I walked in to the student counseling office and take a seat. In there I sit next to a guy who looks like he hasn't taken a shower for weeks and a girl who appears to be Olive Oil's down and out sister. Not being judgmental but trying to get you a picture in your mind. I sit there and wait for a second then read you need to ring the bell and sign in. So I do, and I sit, nobody comes, ten minutes of trying to not make eye contact with the two people in the room with me. Eventually a lady comes out, asks for me and has me follow her in to her office. She sits in a chair and asks me to sit on a black leather sofa next to this gigantic plant. I look around the room and there are all kinds of books on mental disorders and the like. Why am I here? I start to go into shut down mode as I am really feeling like calling these people was a huge mistake.
The Doctor starts asking me questions of who I am, what do I study, what do I like, yada, yada, yada. After about ten minutes of that she gets to the real question, why did I call? I told her honestly, I do not know, that my sister was afraid I was depressed and I made a promise to call you guys when I got back to make her feel better. She was worried, we are close, and I owed her that much for being so great to me. The Doctor then asks "what do you mean by being great to you?" Ahh these people are good right? I squirmed, I was on edge, and I danced around it quite a bit. I think I said something to the effect that I had some sexual encounters that got me in trouble and she saw me through them or something to that effect. Well we go round and round on questions and as I said before these people are good. I eventually slip and say I am not happy because I cannot be who I truly am. That was all the crack in the door for the good Doctor to stick her foot in the door and get to the real issue at hand. "Who are you really?" she asks. Well, I guess in a moment of courage or just a slip of judgement I say "a girl."
Ever have one of those moments where you say something and you wish you could grab it in the air and shove it right back down into your mouth for which it came? If I could have I would have. I remember she stared at me, wrote some things down on her paper, and did not say much of anything for a couple minutes outside of a few "hmm" sounds as she wrote. I remember squirming and wanting to get out of there fast. She then asks me, how long have you had gender confusion? "Huh? I am not confused! I want to be a girl, I was born with a penis, that is not confusion that is Hell on Earth!" She looks at me and asks me a series of questions that to the best of my untrained logic were to get to whether or not it was a sexual fetish thing or was I truly a gender mixed up individual. I guess I answered them strongly because she immediately went in to a line of questioning about how I see myself when I looked in a mirror, what I wished for as far as how I presented myself to the world, and whether her shoes matched her handbag that day. Ok, kidding on the last one, they did, but she didn't ask and I wouldn't wear/carry them. :) Anyway, she prescribes me an anti-depressant and tells me to take St. John's Wort and Gaba supplements for mental happiness and gives me the name and number of the President for the University LGBT organization. I also get an appointment for the next week and she tells me one thing I will never forget. "You are a transgendered person who professionally I must use the word homosexual to describe because of your attraction to the same gender." Ouch, ever been told who you were by someone you did not know for the very first time? It was odd.
But I remember walking out of there and feeling pretty good. Not because of anything she said but because it was one more stone I turned over in life and it felt as if I had a little weight lifted from my shoulders. I did start attending meetings with the student LGBT organization and I met some people who were just like me. There is more to this I will share over time but this was the third big awakening in life in figuring out who I was to be able to find true happiness one day in this big old scary world.
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