Jenna Sisolak grew up trying to avoid conflict at all costs. The more that she moved away from those tendencies, the more that she began to express her authentic self. A part of this process was reactive: Jenna went from being a “star” student to a rebellious kid after her parents did not respond well to her coming out that she was gay. This process took lots of time, and included some very low points in her life, but it has also led her to being able to come out as trans.
“Right now, my goal is to always make myself free enough to take care of anything that needs to happen. There was a recent surgery, not for me, for a friend and she needed to stay overnight in the hospital. I was able to say, no problem, I’m here to stay, I was like I literally have nothing else to do, and I’m here, and I loved that, and I always want to make it a point in my life to have that capability, to take care of people that I really care for. There’s just been so many people that have pretended to care for me, and then haven’t been there that I never want to do that to somebody else. If I can be there, I will be, and I’m going to make every effort to be there. ”
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TRANSCRIPT
Interview conducted by John Keller
New Brunswick, New Jersey
May 19, 2017
Transcription by Caroline Safreed
So this is John Keller, conducting an interview on May 19, 2017, we’re located at Mason Gross School of the Arts at Rutgers University and the interviewee is–
Jenna Sisolak, from Elmwood Park.
Great and we'll get going. So, hi!
Hello!
Where were you born?
I was born in central New Jersey, grew up in Monmouth County. I don't remember which hospital it was, it was probably somewhere in central Jersey, maybe New Brunswick, actually. My parents lived in Sayreville, so, not far.
Did your parents ever give you the "day you were born" story?
No, not really. I guess they were just really vague about being born, I don’t know, they just said I cried a lot when I was little.
You said you were born in central New Jersey, you don't remember the hospital, but you grew up in Sayreville?
I grew up in Monmouth County, Union Beach.
Did you live there your whole life?
For the most part, yes until I was about seventeen.
Do you have any siblings?
I do, I have one brother, his name is Kyle. He lives in, I think, South Amboy actually now.
Older or younger?
He's younger. He's two-and-a-half years younger.
What do you remember about your early childhood?
I always remember being an extremely odd child. I never really– I guess, fit in with other kids. I was definitely reclusive; I enjoyed reading books and playing video games, watching movies. But, I really, really tried to be social from the earliest age. I was involved in recreational sports. I think I played t-ball– pretty much anything that my parents could do to get me out of the house and be active, which later I found out they thought I wanted to be involved in sports, but when I finally quit, they realized that it was not my thing at all.
What motivated you to do it?
I've always had a desire to please people, and it’s– I let that control my childhood a lot. I didn't really do a lot of things that I wanted to do. It was mostly to keep peace and avoid conflict at all costs, because I hated conflict, always.
Did you have any conflict specifically within your family?
I fought with my brother, constantly; it was just incessant, really. We would fight over anything and everything. It was very rarely physical fights. We didn't really physically fight each other until much later in life. But, growing up, we just picked on each other a lot, and he was always at the end of it, because he tended to hang out with my friends, and they obviously favored me, and he was the butt of all the jokes. Other than that, he and I never really got close. We're not really close now, either. I only see him every so often, maybe once every other month. I don't see my parents at all now, and that's by my choice, not by theirs. But, my brother and I, I guess we’re just– we don’t really have much to talk about, we're just very different people. We don't bicker or fight anymore, so that's good, but definitely live in different worlds.
What was school like for you as a little kid?
School was the worst. I was– basically all through elementary school, I attended a kindergarten through eighth grade school, so I was in the same school for the whole time, and there were only about nine hundred kids for all of it. It was a very small school, and a very small town; the town is less than a square mile. I guess I was always bullied a lot, and I thought that it was really good attention, but recently, I was actually diagnosed with Asperger’s, and kind of looking back at how it would play in, that made a lot of sense that I really couldn't identify what– whether people were laughing at or with me. And, most of the time it was at me, but I just didn't put two and two together, so I thought they liked me, but that's okay. I got straight A's all the way until freshman year of high school. I was involved with– I helped found the drama club in fifth grade. That's when I really started to pull away from sports. I was part of the baseball team and drama club at the same time and it was ridiculous. I would have to pick one or the other all the time and I hated that, because I really wanted to pick drama club, but I knew that my parents weren't okay with that, so it was a lot of trying to please them with my choices and not what I wanted to do.
You said you got straight A's in school. What did you like about school, or what subject areas did you like?
I actually didn't really care about school; I got by on pure intelligence. I didn't study, I didn't do homework, it was just– I was able to take tests, because most of the classes I already understood the material. I was well-known for receiving the textbook for a class, and having read it within the first week of school, and then just kind of checking out for the rest of the year and taking the tests and ignore the class.
What was your social life like in school, like as a younger kid? A particular friend?
I had a couple friends I guess. I think it was a combination of my mom is really– or was really popular in my town. She was the Board of Ed. [Board of Education] president, on all kinds of committees, this, that, and the other thing. So, she had a lot of friends, I really think I mostly hung around with her friend's kids. I guess I tried to want to be involved with other kids, but I never really enjoyed the things we were doing, I was just kind of doing it because everybody else was doing it. I got into things like skateboarding, and BMX biking. But they just never really stuck because I wasn't having fun, so as soon as everybody else moved on, there was nothing there for me, so I moved on.
Any teachers, parents stick out in your mind?
Oh absolutely. One of my teachers, her name was Mrs. Plevier and I had her multiple times, I can't remember exactly, I know I had her two years in a row, I think it was fifth and sixth grade. But she was the director for the drama club. She actually approached me about starting and being involved with the drama club and it was excellent, I loved it. We actually started out with a, I guess, class-wide lip sync, and it just kind of grew from there to doing full-on plays.
And sorry, what was the teacher's name?
Mrs. Plevier
How do you spell that?
P-L-E-V-I-E-R.
And, can you tell me more about her? Like, what was she like, what did you like about her? What do you think was–
I think– I was allowed the liberty to be myself when I was around her, like it was pretty uncommon at the time for young males to be involved in drama club, to do things– to want to do things like be involved with dance. That was just not common, and she full out encouraged me to do all of that, and I was often referred for, I guess, honorary programs, gifted programs, writing prompts to be read for people, things like that. She really just gave me a lot of opportunities that I otherwise would have not known existed.
Are you still in touch with her?
No. I forget what it was, I think she retired, maybe about eight years ago, and I was approached to go to a get-together for the first drama group of us, because we all kind of stayed in touch. I don't know why I didn't go. I don't know what drove me not to go, honestly, but I didn't, so, I haven't reached out to her since. I have no idea what she's doing.
Is there anything else about the drama club or about that time that you said that was around fifth grade that you started doing that?
That was my first introduction to people who I really– this is fifth grade me speaking– I assumed were some part of LGBT community. There were I– don't want to like incriminate anyone, but there were a couple kids that it was pretty much assumed that they were homosexual, and I got along really well with them. And that was really my first, interaction with people who I actually wanted to be around, or wanted to be like. And, this will definitely be a repeating topic; my parents didn't let me hang out with them. They were avid users of slurs against homosexuals. Wasn't good. They told me that I wouldn't like them, that– anything to get me to not pursue relationships with them. And I guess that was a– a point that I really missed, where I could have stood up for myself and what I wanted to do, but I did what I normally do and just tried to appease and not cause a conflict. My favorite thing was when my parents left me alone. So anything to get them to not nag me; I was doing that.
Did you ever do any full-scale productions with the drama club?
Yes I was involved in Bye Bye Birdie and Grease.
How so?
I played the role of Eugene in Grease and I don't remember what the– I guess there's like a core friend group, the "T-Birds" of the Bye Bye Birdie world, whatever that crew was I was a part of that. I don't remember the name of the character for that one, but I think– so that's one, two, fifth and sixth, I don't remember what– how I was involved in seventh and eighth. But I definitely was in the first production; I had a lot of roles, really. I helped with stage crew; I obviously had a role in the play itself. I was so shy to sing, and that's why I didn't go for any of the leading roles, but I would have loved to do it, and I don't know why I didn't. It was just overwhelming shyness I guess, and looking back now, the people who got the lead roles were horrible singers. I would tell him to his face right now, like, "You were so bad then." and it was ridiculous.
So when you weren't in school at this time, where were you, what were you doing?
At home for the most part. I was always very into video games, still am, really. But, I buried myself in video games; I was in my room–
What kinds of games?
I played RPGs [Role Playing Games]. I was on the game RuneScape for the longest time.
I’m so sorry, so Role Playing?
Yes.
And then like group– where it's like groups of people?
It was mostly– I pretty much avoided groups of people; it was mostly about character building. Anything where I could start a character from scratch and just build it into an epic player in the game. That was my ideal situation. I think my outside activities, I never initiated. I was always asked to go places, and it really depended on my mood, whether I was going or not. There was a couple sleepovers that I went to. I hated those. Oh my god. It was a group of boys, because there were no boy-girl sleepovers, heaven forbid. We were big into– I don't know what it was called then– I guess W.W.F. wrestling at the time. [W.W.F. or World Wrestling Federation was a professional wrestling television program produced by World Wrestling Entertainment] And all they wanted to do was wrestle, and I was like– "No." Just like, "Back it up, no touching." So, didn't fit in there.
What else about your hometown? Do you have any memories of specific places?
I got involved with the recreation committee, my mom was involved there, so I liked helping with events because– there were a lot of charity events, and I guess just like town-wide events. Block parties and things like that, that I enjoyed being involved. There was also– it's a beach town, so there was Wednesday nights I believe were a D.J. at the beach, and there were a lot of people that showed up to that every Wednesday night. There was beach volleyball, and I loved that. That was a lot of fun, and all I wanted was to play the adult game, because the kids games would just devolve into chaos, no matter what, so I didn't want to be involved in that, I wanted to play seriously, I liked it. When I do anything it's really either I'm at it for two minutes and drop it, or I'm so obsessed with it that I forget to eat. And volleyball was one of them. I played in multiple leagues later in life– I loved it, so I wish I could still play.
Why, what makes you not able to play now?
I don't live near a beach. I like beach volleyball. I used to drive from NJIT [New Jersey Institute of Technology] down to Sea Girt to play; it was like over an hour drive. [Sea Girt is a borough in Monmouth County, New Jersey] Twice a week, I used to do that, to go play. Now that would be way too much, right now.
So, you had mentioned you have a younger brother, and then your two parents, were there any other family members who were kind of around at this time, or extended family?
I've always been distant from most of my family, my mom has three brothers and sisters, well she's got a lot more, but there's a bunch of half-siblings involved, there's probably about twelve total. But I had three of her siblings that were really involved in my childhood, but I never was close to them. I was babysat by my aunt, who lived about three blocks away from where I grew up, and my– one of my cousins, which looking back now, she was just really bossy, and I don't have any relationship with her anymore, but I really feel like– like my brother was being babysat there as well, and he found, like, neighborhood kids in their neighborhood to play with, and I stuck with my cousin and her friends, and I loved that, that was great. I can realize now that hanging out with girls was much more appealing to me, but at the time I didn't realize it at all. I didn't even give it a second thought, I just kind of did what I was doing and that was it, it was really, I guess, sanctioned socializing with girls that I wouldn't be allowed to do with my parents approval, but because it was my cousin, it was okay. I don't have any relationship with them, at all. I was also frequently with my grandmother, and that's a very toxic relationship. I can't even talk to her anymore, it's just, it's gotten out of hand with her, but we'll get to that one– she's definitely tried to sabotage my life multiple times. But I think that was probably one of the closer relationships that I had was with my cousin. I actually didn't mind hanging out with her. My god I remember one time, I got punished for playing with dolls by my aunt. She– it was a– I think it was Belle from Beauty and the Beast. It was definitely a doll with a yellow ball gown, and I was just playing with it with my cousin, and she's like "You want to play with it so much? You hold it on the couch." And I’m like, "Okay, that's fine with me I was playing with it anyway." So, apparently I got in trouble for that– okay.
How old were you then?
Probably eight, nine something like that. It had to be like third or fourth grade, but I think if memory serves, I started getting left home alone very early. I think I was probably like eleven when I started being left home alone, and not having to be at my aunt's house or grandma's house. But there was just, with my parents, there was always demonizing people, like, if they didn't want me to hang out with them, it was just relentless ridicule of whoever it was, and now looking back, the people that they didn't want me to hang out with were some of the best people. I went through so much nonsense in the past few years, and one of the people was my aunt, who I had been poisoned against my whole life to dislike her. I like her a lot. My brother likes her too. He went to– she's a security guard at a behavioral school, and my brother ended up going there, and he likes her a lot too. It was just definitely, I guess, my parents trying to sway the opinions.
What was it about her that you think they showed distancing too?
They had a lot of history with her. She was my uncle's second wife, and from what they say, obviously there's two sides to every story, what they say is she's always been really mean to them. I don't know if that's necessarily the case, because now, being an adult, I can't stand being around my parents, so I can't blame her.
What did you like about her?
She's relatable. She never said a word about the things that I did. It was– she has quadruplets, and they are all very different people, and I think she's just had a very open mind the whole time. So it was– I think it was easy for them to be themselves, which there was irony in that because my parents told them– told me that they didn't really make any of their own choices, and that they were told which football and baseball teams to like and things like that, which I think was actually backwards, because I was told what to like, what not to like, who to hang out with, and I think they were given a lot more freedom, so it was a very interesting dynamic and it changed every time depending who was around. Like, if we were at my grandma's house and she was there, everybody behaved differently, but if we were at my aunt's house, everybody was another way. It was always at least, from my point of view, an act, like they were always trying to hide things and put on a show. That's probably why I never really got close to any of them. And it always– my– one of my uncles, I don't know if he was prompted to do so, or if he wanted to, but he used to take me fishing. I don't really like fishing, but I went, and it felt forced, it felt like he had to. But, now interacting with him, I think he just kind of felt awkward doing it because he didn't really know me.
So you said you started developing an interest in drama club around fifth grade and then kind of extended it through like the middle school time frame and then did your life change at all as you're making your way through middle school towards high school? You kept up with sports, or shifted things?
I guess the shift really occurred in like eighth grade. That's when I quit sports. I guess the big kicker was telling my dad that I didn't want to play baseball anymore, and I think that really crushed him because he realized that I was not going to be the "sports son" that he wanted. That just wasn't going to happen, and after that I really– I went to high school about thirty-to-forty minutes away from where I grew up. The next town over was our high school. We shared that one with the next town, but I could also go to schools which I needed to apply for, and I got in there due to the perfect grades and clubs and things like that. So, I really was able to get away from the influences at home, and that just built over time, as I went to college and then entered adulthood the more separation from home and their influences, the better I felt. I guess the deep-seeded desire to please people and to kind of be "normal" really drove the things that I did. I tried to play sports in high school again. I– we didn't have a football team in middle school, I did play recreation or "Pop Warner" or whatever you'd call it, but I tried to get involved with high school football. [Pop Warner Little Scholars is a non-profit organization that provides activities for students] I quit that. Tried to be involved with soccer, lacrosse, I quit all those. It was just not my scene at all. I did get involved with a couple intellectual clubs, the aerospace engineering club, that was all right. I was the president of that for the four years of high school. I founded it freshman year and stayed president the whole time. It was okay, it was mostly about competitions, engineering competitions around the state that I got involved in, so they were something to do, I guess after school. I think it mostly stemmed from having some after school activities so I didn't have to go home– but I was involved with stage crew in high school. I never performed in high school. I think I probably stopped performing in eighth grade and moved more to the technical side. Lighting and sound were definitely my thing. I loved set building, so I definitely got involved with those in high school and I liked that– I liked the community, the– there was a lot of, like, loyalty and camaraderie among the theater kids and I really liked that. I got involved with a couple other pursuits, I guess, in theater. I worked at the Count Basie Theater, PNC Bank Arts Center. I worked for a sound and lighting company called Posh Entertainment. I tried. [laughter] And I really couldn't make it work, so I had to stop.
What couldn't you make work?
Basically, I couldn't afford it. I wasn't making enough money just working shows and things like that, so there was– I needed multiple jobs to be able to get out of my parents house. I ended up working three jobs when I was like 18-19. I worked at Dairy Queen in the evenings, then I went to Toys R Us for overnight, and then during like the lunch rush I delivered pizzas for Pizza Hut, so my days were jam-packed everyday.
So you had mentioned before that you had kind of gotten straight A's all the way to ninth grade.
Yes.
What's the story there?
Ninth grade I definitely got, maybe I got my first “B” in ninth grade, or I got one earlier, and I just started to self-destruct sophomore year of high school, it was absolutely over. I was a star student– I mean I've always been a sarcastic brat, but I really became a delinquent in sophomore year of high school. I was involved with bad people. I was taking and dealing drugs, I was skipping school. I would harass the teachers just so they would kick me out of class because I didn't want to be there. I don't know whether it was rebellion, boredom. I can't remember a class through elementary and high school in which I was not bored out of my mind. There's a strong possibility that that drove my behavior. I started seeing a therapist twice a week. It was a school therapist, the school had a counseling department, and it wasn't– she wasn't like a guidance counselor or anything, I think she was a doctor, something like that. I don't know, she was at least a social worker, a clinical social worker. And she was the first to really dip into the issues of the possibility of Asperger’s, and I was like "okay", and nothing really ever came of it, I didn't get the diagnosis for that until maybe 2015 or 2016. So, being an adult being diagnosed with Asperger’s is pretty rare and not very easy to do. During high school there was no way I was going to be involved in anything I didn't want to do. I really just kind of decided to make my own path, and people were flat out terrified of me. I used to fight, I wore a long– wasn't quite trench-coat-length, but I wore a long, green jacket everyday to school, and nobody wanted anything to do with me. There were a couple people I hung out with that were also degenerates, and we all got in trouble together, so, that was who I was associating with. It was a horrible crowd, I was a horrible person at the time, and it really– it took a long time to get out of that rut, it wasn't even like, it continued up through freshman year of college until I really– I guess it was the end– second semester of sophomore year, I got my act together a little bit. I took a hard look at my life, and was just like I have to stop the– the nonsensical behavior. It had a lot to do with the girl I was dating at the time. Now looking back, I think one of the biggest factors in me kind of spiraling out of control sophomore year was coming out to my parents that I was gay when I was fifteen. They didn't take it well at all. They deny it now, but they told me they wanted to put me in a mental institution. I was just– that crushed me. My mom just interrogated me on why I liked guys, what makes me think I'm gay, all kinds of things like that, and then all of a sudden, I'm starting to– they say that it was part of what they always wanted me to do, but they started sending me to religious camp. There was so much push for I guess being a "good Christian" and it was never directly approached at the camp, but it was made very clear that any type of feminine behavior would not be okay. It was definitely a strict way about the place. Fortunately, I didn't endure any abuses there, but it was definitely something I look back upon as kind of my parent's last attempt at trying to make me normal, was going to camp. I went there for two years, two summers.
What was your experience like there?
I made a lot of friends. I didn't know how to behave. I've always absolutely despised going to church, religion, any of that, it has always been the worst for me. My parents sent me to all these religious classes and things growing up. I hated it. It was the worst. There was an old man that they had guide me through my confirmation process, and he wasn't all there, so he didn't realize that I brought a book with me, and he thought that he was reading the bible along with me and I was just reading a different book, and he couldn't put two and two together that it wasn't a Bible. So, I skirted through that pretty much the same way I had been doing the whole time, just trying to please, not get in arguments, not get in fights. There was– I just wanted to get away from my parents, I just didn't want to be anywhere near them. They always just took issue with anything I did, and the people I was with, it was always, constant ridicule of anyone and every– everything that I was with. So, they don't know, but I brought home a guy I was dating once and they thought he was just like my really good friend and I was just like, "Yeah right, you think that, that's cool." So, I dated two guys in high school. That was an experience. One of them was just a weirdo, it was like– I don't think he knew whether he was gay or not or like what was going on, but the second guy was really nice, I liked being with him. After those– in-between and after those two, I just started dating girls. I was in– I was a serial dater, really. It was– I started having relations with people with like no gap in-between. Like if I broke up with a girl, like within the next day or two, I would have another girlfriend. I had a long relationship and I was seventeen-ish. That lasted about two years– I think it was like two years. She was extremely clingy, and I think I kind of fed into that, I think I needed something to really pay attention to, but I never really liked her very much, and I think one of the biggest things was I really liked her family. Her mom and dad were great, her little sister was awesome. I used to babysit her little sister all the time, her sister was maybe eight years younger, she was about ten at the time we were dating, and I loved hanging out with her, it was great. We played Pokémon cards together, and I used to play video games with her dad, I would hang out with her mom, her grandparents were really nice, and her aunt and uncle, they basically all treated me like family, and that was actually my first experience with how different a– I guess, "close to normal" family is. Now that I tell people about how my family is, and the things that they do, it was so far away from normal that I didn't even know what normal was when I saw it, and–
What kinds of things do you remember any specific events or stories that you have?
With my family?
No, with this– this was your girlfriend's family.
My girlfriend’s family, I guess– well first of all, it seemed like everybody liked each other, for one. There was a sense of honesty. Contrary to my family, her uncle lost his job, and the same day, he got all the family together and told everybody that he lost his job, he's looking for another one, that he didn't need help, he just wanted everybody to know and hope for their support and you know guidance on anything to get another job. My dad lost his job multiple times, and it was kept a secret, there was no trust in my family among anyone. You couldn't trust any of them to do anything, to tell them anything, nothing. It was– they'll deny it, but they all knew that I was gay. They started calling me names growing up, very early, I was called a "fruitcake" a "fairy" all kinds of things growing up. But they– there was so little trust that anyone in my family that felt a similar way if they were part of the LGBT community, they couldn't talk to me, like there was just no ability to connect, and my mom recently blamed that on me having Asperger’s, to which, I had some choice words for her, and told her to go away– to put it nicely. There's– I guess the biggest event for me, which wasn't really an event in and of itself, but just an occurrence, was that I was able to go to any of her family's house without her and be perfectly accepted there. Like it was– if I was around, I could go have dinner with her grandparents. Not a problem. Same with her aunt and uncle. They trusted me to drive their car and if I needed to drive somewhere and I have my own car, but if I was at their house or something and my car was blocked in or something they'd just say take theirs and it was just so much trust that I never got from anyone in my family. I think I felt like I had to keep the same secrets that they were keeping. They made sure to hold everything back and I guess so did I.
You said this was around when you were seventeen or so?
Yes, I dated her from 17 to 19-ish. I dated her up until the second semester of freshman year of college.
What was your decision process, your process for getting into college or going to college? You said you went to NJIT?
Yep, I went on a road trip with my dad to Florida and Georgia to look at colleges. I'm pretty sure I just got completely overwhelmed and I knew I had already been accepted into NJIT, there was an early decision/early acceptance thing. You could get in very early. It was like September of my senior year of high school that I was able to get in. So it was like I had that on lockdown and I was just like you know what, I'm just going to stay with that. It was basically the easiest path, the path of least resistance, and that I would pursue that route. I started out as an Information Technology major with only the skills and no inspiration. I had no intention or no desire really; I had every intention, no desire to do anything in IT and I eventually changed majors because of that. I had lost interest, and the math requirements really beat me up. Mostly because I didn't attend class. But when I changed to History as a major, and I started going to Rutgers Newark instead of NJIT, for the most part, I actually enjoyed class for the first time. It was a very weird feeling to actually enjoy one or two of my classes, for the most part, I still didn't really go. That was kind of my forte all the way through school, I just didn't attend very much, and somehow by– I don't know sheer luck– I've only ever failed one class, and it's because I think I missed the final. I don't even remember what happened. It was Cultural Anthropology, and I was at Rutgers and I went to talk to the professor afterwards, and he just disappeared, I think his assistant said he went to Chile, and he was just gone, and I'm like, "whatever", and I just left it it was just, an “F”. It didn’t matter to me, I really– I don't think I ever cared about grades. The only thing I cared about grades was my parents used to get me presents if I got good grades, like I could get “x” number of things per “A” that I got, "Okay cool, I'll get A's I’ll get things." and that was really a theme with them, was that they would try to buy me things and they were so distant from me, that if I was ever visibly upset about something, like there were times where I would just be crying in my room, and they didn't know what to do, they would leave my dinner plate at the door, they– I would go to the bathroom, and come back to my room, and there's just like a new video game on the bed and I'm like, "okay." So it was, like, always sneaky, and not– they would never even ask me what was wrong, it was just like okay, stay in your room, we'll feed you, everything's fine if you don't be upset near us.
You had mentioned that I think it was towards the end of your sophomore year, you had been dating someone, and that kind of caused you to reexamine your life. What was that time like?
I'm trying to think how to best describe her, she asked not to be named, she's still a part of my life. I met her, she is a very driven individual, she's awesome, she's my best friend. I clung to her as soon as I met her. It was just, like, almost obsessive, and we started living together. There's a lot of friend groups, and we’re both involved in Greek organizations. We kind of shuffled the dorm rooms around, so that anyone who wanted to live together could. So, I had a roommate who lived in a different room and then, his roommate lived somewhere else, and then it was just like everybody just kind of shuffled around, so we ended up living together most of college, and then we ended up getting an apartment together, but she was really the first person to actually pay attention to the things I struggled with in school. I never even learned how to study until I met her. She taught me how to prepare for an exam, which really got me through school, she pulled me through college kicking and screaming. I wanted to drop out, I tried going into the military before college. My parents vetoed that; they were just like "No, that's not happening." I really didn't want to, but I guess it was just something to do. But she– the thought came up again to join the military I guess junior year of college, as an alternative to changing majors, because I was just done, I couldn't do the classes anymore, I had no interest and no motivation to do anything, but she really pushed me, and still does. There was still– because of the rejection that I faced from my parents when I came out the first time, I made it such a point to be as masculine and not gay as possible, which meant being with girls. Looking back now, we're both glad we were together; we started dating 2010 I want to say. And we were married in 2015; we're still legally married. I live with her still, we're still best friends, and our relationship is really good. She's not– her health isn't in the best shape, but she's definitely mentally doing much better than she was. When I first– I told her that I had thoughts of– I was basically telling her I'd been lying to her the whole time about six months into our engagement. We got engaged maybe a year before we were married, so maybe 2014, and I told her that I was bisexual, which was a flat-out lie, and I guess she didn't put two and two together until later, because I don't really quite understand, and I don't know if she really understands what she was striving for from the relationship, because it was clear that we were not a couple, like we didn't behave like a couple, we just kind of coexisted a lot. It was very much a best friend to each other, and we just kind of called it a relationship. The– I think she still wanted to go through with the wedding after I told her I was bisexual, and I had really been feeling depressed for years before the wedding. It started off as mild, maybe like sophomore year of high school, junior year of high school, and looking back now, it really all stemmed from the poor reaction my parents had to me coming out. But that– it was just so much effort trying to pretend to be something that I wasn't. As soon as we got married, the depression went out of control. It was insane. I wouldn't get out of bed for days at a time. My employer had to give me, like, extra days off of work beyond what I was allowed. My other good friend who– she's actually dating now, really was another big factor in me being– they both kind of worked together to get me out of bed, one of the few things I would get out of bed for was to go play mini golf. I don't know why that– but they found it would work, so they would take me, but I had completely given up. It was almost immediately after the wedding. I just collapsed, I was done. My– work started to fail.
Where were you working at this time?
I was working for a contract company to Fujifilm repairing printers and installing photo labs at Wal-Mart. So, I spent a lot of time traveling. Basically my area was east of the Mississippi. I spent a lot of time in Texas; I went to Kentucky, every state. The only one I didn't hit I think was Alabama, and I was never home. I would leave on Sundays around 11:00 A.M, and I would get home Friday night / Saturday morning I guess at around two in the morning, and then leave again on Sunday. I was home for basically twenty-four hours, and that went on for a couple months. That was horrible. Being by myself all the time, I was just in the hotel room, staring at the walls, and I would call and tell her that I was like, “This isn’t good, the walls are closing in on me, like it's just getting really bad” , and I guess over time, things just got worse. By some miracle, I actually was promoted in that job, and I ended up being in an office. I ended up in Edison. I had the stable nine-to-five office job, and things didn't get any better. I was being harassed at work. Nobody– I made three really good friends who I am still friends with after being fired from that job, and they really helped me keep it together at work, because I was on the verge of exploding on one of my coworkers. He was just so horrible the whole time and–
In what way?
He would loudly make fun of me to other employees. He also made it a point to give me very labor-intensive work when I was in a technical role. There was no reason for me to be involved in warehouse/stock and things like that when most of my time, I should have been involved in repairing printers and computers, and he made it his mission to make me miserable. Anything I didn't want to do, he was going to force me to do it, and the situation was so bad there because he and I were technically both managers of the department. He wasn't my boss, but he was kind of my boss. He was in charge of operations, and basically the personnel, and I was in charge of all the equipment, so I kept everybody up and running, and testing equipment, whatever the thing was that they were doing, I made sure they could do it. And, we'd butt heads on that all the time, and the problem arose when he was just treating me so poorly that I would love to tell my manager about it– okay. My manager's manager– the director of the whole building, is the guy I had the problem with, it's his dad. So I'm going to complain to my manager who's going to do what? Discipline his boss's son? Yeah, okay. So, that went nowhere. I ended up working in two departments, splitting my time. I was stretched so thin. I was basically doing my old job, and then doing an entire other person's job in a different department just to not be near him. It was absolutely miserable. There's– I made a two-page bullet list of all the nonsense that he's involved in and I showed it to my manager and his boss, my coworker’s dad. And, they shrugged it off, completely– they just ignored it. And I said, I guess, it's apparently a right of passage here, just to have a formal complaint about this person and have it ignored, so, here's mine and back to work I go. I guess I was starting to move around a lot, I've moved four times in the past couple– five times in the past couple years. I went from the college dorms– my senior year, I guess I was in an apartment with my girlfriend at the time, now wife. I graduated before her. She had a couple classes to finish or something. She had a medical leave second semester freshman year before I met her, so she had another semester that she needed to make up, and we were in that apartment for maybe a year, and then after we both graduated her grandmother was severely ill. She was– I think she was either about to be, or was already home on hospice and her grandfather couldn't take care of her. So, they asked if anyone in the family was able to go there and basically care for her until she passed. So, she and I said, "You know what, this apartment is a piece of crap, and we're paying way too much for it." We would be able to go live– it was on a farm– we would be able to go live there for free, and she would be able to spend as much time as possible in her grandmother's last months. I can't remember how long it lasted; maybe she was home for a month or so before she passed. That crushed her. She was a mess after that for a while, and all the while, she was giving a lot of attention to her grandmother, and it allowed– I shouldn't say it allowed– I guess I kind of was able to deteriorate more due to the depression, because she wasn't able to watch and push me out of it. So, it just got worse for me.
You said this was around 2015?
Into 2016, yes. It was at the end, just past our first anniversary, so this was about almost exactly a year ago, eleven months ago that I went all the way downhill. I ended up in August of last year in the psychiatric unit in the hospital for a suicide attempt. I was just completely done. My entire life was a lie. Everything that I had put together, it was all bogus. I had convinced myself that I had destroyed her life, that I had really ruined everything for myself and her, and it was just absolutely miserable. I didn't even– for me, it was mostly a product of being gay, and it wasn't until after that hospital visit that I really put two and two together, and it was actually my wife that really asked the question about whether I was a girl, and I didn't really even think of that as like a possible reason for the way I was feeling, and I was in an outpatient program five days a week after the hospital and I really started exploring what it would mean to be transgender and if that was me, and I really looked back on most of my life, and realized that a lot of it was being forced into a male role, and it wasn't always other people forcing me to do it, it was really me trying to fit into a box to try to avoid conflict. Whatever I was doing to just appear normal, that was really the root cause of my distress for most of the time. There didn't seem to be– it was just this golden explanation really, everything made total sense. I hated hanging out with boys growing up, I didn't want anything to do with typically male activities, and there were so many times where I was jealous of girls hanging out together. Even in high school I wanted to play field hockey so badly, but they wouldn't let boys play. It was a female-only sport, and that was just like– there's so many little things from growing up that I realized were linked to that. And I wish so badly that my parents were supportive of me being gay because I probably would have explored the transgender feelings earlier had I been able to express myself more freely.
Where do you think you are now?
Now– I'm in an interesting place now. The depression has gotten a lot better. I've been definitely struggling to get a lot of my issues under control. I've been diagnosed with the Asperger's, depression, anxiety, and ADHD. It's been a lot to really juggle all of those and get them under control. I've had a lot of different psychiatrists, and people attempting to get control of it. I've really isolated myself a lot. I don't really go out very much, but in January for the new year as my resolution type, I decided that I would go full-time female, I hadn't started hormones or anything, which I have now, but oh my god it felt so freeing. It was just like everything– my life was a complete disaster when I went full time, but it seemed like everything was going to be alright for a second, so I definitely decided to continue with more from [unclear]. I started with the social transition which actually is backwards for a lot of people, most people medically begin transition before socially, but I decided to go forward with the medical transition as well, and with that aspect of my life, I am very happy. I know that it was the correct choice, and the way I was always meant to be, so I feel a lot better about that. I think a lot more of my issues are as a result from hiding and lying and pretending for so long. I absolutely– I was– I learned from the best. My family members to be the best liars. Like, I could fool anybody into thinking anything about me, and all the way, through school was fake, and it was a very unfortunate way to live, and now I live a much more authentic life, and it weighs much less heavily on me, so it actually affords me the opportunity to pay attention to the other issues I have going on– the other diagnoses that I have gotten, where as before, I was just ignoring everything, and just pushing it down, and trying to push my way through life, force it..
Do you want to mention anything or tell me a little about TrueSelves itself, like what that group is for you–
Sure. Basically, I started attending TrueSelves definitely before transitioning full time. I was mostly– I was definitely dressing and acting female at home, but I wasn't in public at all, and when I started going there, I was allowed, or allowing myself really to not only be there, how I wanted to be myself, but I would take the drive, and stop at the convenience store dressed as my true self, and that was– that meant everything to me. It was– it made it so simple for me to just put two and two together and realize, this is exactly who I want to be, and who I am, and who I was before is–it was such a regretful time that I never got to be myself all the way throughout my teen years basically. There was– it was just complete hiding the whole time, and I hate that I had to do that, I hate that I lied to people and now being able to be authentic is so freeing, and when I started going to TrueSelves, I met people who were significantly further along in life than me, and forget in-transition, not able to, and not in the foreseeable future be able to transition, and I can't even imagine how– I felt trapped in my life, not even knowing why I was trapped, and I ended up suicidal because of it. Knowing full well why, and just being flat out prevented from doing so doing anything about it really– I can't imagine. And that gives me a lot of perspective into how I behave. Right now, my two roommates, they ask me a lot of questions about transitioning, and I'm always glad to answer. One of the big things they ask is how I feel about people's perception of me, and I really– I don't mind what people say or do with me, I think that really stemmed from the way I was hiding before because I was forcing people's perception of me. Whatever I wanted, people to look at me as, which for the most part was the masculine, cis, straight male. I could make them do that. I could put on whatever persona I wanted them to see, and force them to see what I wanted. Now, it's almost relaxing to me to let people make their own perceptions of who I am on their own. I've been approached by people who say like, "Oh, you're a guy wearing heels–" okay, that's fine. "So what are you?" What do you think? "I don't know are you a crossdresser?" I guess technically, sure, why not? Okay, that's fine, I'm almost so secure in myself at this point that it doesn't even matter what people say about me. I'm perfectly fine saying, “Okay, I'm a cross-dresser, you think that, fine. Okay I look like a guy, okay, cool." I mean, granted, I am over the moon when I get gendered properly, it doesn't happen very often yet, but it has happened a couple times, and that is the best feeling, I am just absolutely ecstatic after for days after that. And the people that do it– everybody who knows me well, they attempt to use my correct pronouns, and my preferred name, but it's people that I don't know that really make my day, and they have no idea that they're doing it. So, it's ironic really that the people that are trying the hardest make the least impact, but hearing everyone's story at TrueSelves just, I guess it makes me feel like I'll be able to get through, because, now I'm past the point of suicidal, and honestly, there's not much worse you could be than suicidal, because I mean, if you're dead, you're nothing, so– being at the absolute rock bottom really just kind of let me say, you know what, anything else is a bonus, alright, cool. I'm free to dress the way I want, I live in a state where I can go to a support group that can be publicly advertised, we've got our own website and things, and that's not the case everywhere. I've tried to reconcile with my parents a couple times, they want me to go visit them, they live in Georgia, and I told them flat out it's just not safe for me to go there. I just can't. So, I'm very glad to have the support of other people that are in similar situations to me, and to be– I guess, guided on transitioning and what people have gone through. To know that, I'm not the only one who gets harassed, I'm not the only one who feels that people hate me a lot for no other reason than being transgender, so it's just very– that's my only socialization right now. That's my– I really tried to go to one of my roommate's family's house, but it honestly throws my anxiety through the roof, and I'm out of commission for a couple days after. Going to TrueSelves, I look forward to it. I really do, but for a lot of people, it's because they can be themselves there. For me, it's like stress-free, like I just, I feel good going and because a lot of times I'm not in a bad place, I feel pretty good, so I almost feel like a social obligation to go when I'm feeling good, especially when I'm feeling good, especially because I feel like a lot of people need that. For me, being out and open as trans, I feel like I’m doing some kind of good in the world, when I've spent so many years destroying. So, that's probably the biggest part for me.
You talked about that moment of coming out to your parents when you were fifteen. Did you have another coming out moment to them?
Only my mom. My mom decided to take it upon herself to tell my dad and brother. I basically told her over the phone around Christmas, this past year that I'm transitioning, and what my new name is and things like that, and she just kind of shook it off, pretended like it wasn't real. I think they all still thinks it’s a phase. One of the most hurtful things my parents have ever said to me, even– no matter what their reaction was coming out the first time. When I was in the hospital and suicidal. First of all, they came to try to check me out, and my wife and best friend told them that that's not happening and that they needed to leave. Before they did go, they spoke to my roommates and my dad said that– well, my roommate said that they're glad the threat was over, because I was in a safe space, and my dad said, "If there ever was a threat at all." And it's just, nothing has ever been so invalidating as that statement, because even though I was close to being dead, they were still in denial about me, they still don't care, it just, that's just the mantra for their life is just make sure it looks okay from the outside in, and ignore the rest.
What's your mantra of life?
Be available to help people. Right now, my goal is to always make myself free enough to take care of anything that needs to happen. There was a recent surgery, not for me, for a friend and she needed to stay overnight in the hospital. I was able to say, no problem, I'm here to stay, I was like I literally have nothing else to do, and I'm here, and I loved that, and I always want to make it a point in my life to have that capability, to take care of people that I really care for. There's just been so many people that have pretended to care for me, and then haven't been there that I never want to do that to somebody else. If I can be there, I will be, and I'm going to make every effort to be there.
Is there anything else you think you'd want to say or anything that you wanted to talk about or any other stories that were pressing or any that we didn't get to?
I don't think so; I think we've touched on most of the important topics.
Great, and I would also say that we can always, if it's something where you get home and you're like "Oh, we forgot that!" We can always sit down for another session.
Okay, cool.
But I think what I'll do is I'll stop the recorder now.