We all share similar stories for why we transition. This is mine.

[Valorie]

Hello everyone!

 

My name is Vaela (Vay-lah) Kay. That name and the decision to be her permanently is only a couple months old. So, let me fill in some of the important details that led to now. 

 

When I look back on my childhood, I have a clearer picture today. My parents were two broken people, my dad especially, and he broke everyone around him. Horribly abused as a child himself, he never hit me, but there was this always-present rage in him and it would come out randomly and with little to no justification. 

 

My mom was always on the receiving end. Again, not physical abuse but emotional, forced to live in a poisonous atmosphere with a man she loved but also feared and I think despised. 

 

Vaela fits in here somewhere. One of my earliest memories is holding a plain eye shadow pallet, meant for playing cowboys and Indians, but instead creating a new curiosity in me. That's where the disconnect really started, where despite my best attempts, I've always fit very loosely in this skin. 

 

I grew up in a strict Christian home. I got saved at two. For me and for them it was the type of Christian home where the hearts were genuine but the way my mom and dad went about it left no room for error, no room for this woman that was already alive in me. They were staples of the church who lived in a very particular hell when no one else was around. I remember pieces from this. A lot of screaming, a lot of not feeling safe, a lot of hating what it meant to be a man because of how my dad acted. 

 

As the years passed, their relationship got worse, more tumultuous. The threat of divorce was an anvil waiting to drop. And then when I was ten years old, my dad got diagnosed with stage four multiplemyeloma, a blood and bone cancer. For the next three years, he fought a valiant, ugly battle. Through three remissions, multiple rounds of chemo and radiation, and his still poisonous rage, I was by his side. Cancer hadn't helped heal mom and dad's marriage. It just put divorce on the back burner. 

 

I was both my dad's best friend and confidante. I think I was those things to him before I was his son. I was a main place of support. Except, I've found over the years that being that place of support for him then has negatively affected me since. It was too much, it was too heavy, and it made me turn to Vaela when the pressure was too much, or the nights were lonely, or I didn't know how to handle what was happening.

 

As all stories like this seem to go, he died. I was thirteen, just at the start of manhood, no map given to me and no guide to help me through. My relationship with God took on a new, distant look. And so, I proceeded to trip through life trying to be a man. I've explained it before to people as this: it seemed I was given shoes too big for my feet. I tripped in things all the other guys thrived in. I struggled when it came to them effortlessly. That has continued in many ways since. 

 

Vaela began as curiosity, then she provided me a safe place when the world was falling apart around me, then she kept me alive when my depression was near suicidal levels in my teens. And still, I didn't accept her. She wasn't 'her' back then. She was IT or THE URGE. I referred to her almost as a spiritual parasite. I wanted her to die because then I could just be a normal man who didn't respond to feminine things. If she died, I could finally walk in fitted shoes and fit with everyone else.

 

And I tried that. The period of denial set in as I met my wife and we had kids. In secret, Vaela was an urge I fought against daily. She was the excitement I would feel when walking by the women's department. She was the desire to be seen as pretty or desirable. She was the silly and illogical and sporadic thought that if I found some thing that could grant me one wish, I could wish to finally be her.

 

My story is one of gradual acceptance, of fighting to stay the man but finding the woman makes me so much happier. I am now approaching my thirtieth birthday and have decided that I want to be a whole person. 

 

Vaela in old Norse means to lament or cry. There's been a lot of pain in my life, a lot of not fitting and splitting myself into pieces to try to find a balance. In many ways she was born in my pain and now I'm setting out to build a fuller person and future as her. 

 

I have a blog about preparing to transition, reconciling my faith through this, unpacking my past, and all the little things in between. If you're interested in checking it out: https://transitioningandchristianity.blogspot.com/?m=1

 

Thanks for reading my long post and I'm excited to get to know every one!

 

Vaela 

 

 

[Jani]

Hello Vaela and welcome.  I'm saddened to read about your childhood but that is past now.  Its time to look forward and living a good life.  Please join in the conversation. 

 

Cheers, Jani

[Ivy]

Welcome Vaela.

I will check out your blog.  I found that writing through my thoughts (journaling in my case) helped me to come to the place I am now.  I still write to explore parts of myself that I have been reluctant to face in the past.

[Valorie]

Thank you, Jandi. Yes, writing can really help. It's kept me alive many times throughout the darkest times of my teens and early twenties. 

[Charlize]

Welcome dear.  Finding peace with ourselves takes time.  I know it did for me.  Being here and sharing my journey helped a great deal as did seeing a gender therapist.  That was a recommendation i got here and i'm thankful i took it.

 I'm glad you found us!  Simply knowing we aren't alone is comforting.

 

Hugs,

 

Charlize

 

 

[KayC]

Hi Vaela Kay.  We already met on your first post.

Thank you for sharing the details of your poignant story.  I am so sorry for the loss of your father at that critical age.  And having lived through a childhood with domestic turmoil I understand the extra burden of that. 

 

On 11/9/2020 at 10:17 PM, Valorie said:

My story is one of gradual acceptance

Self-acceptance is the Goal.  It is definitely achievable and its "Self" acceptance.  It doesn't require Acceptance on anybody else's part.  Happy to see you are using therapy to help with this process.  It is essential.

I hope this Forum continues to give you a sense of community and a safe place to express yourself and also connect with others going through the same experiences .. 'cuz there's LOTS of us here ?

btw .. you are NOT "damaged".  You are uniquely Vaela Kay.  Celebrate that❣️