It all kind of first started when I was about 6 or 7. ABC was airing “That Girl” reruns during the daytime. The show starred legendary actress Marlo Thomas. “That Girl” was my favorite show and I used to role play Ann Marie, her character on the show. After a period of engaging in this fun activity, as an elementary school boy, I realized that it probably wasn’t the best idea and stopped.
I think I was in the third grade when I was regularly seeing the school counselor. At one point, my mother, who was usually very understanding, angerly said that Mrs. “X,” the school counselor, didn’t know what she was talking about and that I wouldn’t be seeing her anymore! My mom passed in 2008 at age 70 of early onset Alzheimer’s, a little over a year after I came out and 8 years before I would start my transition to female. She never learned about my internal gender conflict. I wish she was here so I could pick her brain about the counselor incident; I suspect I have an idea what might have prompted my mom’s unusual reaction.
Then, when I was in third or fourth grade my mom took me to buy “school shoes” at The Bootery on Main Street in Northampton. My very narrow, very flat feet, were hard to find shoes for. Out of curiosity or desperation, the shoe salesman found a pair of androgynous girls’ brown oxfords. The shoes might have been a tad bit feminine by American standards, but looked very much like the shoes worn by school girls and boys in Europe. Surprisingly, they fit, and I wanted them. The salesman decided to take another look “out back” and found a pair of boy’s shoes that also fit — we bought those. I was crushed but didn’t say anything.
In junior high, I was both attracted to, and envious of, my female peers budding breasts. In so many ways, I would have liked to follow the female path to maturity and not the male one I was on.
Also in junior high, I was also jealous of the girls’ gym uniforms. They looked better than the boys’ uniforms. After transitioning, my female classmates set me straight, informing me that the girls’ uniforms were one-piece, zippered, and awful, and that I was darned lucky to have worn the boys’ uniforms.
In my mid-teens, we took a family trip to Cape Cod; my brother and I shared a room. At night I couldn’t sleep and, in the dim light of the hotel room, I stared at an old water spot on the ceiling. I kept thinking, wondering really, if I was the kind of male who’d ever transition to female. In so many ways, it felt so out of reach, so beyond anything I could ever imagine actually doing.
There would be about 25 more years of experiences similar to those I had as a kid, before I gained the courage, and experienced the necessity to come out as transgender. My coming out stunned a lot of people — a few still haven’t completely gotten over it. I thought, knowing me, and my calm, gentle nature, how could people be surprised? Was I really that good at playing a male and all that entails? It would be another nine years until I started my transition to female. Strangely, despite it being new, much of living as a woman somehow felt easy, so natural, so comfortable. That’s when any lingering doubts I had that I wasn’t really transgender went away.
Over six years into living as a transgender woman, I am both thrilled for, and a bit jealous of, the transgender kids today who don’t have to keep secrets. Yet, sadly, there are still kids, and adults, who have to keep their true selves hidden away like I did for so long. Coming out as transgender at any age is far from a “cakewalk” — especially in this charged political climate, but people, young and old, are still doing it and taking powerful steps towards becoming their true selves. It warms my heart.
Mariel Addis is a native of Florence. She left the area for 16 years but returned in 2013.