Suicidal ideation and the importance of coming out for this trans woman

The therapeutic appearance of female rage and an ability to defend my boundaries

Trigger warning: please don’t read this if you are upset by a discussion of suicidal ideation. That is what this post is about.

My wife has been a bit schizoid about my coming out and transition.  My favourite quote, delivered in a menacing tone is, “you’d better go through with it,” meaning the operation.  At the time, her statement made me wonder the opposite, such is my contrary nature.  She was processing her pain at ‘losing’ me, though it is hard to say that she ‘lost’ me when defenestrated is far more aligned with she has done.  How do is ‘losing’ someone the right word when you toss them aside?

She was menacing and threatening because she was measuring what it meant to her to lose a husband.  As it turns, I think she never really had one.  How can you be said to have something if you don’t even know what it is.  I don’t mean to be a snob, but ‘pearls to swine’ feels most apt.  And I think a part of her knew.  “It’s not like I haven’t benefited from it for all these years,” she mused out loud to me not long after I told her I couldn’t live this way anymore. 

She was referencing her rape at the age of 11 by a man who her mother had just met and asked to babysit, a mother who later told her it was ‘her fault’, and a lifetime of mistrust of men. I only learned of this at Christmas 2021, shortly before telling her what was up with me. When she told me I just cried while she talked, and it dripped out of her, every painful word of it. And I couldn’t say anything to her other than how sorry I was, that it was so hard to understand. ”That’s why I married you,” she said.

She was also referencing my fashion sense, and how many wonderful and perfectly fitting items of clothing I bought her over the years. Almost always things which became her ‘look’ for a season or two.

My wife is such a domme, we were a perfect pair, only she has such intense shame around her dominant nature, and her own masculinity, that she squelched it in her and kink-shamed it in me, so our romance died on the vine.  Most of my women friends tells me she was a bad choice, and they’re right.  You can’t marry somebody you don’t enjoy having sex with.  I had to take Viagra to have sex with her.  That never happened before, and even as a castrato, I get more reliable wood now than I did when I contemplated shagging someone who found my sexuality objectionable.  When we speak of presence, the beauty of sex is to be present with your partner.  I was never present with my wife.  Not once.

But all the women who came before her, or at least those who lasted a few days or more were all about the sex.  I didn’t struggle to be a man with a woman who I could connect to on an emotional and energetic level.  And part of me wonders now whether I might have survived my dysphoria had I married someone else.  Someone who might have allowed it to come out.

I guess that gender dysphoria is so strong that it would have just come out sooner, but it’s hard to say.  The path would have been easier, that’s for sure.

When I first moved to New York in my twenties, I really struggled.  I was self-destructive, self-harming, and experiencing intense gender dysphoria brought on by my freedom, which seemed to make it worse.  Being able to express it, and to even be seen, had the curious effect of making it harder.  I remember buying panties, a pair of black lace, high waisted panties at Canal Jeans in New York.  Remember that place?  When I paid for them, the Latina woman at the register was so affirming.  It was hard to do, hard to overcome fear, hard to not feel shame. Her friendly smile and the feeling of ‘it’s okay, this is normal’ which it conveyed fostered a life-long joy in shopping without fear.

Panties had already taken over my underwear supply, and as an avid photographer, I used a timer and a tripod to document my early forays dressed femme.  It felt very different to me than what I imagined a transvestite felt, as it never stimulated me.  I never became aroused.  Arousal was related to power dynamics with women.  Being strangled, having my hair pulled, being scratched, being thrown onto the bad, spanked, slapped, and ravaged.  Dressing with vestiges of the feminine just increased my feelings of submission.

Dating a lingerie model and fashion designer and conveniently always forgetting a second pair of underwear when I stayed with her proved to be a delicious way to play and to step away from male underwear forever.  That old expression ‘it’s what you’ve got on underneath is what counts,” was a very deep and sustaining feeling for me.

Despite the fun, I was not in a good place mentally.  I was so distraught about wanting to wear diapers and being treated like a baby; so distraught about being self-harming and self-sabotaging; and I was terrified to my soul about killing myself because I was male and not female.

I went for deep psychoanalysis twice a week for two years, and she saved my life, stopped from being self-harming, and my professional life just took off.  I walked away from an incredible relationship with a glorious woman and left New York.  I didn’t ask her to come with me, moved to Paris, and she hated me for it.  The only she time she spoke to me, we met, and she was wearing my favourite leather jacket, and looked great in it, and I didn’t have the heart to ask for it back, and also understood where some of my clothes went.

Boys out there, I don’t know how many of your ex-girlfriends stole your clothes, but this was a real thing for me…mostly they would steal my women’s clothes, but also my dress shirts, always my undershirts which were size small, so nice and tight and sexy, my lingerie, even my man underwear (boxers), and even neckties.  Whatever they liked.  Easy come, easy go.

When I first began dating my eventual wife, I was also in a phase of intense emotional turmoil.  I was suicidal at times, self-destructive, self-sabotaging, and not all that stable.  She was great.  She stuck by me which is what I needed.  I needed a woman to show that she would stick around, and she showed me she would and that provided the safety that I needed to be able to open up to her and to seriously consider settling with her.  I had never felt such a strong commitment from a woman before.  And that right there is why I wanted to marry her even though the sex was no good.  I had never felt so safe before.

When I asked her to marry me she said ‘no, not unless you go to therapy.  And then, when you’re ready, ask me again, and we’ll see.”  I found a fabulous psychoanalyst and sat with her for an hour every week for two years.  She was the first therapist that I began to discuss gender and sexuality with.  She helped me pull myself back from the brink.  And so did my future wife.  And this mattered to her a lot because one of her boyfriend’s when she was young took his life.

One of the first times she stayed over at my flat in leafy Holland Park, she found that hanging in my closet were a number of items which she wondered who they belonged to, “are you seeing someone else too?”  The relief of my ‘no’ was soon replaced by a new concern.  “Are you gay?”

“You sound like my mother.  No, I’m not gay.  But I also don’t get off on wearing women’s clothes.  I wear them because they feel right.  They make me feel comfortable.  The way they touch my body, rest on my body, it’s like dancing with someone who is leading you, telling you which way to move, how to be.  I need it to feel whole.”

I am not sure she understood.  We read a few books on it together, but they mostly catered to cross-dressers, which was not my thing.  She banned lace, more or less said she didn’t want to see it (which made me feel ugly), but also told me “I don’t want to be party to a secret.  Either be out or not, but then don’t involve me.”  I was so proud of her for being so strong in that way, and I imagined that would mean that she would be involved if I were out.  In a way, that told me it was safe to marry her.  That there was no rush to come out.

My wife understood that there was a link between my mental health, suicidal ideation, and gender dysphoria, no matter what the words were.  She understood that it wasn’t about the clothes, it was about my identity, and that the clothes helped me to connect to that.

We can have fun and be normal, be in relationship, but for so many of us, being trans is a far more powerful force than any of that.  It seems logical that the really high suicide rate in the transgender community is a result of social pressure (a trans woman is 100x more likely to take her life than the other 99% of humanity).  But I am not sure that this explains all of it.  It does explain why I get so upset with the desire to pass, knowing that most trans people will never have that luxury, and certainly anyone who goes through the wrong puberty won’t.

No.  I think that gender dysphoria is so powerful not just because of social reasons.  I do believe that being female and being male are very different from a biological wiring standpoint.  We see the world differently.  That is not to suggest in any way that the world is either male or female.  Every man, and every woman, exists on a spectrum.  There is overlap.

But if there is one thing that has become super clear to me as my body and my brain have been changed by oestrogen, it is that our sex hormones are the most powerful substances in our bodies.  And their governance and control over every cell and every cellular process is profound.  So profound that they can rewire us completely.  It takes 10 years for this process to happen fully, and I began to feel its effects early, almost immediately, but how I feel now compared to how I felt 1 month in is utterly different, and I realise that this is going to continue.

My dysphoria has not disappeared completely.  I am amazed that only 18% of trans women go through with bottom surgery, but I respect their decision when they have the freedom make it, but also know that many do not make that decision for economic or safety or health or other coping-related reasons.  For me, the vagina is no more important than not having a penis.  I have never felt comfortable in that club.  I would rather have nothing than have a penis.  But to have a vagina, and to have a neo-vagina that needs special tending and care, one of the hardest physical aspects of the transition process, and to know that this is a life commitment, is such a huge dysphoria-abating concept.  I cannot wait.

And the suffering that I experience to get one is a part of my joy.  It is a right of passage, a price I will pay every day, and while it sucks that I have to pay a price at all, it is perversely affirming of the choice.  I too suffer to be a woman.  Maybe in a different way, but that’s okay.  I can’t have a baby, and that is its own pain, but the physical struggle I will go through to survive and thrive and recover after surgery is my equivalent of giving birth.

The colossally absurd notion that this is a choice taken lightly and which is pedalled by idiots in politics, is just that, absurd.  Instead, it is the imminence of a vagina which saves my life.

In October of 2021, my wife and I were not living together because I was living and working in the US and she didn’t want to be there with me.  I spent a lot of time on my own and had a lot of time to think.  I had always told myself that I didn’t want to die in a man’s body.  That I would get a sex change when I was 80.  That thought kept me alive.

But suddenly, and possibly exacerbated by things going in my work life, I couldn’t take it anymore.  I was sure that I was at risk.  I imagined leaping from my balcony several times a day, and was genuinely afraid that I would take my life.  I so understood what was causing it, that I couldn’t go on being a man.  But I didn’t know how to face what lay ahead.

I read everything I could about transition, hormones especially.  I volunteered on a trans suicide helpline, which is a perverse thought, and yet it helped me to help others.  I flew to Mexico and bought hormones.  But most importantly, I hired four therapists.  I wanted to cover the bases, and I wasn’t sure that one would do, or what kind of therapy I really needed.  I also began working with a dominatrix.

There were physical things that I needed to have beaten out of me, there were sexual things around shame that I needed to let go of, there were things I needed to discuss with people, both therapists and not, who could hear me.  And this was a contrast to younger me in New York, who struggled to say what was really on my mind because I had so much shame that I couldn’t even talk to my therapist about it.

I told my wife that I had been suicidal in the Fall of 2021 because she was giving me a hard time about having so many therapists.  I needed her to understand what was at stake.  It didn’t stop her for teasing me about having so many therapists, and this continued until recently, when I suspect members of her legal team told her that it was not good for her case.  But the children picked up on it, and have also teased for the same thing, parroting their mother’s words.

I am not suicidal now.  I’m angry.  I am also stepping into my future with real joy.  I didn’t it could feel this good.  The only thing that really wobbles me, and that is considering all the other crap that I am dealing with now including potential homelessness, destitution (siblings have offered me shelter), it is the thought of having to delay surgery.

My wife asked me to postpone transition so that I could continue to work and make money and pay school fees, but then simultaneously used my working as a way to ratchet up a request for maintenance to levels which dwarf any available cash she has ever had, including when she was gainfully employed in recent years.  Her legal team asked as well.  Now my children have asked.

I wish it were possible to just ring up a doctor and say, “hey, I’d like to book an appointment for vaginoplasty, when can you fit me in?”

“How does next week look?”

“Great, can’t wait.”

I wish also that there were more good doctors and that butchers were exposed and driven out of practice.  But the world of trans surgery is not transparent, and some ‘good’ doctors are dangerous.  Thankfully, death is very rare.  But permanent loss of sensation, life incontinence, the need for follow-up surgery, and horrific results are all too common.  The really good doctors, as a consequence, can take over a year to just get a phone appointment with.  My first choice surgeon has a two-year waiting list for that.  Thankfully I had to wait only 18 months.

But these appointments are not like, “oh, that day doesn’t really work for me, can I have another?”  You take what you get.

This has already shown its ugly face in the court, where there is no consideration for longstanding appointments—they just give you a date.  Thankfully, they were understanding enough to allow for me to participate remotely, but during the last hearing the judge was very unsympathetic to me not living in the country where the hearings are taking place as my wife has “venue shopped” her way to the courts she believed would be most sympathetic to her, and thus far, she has been right.  He was also unsympathetic to my not being there because I was in the US meeting doctors.  Discrimination in the courts is tragic but real.

My wife apparently told my children how disgusted she was that I wore makeup at the hearing.  But I didn’t. Sometimes lip gloss, but in a colour that is like my own.  I may someday, but I’ve always preferred natural.  I love that she refuses to gender me correctly with our children.  They are beginning to refer to me as she, but not in front of her because it drives her nuts.

One curious thing that I touched on in a previous post, is how they comment on my clothing.  That never happened to boy me.  It is amazing how powerful our culture is that it is okay for someone to comment on what a woman wears, but not on what a man wears.  I tolerate it, but I make them understand it, so that they are aware of it too.  I am thinking about it because they were all over me for wearing a “too-revealing” top.  I loved it.  It is a white silk Donna Karan top that crosses in the front, but when I lean forward you can catch a glimpse of my bra.  They were horrified.  We went out to dinner.  The women present who were not my children, but were either nieces, cousins, or sisters not only looked, but also smiled.  The males present were on edge, as were my children.  “Papa, you can’t do that,” came the indignant cries.

With all the heavy stuff going around right now, one of my children asked me to put my transition on hold and to get a job.  This child also said, “you had no business having children if you are not willing to make the sacrifices to support them,” when I said that I wouldn’t put it on hold.  It took me 24 hours to sit down with calm and to talk through the history above, mainly about dysphoria and suicidal ideation.  I also shared with them that two psychiatrists have said that asking a trans person, me included, to delay or stop transition can have ‘permanent’ consequences.  It doesn’t take much to read through the lines on that.

I expressed to them that I understand that their mother hates me, a feeling now shared, but also how inappropriate it has been for her to seek to prevent me from having surgery, particularly given the potential consequences, but also slightly weird given her threatening “you better go through with it.”

I think that they also understand now that it is unrealistic for them to ask me to get a job right now, knowing that I will be unable to work for 4 months.  Look, yes, but work?  No.  My children do understand now that there is nothing that I will willingly allow to get in my way.  Maybe the court will stop me.  My wife seems to be hell bent on trying, which kind of makes me think, knowing the background as she does, that it would be convenient for her if I were no more. 

But that just makes me want to fight, want to live, and want to step into my womanhood.  It also makes me feel more ruthless with people who violate my boundaries.  Betrayal is all around me, but I refuse to accept it.  To the traitors in my life: you are out, never to return.  It is non-negotiable.

And who are they?  Friends or family who tried to play both sides, or who reached out to my wife and expressed solidarity with her because I am trans, and how that therefore disqualifies as a relation or a friend.  Fuck ‘em.

Finally, I am finding a vein of female rage.  This is as important or more in letting go of being a doormat than anything else.  I am sure I will overreact and break things along the way, things I shouldn’t.  But if I can’t defend myself, protect myself, then I am pretty useless.  It is a powerful lesson.

Bring it on.

P.S. when I look back at these old photos, particularly from my modelling days, I am overcome by a sense of sorrow. I wonder about how my life would have been, how I might have evolved, physically, emotionally, what might have become of me. I know I should take joy in them, and I accept that it must seem perverse, but it is very painful for me to look at myself all the way then and consider what I was, what I could have been had I transitioned before puberty. But I have to accept that being a woman was not my path. I take this path today, knowing that I could have passed, that I could have been a woman in ways that I cannot dream of now.