didn't care, I needed rest because I already knew walking into this that I wasn't going to be getting very much sleep. I awoke to the yelling of Nikki's greeting and telling me to get my ass in gear, that the game had already started. I hopped in the shower quickly and put on my face, I did my hair and was out the door to introduce my new PC to the world. I was excited, as I was walking down the corridor and I ran into Ken Auchman, the player of my sire. He asked if this was Khaelin and all I could do is smile and ask if he liked what he saw. He laughed at first but said that it rocked. There was only one bad reaction that really caused me grief and that was as I was coming out of the Security Office and getting on the elevator, a girl that I had known from other games that lived in South Carolina looked me up and down and said that "It was too much", when asked by what she meant I got a cold shoulder, and she huffed of the elevator as soon as she could and disappeared. It kind of pissed me off and if I see that little cunt again. I'm going to give her a piece of my mind. I thought she was a little more grown up that to resort to insults. I told some of my friends and was a little upset, the nerve of her to comment on the way I was going to live my life. That is when I learned for a fact that people are also mindless idiots when it comes to things they don't understand. I eventually went outside and thought about it, I did look better than the bitch that treated her like a freak of nature. I was getting compliments left and right and my friend Charlie just sat back and took it all in because he was the first gay Camarilla member I had ever met. He knew what was going down. I thought to myself, it's best to let it roll off my back because not everyone is going to accept this and that some bridges were going to be burned no matter what I did. 

This was evident by the looks she was getting from others because they were trying to read her. I eventually got over it and then I went in character and wandered around the convention meeting all sorts of interesting people. The next day was very much the same as before, I retired to my room about three in the morning and crashed. I had to be back up at nine in the morning to staff the table and take care of any questions and concerns that some of the guests might have had. So far so good, all was going good but would it stay that way? That was the question that I was contending with the entire weekend. I was still trying to get used to the fact that I needed to let all of the people that were pointing fingers at me and laughing to roll off my back like a duck. This was my life and it was now time for the butterfly to flutter forth. I wasn't going to be able to change the opinion of others so why bother? Screw em I thought to myself, this is my weekend to shine and no matter who said what or what kind of flack I was going to garner I was not going to let it affect me. The second night of gaming I chose to play one of my other PC's because I wanted to spend sometime with my Chelle Cagney. Chelle was one of the first people that I told all of my thoughts to on a regular basis. She is a really beautiful person and it was really ironic that she was such a shoulder for me because during the time that I met her and in between the time I made a character for her lineage, I never talked to her much. After I made the character we got to be really good friends. The two of could chat about anything. We had a blast hanging out and when not talking about in character stuff, we were talking about everything in general. She was the very first to accept me into the sisterhood. After the second night of gaming was over, I was very pleased at the outcome of the last two nights. I was impressed with the openness of my friends and their acceptance. I got to meet alot of people that I had been talking to online for years and I made alot of new friends. Alot of my friends that I spoke to that weekend were really impressed with the fact that I had the courage to come out to so many people at once. When I told my therapist the events of the weekend, my therapist told her that not only did I break a one of a kind mold but that I knows how to do things in grand style. I went back to my room with a few friends that she had been talking to online for a few years because they didn't have a room to crash in, I had the space and well, I could tell that they had a lot of questions. Not only that but Mariah's boyfriend Travis  was damn good looking, I fell for him on the spot. I really wanted to explain things to Travis so that he would understand all of what as going on. Travis had done so many things and was on the level with me for all of these years without meeting me or the alternate persona that I was growing into meant alot to her to explain the way of Zen and her brain. I had some seriously long talks with alot of people from the UK and was really surprised at how open they were to all of this. They didn't seem to mind from what I saw, but they were still bitchin because they couldn't find a decent port in the states. I cornered a few of my friends that I had met at other regional type gatherings, Matty & Charlie were really proud. Charlie especially, I always wondered if Charlie had known when I was acting sooo straight that he'd actually understand the turmoil I had gone through to get where I was at but he was proud that I had finally found the lost me. He really liked the new outlook on life I had taken. I had a few long talks with a girl named Cat from Texas and got to talking names and I was trying to pick a middle name. Cat Marie. It just rolled off the tongue, Rebeka Marie. The weekend was finally coming to a close and I was very pleased with how people reacted to all of the changes that had occurred in my life. A few commented on how happy I finally looked. A few commented on how great I looked. The most that meant alot to me was the general attitude of how well all of this went going. Later that night when I got home and I couldn't stop.

As small side note, Charlie means alot to me, we don't talk much but he is like a big brother. When a shoulder is needed, he is always around. I don't know if he will ever understand how much I love him, but I htink he has an idea after ICC. I gave him the biggest hug I have ever given anyone in my life. I first met Charlie in the summer of '98, my sister wanted to go to the NRV Ventrue Ball. I also had a couple of other people in the car but my sister was in the other car thast followed myself and those in my car out there. Kim had contacted him and he was gracious enough to share his home with us. I really was a quiet person back then but I thought Charlie was the bomb and I really really wanted to talk to him about what I was feeling but I was to scared to. I'd still like to talk to him more. He had been the first gay man that I had ever spent an extensive period of time around. I watched him like a hawk, I paid particular attention to his generous nature and full openness about being gay. I was kinda shocked at first but I managed to control my shock. I still felt out of place in my own skin but then again, when your life is in turmoil a fresh opinion is rather exhilarating. I don't know if he noticed or not but we saw one another on numerous occasions at gaming conventions and stuff. Now when I would see him, he always managed to put a smile on my face and make sense of things for me. Meeting him really got me to thinking about things as I drove home from that first initial meeting of him. If I was to describe the expereince of meeting Charlie... I would have to say that it was exquisite blissful fun. We both ran into one another at a Convention in Virginia Beach, it was the first year for this convention called ECC. We didn't talk that much but he made me feel very comfortable because I was contemplated my transition at the time and I wanted to but again I was scared as hell. I told Milena about it but I didn't tell Charlie. I wasn't sure how he would take it. I didn't know his opinion on the Trans Community and I mistakenly said sometihng to Milena when I was working the booth about a guy that walked by and she gave me the look of "Oh welcome to the girls club honey". The only thing I wish I could take back is my shyness, I really wanted to walk on the beach with someone that weekend and I wanted it to be Charlie. I never got to walk on that beach but a girl can hope. I have never felt so relaxed in my life. 

From there I has just continually blossomed into a butterfly with a heart of steel

 Since I have come out to most everyone since I started hormone replacement therapy, there has been some hesitation, but there are a few that cannot accept this at all on my fathers side of my family. I can only hope those of my family that cant accept this will come around with time. All I can say is that blood is thicker than water. I've pretty much been able to educate the rest of the family, most of my friends that I've had throughout my life and I have told a few co-workers that didn't know about it that I haven't seen in some time. 

12/27/01 - It is the holidays and I am feeling rather down with the holiday blues. Kind of sucks cause my plans for this year was to sit home watching a candle burn by my lonesome. That never happened and I'll tell you why. I called my step mom to wish her and the kids a Merry Christmas and stuff and she asked me if I was going to come to Christmas. I told her no especially since my father and I had this falling out over my transition and the fact that I am transsexual. Well she did try, I give her that much but I was really hesitant at the fact. She told me what their plans were and where they would be. I hung up the phone and was in the calling mood so I decided to call my Gram to wish her a Merry Christmas and my Aunt answers the phone, she didn't recognize who I was at first but that is usual I suppose. Well I told her no, that I wasn't going to be able to make it mainly cause of the falling out that I had with that side of the family. I did elude some questions at first but when she came out and said "So what are you trying to tell me, your gay?". I explained that things were a little more complex than that.  I gave her an update on my life for the past year and a half. Her reaction to it all was very surprising considering how strict that side of the family is. We ended up talking about how the rest of the family would take all of this and stuff, seems that my father according to my Aunt had only talked to her about all of this and all he could do was make negative & snide comments abut me and **MY** life. There is an old saying that I have learned over the years dealing with all of this and after talking to many about my situation. It goes like this.....

"One must tend to their own backyard before tending to others"

I'll let you think about that Dad, especially if you read this. 

So anyways back to my latest conquest, by the time I hang up the phone Rebeka was invited to Christmas. This is a major step, very few on that side of the family knew about Rebeka and NONE of them had actually met her. So I hang up the phone and just sat in front of my computer staring at it in disbelief. I was blown away by just what had occurred. I talked to a few friends about this and they told me to go, I debated and paced around the house most of Christmas Eve. How would they accept me?? What would they say?? What if they didn't accept me? A TON of questions ran through my mind, I was super nervous. So I decide this is something I got to do. 

The next morning I wake up and check my email and start off the day like usual. I hop into the shower, set my hair, start the face, pick out clothes, etc. etc. I get dressed and in the mean time my sister had said she'd meet me there at my Gram's. This was my moral support, and guess what happened...I left Gram's  ten minutes before she got there. I was so pissed, but I still had the moral support of my little brother and little sister. So I leave the house and drive about thirty minutes to get to my Gram's and when I arrive I sit in my car finishing my cigarette trying to get up the nerve to go in. I was half tempted just to go home, I was that scared.  I eventually get the nerve to walk to the door and I knock. My aunt answers the door and I walk in and I look around to see who is there. Just my little brother and sister, my aunt and my gram. OK, this I could handle but for some reason I just kept looking out of the corner of my eye at my two younger siblings, it's a force of habit. All they could do is smile. I don't know if that was a good thing or a bad thing. Eventually we all got to talking and stuff, things were really starting to make me feel at ease. Not enough to let all of my guard down but the tension was starting to disappear.  All in all the first visit went rather good and very surprising but I was able to manage to avoid those parts of the family that would have started shit. Which was a good thing, I'd hate to have turn into a viper in front of my family. I've noticed that since my transition, my senses, my mental sense and my tongue have gotten very quick even more so since when I was working in radio. Eventually I say my fond farewells and tell them how much this Christmas meant and they could understand. I shuffle the kids into the car and off we go for stop number two. My other grandmothers, who happens to live but five minutes away. On the way over there I ask them if anyone had bothered to inform anyone in that household of my imminent arrival, the answer is no. I thought to myself great, this should be really interesting. So we get there and they walk in first, with me not far behind. I walk in the door and my step mom's eyes really brighten up. Ahhhhhhh finally moral support. I go over to everyone and give them hugs and the usual greetings and within the first five minutes, I am bombarded with questions. I was very surprised by everyone's reactions. It was very nice to know that some more of my family hadn't abandoned me as I was led to believe. It was a very positive experience. And during the entire time I was there, they kept giving me all kinds of compliments. By the time I left I was a glow and really feeling a wave of emotions roll over me. When I went to leave and I got to my car, I broke down crying. I started t drive home and was really looking forward to Christmas dinner. The odd thing is that a few nights before my friend Rachael and I had a conversation and she mentioned that her plans were scrapped because of certain circumstances beyond her control. So being the ever loving best friend I didn't want her to spend Christmas by herself, I invited her and her mother over for Christmas dinner. When I saw her I gave her the biggest most loving hug I have ever given anyone and whispered in her ear "A girl really does get what she wants from Santa."

Friends and Family what a Christmas present from Santa.

Alot needs to be added to the story at this point. I know I haven't kept up on web updates and such but my life has continued to go on. Most of it is now listed in my myspace & livejournal blogs.