‘Transitioning’ Out of The American Dream
By: Constance Rowan
Tags: Self-awareness, LGBTQ, Short Story, Transgender, This Happened To Me

‘Transitioning’ Out of The American Dream

Taking the leap of faith as a middle age, middle class parent to embrace a transgender identity and life journey

Photo by Paul Hanaoka on Unsplash

… I sat on the edge of our bed, shivering in fear of what I was about to do. With a few short words, I was going to destroy a dream and a family I had worked an entire life to be a part of. It was dark in our room; my wife had just returned from putting our 6-year-old son and 5-month-old daughter to bed. As she came into the room, she noticed me there, tears streaming down my cheeks.

“What’s wrong?” She asked in a concerned voice.

I opened my mouth to speak, but no words came out. I was paralyzed with fear, and all I could do was stare at my wife with a dumbfounded expression. My wife must have sensed it because the urgency of her tone increased, and she began to yell frantically

“<Full Dead Name>! I demand you tell me what’s going on right now; you are really scaring me!”

Something happened at that moment, and all of a sudden, it felt like I was outside my body and observing myself in the 3rd person. I felt a strange numbness wash over me and I began to speak, but it felt as though the words coming from my mouth did not originate from me…

The American Dream overall has been rejected by younger people today. The Norman Rockwell picture of America and the nuclear family no longer applies to their vision of the future, or the evolution of the human race as a whole. Personally, I am glad to see it go.

Many of us older Millennials and Gen X, however, were brainwashed at a young age into the importance of the suburban home and the nuclear family. This philosophy was paired with the significance of high-earning corporate jobs that pay for all of it.

As a kid who grew up in a welfare home, I wanted it all the more because my parents couldn’t provide me that “perfect life.” I was determined I was going to grow up and be a “better man.” This meant dedicating my life to this idealistic future and the family values model at all costs. This was impressed on me at a young age and ingrained in my psyche.

Something else also began stirring in my head around the same time. Something both incompatible and ultimately destructive to these goals.

A child of 5

A child of 5 years doesn’t typically comprehend gender beyond basic observations of clothing, toys, and body parts, although they can begin to feel as though something is wrong. I was no different. I had no revelations at 4-years-old that I should be a girl or that my penis was wrong for my body. What I can point out are some distinct early memories that began to shape the feeling that something about me was different:

I distinctly remember a day where I was in my bedroom talking to my imaginary friend. I was lying on the bed with my feet propped up against the wall staring at the ceiling. I must have been 4 or 5, and I told him (my imaginary friend) “I wonder what it’s like to be a girl.”

This thought wasn’t just a passing musing, and it weighed on my heart heavy, like it was a question that needed an immediate answer. I recall at one point that I brought the matter to my mom, but I don’t remember the conversation or her response. All I remember is the initial question, and how it never really went away and continued to surface for the rest of my life.

This thought wasn’t just a passing musing, and it weighed on my heart heavy, like it was a question that needed an immediate answer. I recall at one point that I brought the matter to my mom, but I don’t remember the conversation or her response. All I remember is the initial question, and how it never really went away and continued to surface for the rest of my life. I was six years old, and I crawled into the laundry basket and found my mom’s nylons. I remember pulling them out and feeling the strange material. I liked the way they felt, and I was curious. I put them on and came out into the living room. I remember my dad getting angry with me, but my mom just laughed and told me to stay put. I felt weird but also felt comfortable at the same time. I was in the living room playing when my mom came back from her bedroom with her old Minolta SLR and snapped some pictures. To this day, I still have them in the family scrapbook. I don’t remember anything else from that year or the year after in my childhood, yet this memory is still very vivid to this day.

A 15-year-old boy

A 15-year-old boy’s sexuality comes alive as testosterone floods their body and brain. Everything is new and awkward, and both their chemistry and societal pressure encourages the exploration of physical attraction. This time, I WAS different than other kids of my age.

I was attracted to girls, but the manner in which I was attracted was different. It was not that I didn’t desire to be close to them; because I did. The difference was that I wished to BE them, not just with them. Whenever I experienced intimacy with a female, I always pictured myself from their point of view.

It was around this time in my life that I once again came in possession of female attire. I was in a freshman Shakespeare performance, and I was given a few pairs of women’s tights as I was to play Baptista in “The Taming of the Shrew.” Like the other boys, I felt silly putting them on and being seen on stage in them. But it did not take long for that feeling to turn into comfort and enjoyment.

A few days after the performance, the items were sitting in the corner of my room. I put them on, and figured I might as well try to make a full outfit… you know… to experiment. I cut an old pair of jeans down to booty shorts, put on a t-shirt and tied up the bottom to make it more of a midriff shirt, and I put on some calf-length sox and bunched them up like the cheerleaders at school. I also had long hair at the time, so I brushed it out as much as I could, and I went and stood in front of my full-length mirror.

“There was no denying anymore that I was no typical teenage boy, but at that moment, I didn’t care, nor the moments like it that came in the future.”

As I stared at myself in the mirror, I smiled at the aesthetic I had created. But the joy suddenly drained from my face as I mentally began to grapple with the reality of what I was doing. I felt this intense guilt because after all, this was not “right or normal.” I also had this intense fear that my dad could walk in on me at any moment.

Despite all that, I couldn’t get over the profound satisfaction the figure in the mirror brought to me. I closed my eyes and imagined myself as one of the cheerleaders, and I hummed our pep rally chant a while in my head. There was no denying anymore that I was no typical teenage boy, but at that moment, I didn’t care, nor the moments like it that came in the future.

Over the next couple of years, I played around with my gender expressions in secret, dreamed about how much my life would be better as a female. There were so many experiences during this time, so many things that brought me pleasure, confusion, and shame, often all at once.

Despite all that, however, it all came to an end at 18 years. Old. A girl I liked brought me to her church, and the trajectory of the rest of my life changed forever, but that is another story. All you need to know here is that my dysphoria took a backseat to attempt to build a life in church ministry, failing miserably, and then falling back on my old standby… following the American Dream.

A man of 35 years old

A man of 35 years old opens the closet in the master bedroom. I had spent the last 20 years trying to forget what I did as a teenager. I had built myself a castle, and wanted to fill it with love, a family, material possessions… in other words… the American Dream. But I was empty inside and devoid of emotion.

I blamed my obesity, a previous failed marriage and divorce, the failure of my business, the death of my mom, the suicide of a cousin, and multiple other deaths in my family. But it was all just excuses I used to hide the truth from others; the fact that I hated being a man.

I hated pretending to have male interests for the sole purpose of trying to bond with and make male friends. I was always better friends with women and rarely made or kept male friends. The ones I did make were typically beta males who shared my affinity for all things nerdy.

I did glance at women, but when I looked, I didn’t say to myself, “I want to sleep with her.” I said to myself, “that outfit makes her look amazing. I wish I looked like that.” I had lived with this for so long, and I was numb to what I was doing. I never even questioned it anymore; I just accepted that it was a part of me.

All that brings me to this milestone, standing in an open closet. My wife and kids were out shopping, and I glanced over at her dresses. My wife and I are both larger people, but I had been losing weight, so I said to myself,

“it’s been a long time since I’ve even touched women’s clothes; I wonder how it would feel. We are both about the same size… why not see what I look like, can’t hurt anything, right?”

I grabbed a short length red dress off a hanger and slid awkwardly into it. It was a bit tight, but I was able to get into it. I dug through the drawers and found a black pair of tights and some Spanx and got them on.

“I locked eyes with my reflection, and it was as though there was another person there, a woman, trapped in the mirror.”

Finally, I found some heels in the closet; and was surprisingly able to squeeze my feet into them. Also, I found some makeup in a drawer and figured, “might as well,” so I hurriedly threw that on as well.

I wobbled over to the full-length mirror to have a look. I wasn’t winning any beauty contest, but something happened as I stared into the mirror: I locked eyes with my reflection, and it was as though there was another person there, a woman, trapped in the mirror. Constance! Her name was Constance. Don’t ask me why. Don’t ask me where the name came from. But she was Constance from that day on. She smiled at me, and I knew I had opened the door to Pandora’s Box, and I felt the hairs on the back of my neck stand up in fear and excitement.