A coming out of fear letter....

This letter was written several months ago, but I wanted to share it typos and all just as I had written it as I came out to one of the most important people in my life.  She is the only consistent parental figure in my life, in court, at baptism, through University she has always been there when I needed her most.  At this point in my life, understanding and love is what I needed most from her, and it would be more important than any moment that she had shared with me, or assisted me, guided me, or anything that she had protected me from in my whole life. She is very religious and I was heart broken while writing it as I thought that I all ready knew her response--

Letter:

Dear Aunt Linda,

Enclosed please find a check for five-hundred dollars.  I will send you the other two-hundred on my next pay period.  I want to thank you for always being there for me.   I want you to know that without your love, compassion and support that I would not be where I am in life, and I can never thank you enough.  You have given me life so many times; you have been my mother, my father and my inspiration.  I will always remember the toughest times in my life being made bearable because of you.  There is so much that I want to tell you, but have been so very afraid of losing your love that I couldn't bring myself to out of fear of disappointing you.  I wish there were an easy way to say this, but even as I type these words fear swells up in my throat because I do not know what will happen once you know, that is if you do not know all ready.  Somehow, my parents not accepting me, loving me, or speaking to me doesn't bother me, but the idea that you may not shakes me to my very core.

All my life I've known it to be true, but because of circumstance I was unable to act on said truth about who I am.  Growing up as I did I never thought I would accomplish half of the things that I have and I know that I owe that to you; which means also that I owe you honesty about who I am. 

Last year on this date I found myself in a hospital emergency room beaten and sexually assaulted by the boy that I had been involved with for a number of years.  I had been abusing methamphetamine for even longer and was on a path to self-destruction and possibly death.  So central was this boy and meth that I only recently understand that I had been in an abusive situation for years.  I made all the excuses, if I had not, or I knew that it would upset him and what happens when I anger him.  I decided to save my life, which meant I had to get sober and get away from him.  I checked myself in to a hospital, still very confused about what had happened.  They tried to run a rape-kit I refused, they called the police who tried to get me to press charges and I wouldn’t.  I could not imagine hurting someone that I loved (and honestly still love) no matter what he had done to me, even as I realized that he had been abusing  me, physically, psychologically and spiritually for years.  I decided that it was my fault and to take full responsibility for my life, but soon realized that what that meant was more than getting sober and out of an abusive relationship.  I had to be honest with myself and now I need to be honest with you.  

I have spent the last year in intense therapy, seeing a Therapist, a Psychiatrist and an Endocrinologist.  I am Transgender.  I always have been, and since I was very young I have known it, but was never brave or selfish enough to do anything about it.  When I decided to move to Minnesota I knew that one of the things that I would do was to begin Hormone therapy.  I have been on female hormones (estrogen, and anti-androgens) for about six months now, and they are having some real affects on my body, mind and well being.  I am so sorry to tell you like this, I wanted to tell you in person, but realized that I couldn't, or rather didn't know how.  Both my father and my mother know, as well as my brothers and my Uncle Frank, I asked them all not to tell you so that you could hear it from me.  I am so sorry to disappoint you, but I could not go on living in a body that I didn't want.  Having been assigned a gender that I disagreed with was more than I could continue to bear.  I've always been a girl, a Tomboy yes, but a girl none-the-less.  I hope you can accept this part of my life, but I do understand if you cannot.  Please know that I love you dearly and whatever response (or lack of response) that you decide concerning this matter, I will accept.  You are the only person in my life that I believe has earned the right to have any say in the choices that I make.  I am prepared for anything, but I beg of you to continue loving me.  My choice to pursue this wasn't easy.  It took me searching my Soul and then deciding that I could not continue to live as I had been for the first part of my life.  I know it is selfish of me, and likely rude of me to tell you like this, in a letter, but I could not continue to keep it a secret from you, I felt like I was lying to the only consistent parental figure in my life, lying out of fear.  You are the only person that for my entire life has consistently earned my love and reverence and I was hiding from you.  How could I champion being honest with oneself and brave enough to be honest with others about who you are while I was hiding from you, the one person that really mattered. 

                So there is the truth, I hope by my next birthday to have a court date and will be changing my name to Kya Ladonald Concepcion.  I will also be changing my gender marker on all identifying documents, license, passport, birth certificate.  Please know that however selfish this may seem (or really is for that matter) that I in no way wanted to hurt or disappoint you.  I only wanted to be able to live my life in a way that made me happy and wasn't centered on anyone else.  So long have I tried to fill this emptiness inside me with everything I could think of, drugs, destructive people, self loathing and self hate that it had become impossible to do anything but be honest with myself and find a way to be honest with the people that mattered to me,  chief amongst them you. 

I hope this letter finds you well and that you are able to understand why I am doing this, and please, please know that it is not to hurt anyone especially you.  Had I been strong enough to continue living as I had been I would have, it would have been so much easier.

Love Always.

(Kya) Ladonald Concepcion  

Transgender Public Spaces--I feel uncomforable in Bathroom A. Don't want to make others uncomfortable in Bathroom B and there is no Bathroom C, sigh.

are Tough

A simple Life on the Prairie with Wedges, and Pumps and Bras, oh my!

     Minnesota is an interesting place with what appears to be plain, but are in fact interesting people.  A bit Xenophobic for sure, yet, somehow at the same time they are progressive, accepting and consider themselves inclusive believers in equality.  Even if this isn't true, it is good that they think themselves so because it results in a social fabric that even if fabricated does result in the blossoming of progressive ideas, and a legislative system that always intends to protect and never restrict individuals rights.  There was a moment when I seriously considered returning to my beloved Georgia, and even received a couple of very promising job referrals. I sat with myself and had to weigh who I am with who I intend on becoming.  I am Georgian, an Atalien, Southern and damn proud of it.  I loved my life inside of Atlanta's perimeter, it really is my city.  Even beyond those boarders from the Coast through the Piedmont to the Appalachian foothills whenever I am in Georgia I am always home.  I almost yearn for hot humid 'April' Days that give way to even hotter humid Summer nights with the expectations of August's end being a momentary yield before a host of Indian Summers.  I miss the sweet smell of Wisteria in second bloom more than I do the friends and lovers and adopted family that I left behind.

     Yet, here I am living a Prairie life, toiling away through long nights in front of two monitors working to make the wealthy even more so....  It puzzles me too!  Why not just give in and return to my beloved Georgia? I believe it is because once you have experienced first class citizenry it is next to impossible to return to a system that doesn't recognize you, or the rights that we are all entitled to as humans living in this our Great American Republic.   After knowing that a 'state' can make  health care affordable and available to everyone and still complete the fiscal year 825 million dollars in the Black makes returning to Georgia seem like living in a thriving democratic nation and then deciding to relocate to a 'conservative Islamic state.  No offense intended to religious states, I just have no intention of living in one.  Readers may think this is an unfair comparison, and it is true I may be in a bit of a hyperbolic space, but let us pause and consider.  In  Georgia there are no laws protecting me from being fired, evicted from my home, because of what it considers my non-gender status.  In Georgia it is Constitutional mandate that my rights to marry and participate in the pursuits  that we are all entitled to as Americans, to commit to another consenting adult with sincere domestic intentions of having a family, property, protection under the law and the other 1,400 plus privileges that are attached to the absolute secular institution of marriage are denied; and why? Religion. So it appears that we are not too far from that religious state that I referenced earlier are we..?  hmmm... At least not from my Prairie home perspective (intentional play on words). Though forever grateful to the federal government for protecting me from stoning, and a bit of social advancement that has finally rid us of once accepted obscene and archaic sodomy laws, because all excepting the absolutely pious, whom I have yet to meet, are guilty of, or even better yet, who I let sodomize me in my private home isn't any one's business! I wonder how such laws were ever legislated?  Non-the-less my point remains that it isn't enough, and we as the citizens of the potentially greatest nation in the history of Western civilization either affecting concern and outrage based on medieval religious values, or those that simply do nothing while watching the rights of others denied based on those medieval ideas is an affront to the very core and distinction of our supposed Great Republic founded on the democratic believe to which each of us is entitled absolute and inalienably.

     So here I am a Southerner living in Upper-Mid-West exile so that I might be able to live with myself, no longer have to hide from myself.  Concerning Georgia I am decided that the idea of valuing a family, a wife, a mortgage with sincere domestic intent could only be attained at the expense of my freedom of gender expression does not make sense to me, so i left.  However available this option is to me what about the countless numbers of individuals marginalized without the options and privileges that I have been so very blessed to have?  What about a little boy beaten to death for being too effeminate, or the transgender boy right now living in the deep south hiding from himself and from those people that declare that they love him.  Or the Transgender girl that even if she could come out would live in constant fear of losing her job, or face no recourse, resources, or rights to self-expression.  Beyond these people, the women that right now are having their bodies legislated by a council of men affirming with their sexist ruling that not only do they value gender norms as absolute, but that they value their position atop the hierarchy as male above the female that after such leaps and bounds forward reaffirming the old hegemony, rendering everything else a feign, a ploy designed to gain the confidence and will of the marginalized in a likely tight race. What about the little boy who has one Mommy that wishes to be a stay at home parent for all the right reasons, but can't because of Constitutional laws designed to make it impossible for the working mom to extend her insurance coverage to her child and Spouse. I've only enumerated a fraction of the injustices that are happening right now as I type this from the comfort and privilege of my two monitors.  How do we go out and give voice to those without?  To quote my least favorite public figures, 'injustice anywhere is indeed a threat to justice everywhere.  We should never allow the mongering of the Masses to triumph over the rights of the individual, and this should be our only tenet of faith.  Mass mongering has only ever produced, violence and oppression.  Judge Garcia Orlando of Texas said it best: 'Without a rational relation to a legitimate governmental purpose , state imposed inequality can find NO refuges in our U.S. Constitution.

      I say exile in Minnesota, but it is actually refuge in Minnesota.  A privilege in Minnesota.  As with everything I complain with a harsh critique about Minnesota, but I can think of no place else I would rather be.  I was on one of my rants about Minnesota, and a Minnesotan friend spoke up and said, 'We aren't that bad, and it bothers me every time you say stuff like that.'  She was correct Minnesotans aren't that bad, they are in fact wonderful, accepting and believe without fail in the rights of the individual.  What that friend will  not know until/unless she reads this is that she represents everything that is wonderful about Minnesota to me.  It is in fact because of Minnesotans like Kenzie that I am not refugee, or feel as if I am living in exile, but know that I am finally home, accepted, and even more that I am welcome just as I am.  I love you Kenzie, and I love you Minnesota thanks for giving me a home, a voice, a sense of self that I wish we together could find a way to give to so many others that live in the perpetuation of ignorance and fear at what should be the pinnacle of Western Society.  Thank you Minnesota for being less concerned with being on the right side of history and more concerned with doing the right thing.  I am home, and proud to call myself a Minnesotan (emphasis on the 'ou').                                          


Written by a poverty stricken boy from Georgia that would grow up to be a middle-class woman from Minnesota.  I never could have convinced that lost 14 year old that it was even possible, but here I am!  Thanks Again, Minnesota...

Okay, let's just get this out there.

        I am transgender.  I just came out this year to very mixed responses from my close friends and family.  Like most transgender people I've always known and by the age of 14 had decided that once I could afford to transition that I would.  I remember being young and day dreaming about being pregnant, of having a husband, raising children: role playing in my mind what I had been conditioned to believe that a woman was.  I realized that in my mind I was a woman and began to (though in the most subtle ways) present myself as I identified, female.  I've carried a purse of some sort since I was about 15, primarily worn panties since about age 16 (excepting when i was sporting my boyfriends undies, which is a total girl thing).  These things were never a big deal for me, and for those around me it identified me as gay, so I assumed that role in order to not engage the more complicated truth that I was/am transgender.  I adhered to a more acceptable, though still marginalized, social role than what I knew was true.  However, saying that I was gay was a lie, one that I told to others and even deceived myself with in an effort to hide and at times deny the truth about who I am.  I believe that a gay person is someone that is almost exclusively attracted to persons of the same biological-sex, and that is not me.  Even as I pretended to be gay and accept all the discrimination and derogatory language that is associated with that lifestyle (faggot, pervert, sinner) it seemed easier than confronting the truth. It seemed the more acceptable of the marginalized space to exist within.   At University I even used it as a tactic to seduce woman that I found attractive by making them feel accomplished having seduced, or changed a gay boy.  Gender and Sexual preference are not the same thing and I've always believed this even while using it to my advantage.  If I had to identify myself Tomboi would be the term that I would use.   But it seems that I do not get to choose because of a social structure that demands that we place one of a set of approved 'concrete' identifiers on ourselves as a way to present publicly.  I've slept with men, woman and those whose gender is not so clearly defined and certainly have a preference but it is not based on biological-sex, which I've discovered is absolutely unacceptable by Society.  

So I lived my teens, twenties in secret to all but select long term lovers and those that would fetishize me as a kinky object of their own secret lifestyle, which I of course played along with willingly; to be objectified in a way that however demeaning  allowed me to express my identity was a relief to all the lies and social ornamentation that I dawned daily choosing the path of least resistant in both respects.  However, this clandestine charade only damaged my psyche and further suppressed the Tomboi that I knew was more than a sexual fetish, the identity that even if it was a choice, was mine to make and not a matter of right or wrong, but a matter of being happy or tormenting the beautiful girl that was as much the truth of my gender as gender is truth.  The lengths that 'we' are willing to go to deceive others and ourselves about who we are amazes me, especially concerning those aspects of ourselves that  should not be plated for public consumption.  But I did it, I lied, to myself, to my family, to my friends, to my lovers, to strangers and it was deliberate. Why?  I like to tell myself that being an ethnic minority, having a mental disability, coming from the lowest  rungs of poverty were good enough reason, but that isn't true.  I was a coward, afraid that being transgender, saying to the world (because to be transgender is very much so about saying to the world, or not saying and, at the very least attempting to deceive them and oneself further) that even though I have a penis I am a girl.  Not that I was born in the wrong body (nature doesn't make mistakes; however, society often does), but that the identity that was forced upon me by the dictates of the social construct were wrong, or didn't apply, or I would defy them without caring about the consequences, was more than I thought I could handle.  So why transition?  Why the choice, desire, need to chemically, scientifically 'correct/change' what society has defined me as?    Dysphoria?  Identity crisis? A need to satisfy societies image of what it means to be female?  There are as many answers as there are questions, but for me the most important one is because 'I can.'  That I am strong enough to not only accept who I am, but if the demands of society insist that I place on gender, and sexuality and identifiers that they will be ones that are honest in the face of social gender hierarchies, but more importantly will be honest to myself and to that little 14 year old girl that day dreamed without fear. I will not be determined by fear!  

That said, I am still afraid, will I ever find love, and have that spouse, children, the mortgage that the little 14 year old girl dreamed about so many years ago.  Or am I distancing myself further from those day dreams by refusing to adhere to societies notions of gender, family, sexuality?  Am I foolish to further marginalize myself?  If the scientific accomplishments to change ones gender weren't  available would I be able to accept myself, and shouldn't I be before I make such a definite decision?  Those are just the internal fears, what about the facts that surround transphobia, violence, legally sanctioned discrimination.  My father will never speak to me again, my relationship with  one of  my dearest friends has been strained beyond what I fear may be repaired.  So why?  The best answer that I can give at this time is the choice that I made to live a determined life.  Often this choice makes me feel selfish and I guess to some degree it really is, but it is also finally being  honest with myself and deciding to seek out hormone treatment makes it so with others.

Though in closing I would like to say that without the strong support system of friends, family and people that I didn't even know before I started down this path I would never have been able to find sobriety, honesty, forgiveness to that little 14 year old girl or the belief that I do get to determine myself.

Bill, Natalie, Tracey, Kathy, the whole McNamee tribe, my dearest and most beloved Sara and so many others thank you for loving me, most of you even when I did not love myself.

hey korea!!!!

Ok!?!?!?!?!? So It finally looks settled, I am going to Korea and the excitement is settling in, overwhelming is the word--I am consumed with anxiety!!!! It is so far away, and I am such a little person, but I can do this and I know that Korea will be an experience of a life time!!!! So here I go people to the Roman out-post to teach Latin.