“We decided to leave Sydney and we moved to Lismore in 2004. She was going to Uni at the time to learn something new and Lismore had the closest degree in regional NSW outside of a city. I had family connections to the area as my grandfather was once a Publican here and I thought that was a nice compromise. We separated a year later. To the best of my knowledge there was never any malice or huge animosity.
I was still very uncomfortable with who I was. Thinking back my internal voice was telling me to hide certain things, not use certain words and not do certain gestures or walk in a certain way. When you have a voice that’s so strong for so long you end up beiging yourself. All the things that made me me deep inside I put away and didn’t let anybody see them. I was really scared, I didn’t know what I was scared of but I knew that I couldn’t be myself, even here in Lismore. Soon after the separation I became more aware of the fact that I was attracted to men. Not completely, physically I was but mentally and emotionally I wasn’t. With dating apps I organised to meet a few guys and never really liked it. I never felt disgusted or upset, I just couldn’t understand why I was there. It was like something deep inside was guiding me around even though part of me didn’t want to do it. It was a distressing time and I cried myself to sleep often.
Over the next 12 years I dated some lovely women and had close friendships with women but nothing really seemed to click. I would go through cycles of feeling really heterosexual and then a couple of months later it would all fall away and I’d be left thinking….How did I get here? It was so distressing because I was really aware that I was hurting the person I was dating. I went through cycle after cycle until this one point in 2016 when it hit me like a ton of bricks why I had been going through those cycles and what my subconscious had been trying to tell me all of these years. I may look like a man on the outside although less so these days with the effect of hormones thankfully….That I had the brain of a woman, I’d always thought like one. It got to the point two years ago that my entire inner cycle of friends give or take one or two was all female. I found it much easier to talk to women. The walls around my brain fell down and I was finally able to feel comfortable with who I was. That feeling of freedom and yet it was really distressing. I felt comfortable sitting in my lounge room with that inside my head. Telling my first friend, my second, my third, my GP, each person for the next 9 months was horrible.
I had a very conservative upbringing, 18 years in Moree, 4 years in Armidale. I hated looking at myself always. I thought I was unattractive. There were beautiful people and not beautiful people and I didn’t even feel like I was in that spectrum. I still felt outside of that. My face felt different and I couldn’t work out why. I grew a beard just so I didn’t have to look at myself in the mirror to shave every day.
A day in July 2016 was the day I had my epiphany. I sat on it for weeks and it was like a cyclone in my head. The implications and what would happen. In parts of Australia and the world Transgender people are not treated as being decent human beings. I found it so distressing that my parents were probably two of those people. They are quite elderly and their heads are still in another time. I haven’t spoken with my parents since November 2017. They said some things that weren’t very nice. I have no idea whether we will speak again. I’ve gone through an incredible amount of trauma trying to deal with that. It’s extremely sad and upsetting.
Living in Lismore I love the length, the breadth and the depth of humanity. People have different stories and not everybody likes that and unfortunately that is where I’ve come from.
I started the medical side of the transition early on once I knew what I had to do. Lot’s of people come to this awareness early in life and hold on to it. I’m still trying to wrap my head around very early memories. I remember conversations when I was a child which must have been obvious that I was different in some way but I don’t expect my parents to have realised back then what it meant. In September 2016 I read lots on-line as thankfully there’s lots of groups and blogs about people going through this. I remember walking into my Gp’s office calmly and said ‘I think I’m Transgender, what the f*#k am I supposed to do?’ He was fabulous and referred me to a great Psychologist who has turned out to be amazing. It took a long time to get through the mental health care plan. From there I got a referral to a brilliant Endocrinologist in Sydney. Six months later I took my first low dose oestrogen pill. I took it ceremoniously with friends down at the farmers market. My heart started pounding 6 hours later. The reason being oestrogen has a strong effect on adrenalin. After a few days it reminded me of a scene in the Wizard of Oz where it starts off black and white and then it changes to colour. That is what my life felt like. I realised I could see colours more vibrantly. It was extraordinary. When I touched my skin it was like electricity going through me and again I found out oestrogen works on nerve endings. It was like I was becoming alive. I had been sleepwalking my whole life. I became alive in my late 40’s. Before that I felt like a cardboard box.
It’s expensive! To wax my body cost me $250 a time and I was doing that six or seven times a year. The oestrogen has slowed it down and the hair is much finer. I had a testosterone blocker and Progesterone cost around $80 a month. I hated being driven by testosterone. I was aware of that the whole time, I just didn’t realise there was a choice. I went to see the Endocrinologist in Nov 2017 who told me that I had been on a low dose and was I ready to up it. I was shocked as I was already up to a B cup. I was over the moon with the way that I felt. I still had periods of anxiety and depression but that’s not about me, that’s about the way that I fit into the world. He suggested an implant so I went ahead and got two pellets of Oestrogen into my butt. I felt really nice for a month or two and then I had two months of anxiety like I’d never felt. Apart from going to work I stayed in my room. I couldn’t deal with being seen. After a while it levelled out. The other thing affecting me was I’d started electrolysis on my facial hair. I had no idea how long it would take but I had between 18,000 and 40,000 hairs on my face and they remove them one at a time. I’ve had 100hrs so far. It’s very painful and very expensive. I’ve spent over $6,000 on the electrolysis but take into count missed work, travel, etc. It has cost about $16,000 so far. I stopped in March as I ran out of money. I’ve been shaving daily. I now have to grow what facial hair I have left so they can remove it. It’s going to be so awful.
In December I went to an information session in Sydney about the different surgeries available. I haven’t made my mind up which ones I’ll do. They are calling them gender confirmation surgeries rather than gender reassignment surgeries. One is called bottom surgery which involves taking what you have in the nether regions and re-fashioning it. Everybody has the same thing as an embryo. It’s only when testosterone gets introduced that the embryo develops a penis or at the other end of the spectrum…a clitoris. There is a spectrum in the middle where people may be intersex that can have a combination. It’s really complex. Because of that the surgeons can convert what one person has to the other. It’s full on, really expensive and has a long recovery time but in terms of mental health benefits it’s worth it. I’m looking forward to it. There’s also facial confirmation surgery. My gender confirmation surgery will cost me about $20,000 as I’ve just started paying for the top level of private health insurance to reduce it’s cost. If I choose to do the facial surgery it will cost about $50,000. Most of this will hopefully come from my super as I don’t have that sort of money in the bank. I don’t think I will follow up on the voice surgery, but if I do they will sew my vocal chords together a little to make my voice higher in pitch. If you are a Trans man you don’t need to worry about the voice as the Testosterone thickens the vocal cords. In February I have my first appointment with my gender confirmation surgeon. They are so careful with all of this stuff.
I remember standing in front of the bathroom mirror when I was about 13 and tucking my penis between my legs and thinking that looked amazing and I when it fell back out again I felt sick. It was so awful. I was the smallest person in my year in high school in year 7, my puberty started later and I don’t remember that time because it was too traumatic for me to think about it. Because of all this I’ve lost some of my family and I’ve lost some friends and I’ve probably lost the ability to have any sort of retirement as It’s going to cost me so much money. I’ve thought a lot about this stuff. The 20 or 30 years I will have of being me outweighs anything else.
When I went to Sydney the first time I went to the Gender Centre. I said to them I didn’t want to be counselled, I just wanted to talk to someone separate to my life here. I knew there was a massive storm I was about to willingly walk through. I wanted to talk to someone who had been through that and come out the other side. I got to talk to a lovely, young trans woman who had done that. She was really happy and it was so good to see. I’d assumed they’d have a wide range of clients but she said nearly every client had drug and alcohol issues, they were homeless, mental health issues and they were Trans. I’m not even sure how you get through that and survive. A lot of people don’t. It’s only that I’m so stubborn and I have an amazing support network here in Lismore that I’m still alive. The number of times I’ve thought of ending my life because it would be easier, I’ve lost count. That’s an ongoing thing.
I have had some very good friends come shopping with me, watch me get emotional in change rooms when I look at how nice I look. I remember the first dress I bought on line and I burst into tears because I had never seen myself looking so lovely. I go through this all the time. That feeling that feels so right when everything has always felt so wrong.
My employment for the last few years have been with Splendour in the Grass as one of the people in their finance department. At that point I was still trying to get my mind around what was going on with me. If I had of realised then that I was Trans it wouldn’t have mattered. I’ve told them all since and I still work with them once a year at the festival and they are all great. The place I was working at when I realised was at The Buttery and I was terrified when I told my boss. He didn’t even blink. No-one has really been that surprised apart from my parents, and my family. My boss said, ‘Well you are working for place that has 65 counsellors so if you are going to work anywhere it’s a good place to be.’ It’s been supportive and amazing.
I had been using my new name Roxy for a year or so when I changed it legally last year. It was easier than I thought. I picked up the completed name change certificate calmly from the post office, I drove home calmly, I walked inside calmly, I closed the door and I cried and hyperventilated for half an hour. It was such a relief.
One of the by products out of this journey is I’ve realised I can write. I didn’t know that I could because I’ve been an Accountant and a Bookkeeper. You can express so many more things with words than you can with numbers. Some of my friends who are writers, journalists or editors told me that I write beautifully after seeing some of my stories on FB. One of the bravest things I’ve done is start a blog. I realise that this story is one that doesn’t often get told in a nice way. When I was growing up Trans people were the murder victims in crime shows. It’s getting better but there needs to be more positive stories. I’ve been doing the blog for 14 months or so. The website is called www.theroxyepoch.com and I’m writing it to let people I know understand the journey and also to help other people that are going through this themselves and also for family or friends of those people to help them understand what’s going on. Coincidentally I launched the blog and came out publicly as Trans at the same time as the marriage equality debacle was happening. One of my blog posts was selected to be in a book of writing about the survey. It was so nice to have my words in print. I was so proud that I made it into a book with well known writers. It was very exciting. For the first time in my life I look forward to the future”