My Story Part 3

I was just starting to come out of the closet in 1999. In the spring I had a heart problem that sent me to the emergency room. Between the time I called 911 and the ambulance came, I had to change from Diana back into Don. That night laying in the emergency room I realized that life was too short.

In the fall of 1999 for the first time in my life, I went outside of my house as Diana. I had summoned enough courage to go to the Connecticut Outreach Society (COS) support group for transgender people. I had contacted COS earlier by email and they told me that the meeting would be next Saturday, so I summoned up all my courage and went to the meeting. However, they told me the wrong weekend! No one else was there! I had to once again gather up my courage to go the following Saturday, however, when I walked in to the meeting hall and looked around, for the first time in my life I realized that I wasn’t alone. The feeling was indescribable, like a huge weight was lifted off my shoulders

The group had an “Outing” (pun intended) at a local boutique where they held one of the monthly meeting and the support group had the whole store to ourselves. However, I had to walk across the strip mall’s parking lot to get to the store. Well, I sat in the car crying because I couldn’t summon the courage to get out of the car and walk across the parking lot.

In the spring of 2000, I went to the support groups annual banquet at a hotel in Waterbury for the first time and I stayed overnight. I signed in as Don, but I had to go down to the banquet as Diana. So I listen through the door to hear if I heard anyone in the hallway and when I thought the way was clear I left the room and I hoped that the elevator was empty. They held the next years banquet in the same hotel, but the following year they moved it to a hotel in Windsor Locks. The 2002 banquet was a nightmare for me. my father had fell down a few weeks earlier and was in a nursing home recovering and was to be discharged that morning. Like all medical facilities, it was delayed until the afternoon. Here is what I wrote in my diary the next day after the banquet,

I was thrown off my schedule to go to the banquet. As a result of it I got a headache and rushed off to the hotel. I got there at five thirty instead of four o’clock. While I was changing I found out that one of my contacts had a corner torn off of it, another aggravation to add to my headache. Also, as I was walking across the lobby, there was a guy registering at the desk. He started laughing and made a rude comment about me. That didn’t help either.
The banquet was nice, but I really couldn’t get into it. However, I did stay until one o’clock (Standard time) and help pack up the sound equipment. I didn’t sleep well and I got up at six (Savings time), checked out and went home took two Advil PM and slept till noon.

You can see in the photo that a friend took of me, that I am down in the dumps, that guy’s comments really brought me down. I didn’t go out in public for almost a year afterward, it took a long time to recover my self-esteem. Even to this day, I have a hard time going into some locations, like auto parts stores or other places there is a lot testosterone flowing.