I wanted, though, to share something someone else wrote. My husband, Meriweather, wrote this story about himself, his transition, our meeting and how we fell in love. It really moved me and it's so honest. I'm very proud of him.
So, I wanted to share it with you all.
How We Became Us by Meriweather A. Asterios
When I was little, I was pretty sure
there was no god.
Which was strange, because I grew up
with god as close as if he was my crazy uncle that lived in the
rickety addition on an old house. He bumped around, disapproving of
the things I did in private. He made up weird stories about pillars
of salt and towers attempting to reach the heavens. God didn't trust
your faith and unconditional love and randomly tested you just to
keep you on your toes.
I grew up Roman Catholic, number six
of seven children. My dad was a Polish immigrant with a bushy black
mustache not unlike the stereotype of an Eastern European. Most of
the time, I lived in my own head. My mother said that I had been
drawing since I could hold a pencil. And then as soon as I knew how
to make words, I had been adding stories to those pictures.
By all accounts, I was a pretty
strange child. I told my sister I was gay at seventeen. I shaved my
head and asked for a man's motorcycle jacket for my eighteenth
birthday. But, you know, there were never signs that I was
transgender. Wearing a fake beard to the coffee house probably didn't
count. It was just a phase. We all experiment with things.
I was a little bitter in my twenties.
I spent two or three years breaking off from my family and trying to
trudge through the quagmire of college. I got accepted on scholarship
to a school that was far away, but close enough that we weren't too
close. There was a little secret inside of me that was something I
knew I had to crush. I smashed it into a ball and locked it into the
basement of my brain.
It would be one thing to be gay. But, that
didn't feel right. The corruption went a little deeper. I wasn't gay.
It was actually a little worse.
The truth was, it was crazy. It was
impossible. I didn't know the word 'transgender,' except in passing.
I watched reality TV and Discovery Health. Transgender and gender
identity disorder was so out of the realm of my reality, that it
floated out of my head like a soap bubble. It was right up there with
schizophrenia, the Black Death, and multiple personality disorder.
Transgender was an abstract idea.
It was something that didn't apply
to me, it was something that happened to somebody else. It was rare,
like an endangered species.
It was also really, super fucking
expensive.
So, back in the dark it went. It
couldn't happen to me. (It would be like winning the lotto--
whispered the little dark secret inside my mind.)
I just knew that I could never be a
guy. Better luck next life. Game over. I'll try to make the best of
what I have.
It didn't go so well.
I attended Kendall College of Art and
Design. But, I never graduated. I was intimidated by the word,
'thesis.' At first, I didn't know what the word, 'thesis,' meant.
This embarrassed me. I Googled the word and learned that it was
supposed to be the culmination of our work. It was supposed to be the
sound of our artistic voice. But, I didn't have a voice. The little
dark secret was still silenced and I had absolutely nothing to say. I
prayed to god and was still at a blank. His absence only affirmed
that he was not there. There is no god therefor there is no point to
a thesis. There was no point to anything. I just went to school to
learn to be a better artist to make money. Money was the only thing I
could think of-- I just wanted to get by. “What can I paint that
would be -good?-” ...So I can sell it.
With that attitude, I was empty. I
dropped out of college and worked for a call center. I wasn't good
enough to be an artist. At best, I was a hobbyist. I became quietly
numb and gained a lot of weight. It was easier to hide my secret
under layers and layers. The secret seeded deep in the soil,
smothered from sunlight and sky.
In art college, I learned the term,
'negative space.' It is the empty space between subjects or objects
in the painting. Negative space helps direct the eye on a
subconscious level. God isn't usually an active force, it is a
passive force. God is in the negative spaces. It is not what it does,
but what it doesn't do at times that directs our path.
World of Warcraft was like that; a
quiet act of god. I played the game from 2006 to approx~ 2013. I
started with a female night elf priest. Then, as I got into
roleplaying, I played male characters. Kiaphus Sin'del was my
favorite character. He was a Blood Elf with grit. I was a twenty two
year old married straight woman that pulled the strings to an elvish
marionette. My puppet became my costume I could slip into comfortably
at night. Under the warm glow of my computer, I was living another
life. Somewhere far away. I'd been a man for centuries in this life.
I knew what it was like to fuck a woman and drink a beer. I knew what
it was like to walk into a room and command respect. I had privilege.
I had strength. I had confidence.
Then, I met her.
She was an elf, too. Normally,
roleplay characters were fairly cookie-cutter. They were reminiscent
of nerd pop culture's idea of femininity. Large breasts, waify,
impossible waistlines. Angelic voices and flowing hair. They were
perfect. They were what the player's dreamed to be. But, Rachel's
characters were interesting. They were flawed and realistic. She
created real people that you could feel. Rachel also knew how to
write and carefully craft a story like an architect could build an
innovative skyscraper. One that was efficient, yet beautiful. Her
words even had classical flair. She had style and skill in her
writing. She was an artist.
Celestial bodies clashed together.
Galactic arms intertwined, wrapping and weaving together in a
splatter of stars. Our words wrapped around each other. It wasn't a
direct meeting of two people running into each other. It was
something that had always been. It was just history repeating. Of
course we found each other again. It was something that had been
before. So, the words kept multiplying. In a matter of months, we had
written over a million words together. Day and night, we roleplayed
our characters. It was as if the stars were expanding and reproducing
in a heated nebula. It was just the womb of what was to come.
In that time, I had created a
character. She named him and had a basic idea. I was told he was
needed for a story line and was allowed to take creative control.
Merris was my new marionette and I liked him very much. But, Kiaphus
was still my go-to doll when I wanted to be a guy. The stories were
fun games--but they were still just games. World of Warcraft was
mostly a place where I could have friends and socialize without the
stigma of being a woman. It was a place that could also be real life,
and not a game. I had tons of friends that referred to me as 'he'
outside Kiaphus the character. I was myself as a man.
The secret inside of me festered and
grew. It was a dark spot. It was a vortex, it expanded and spiraled
the more I fed it. Then, there was actual life. I was depressed and
lonely. At 5'4, I was 351 lbs. I had no emotions. I didn't like
anything. I didn't feel, I just pretended I felt. I was a failed
artist and never even gave my writing a chance. I was attracted to
women, but only if I could be a man. There were some things that
weren't meant to be-- and to me, that was to be happy.
I got married to my friend. I tried
very, very hard. I knew if I could be a pretty girl, then I could be
happy. So, I spent several thousand dollars to have my stomach
stapled closed. I wanted to lose weight. I purchased a lot of pink
clothes. I dyed my hair yellow. I had my scalp yanked hard and burned
and scalded. I had hair extensions and high heeled shoes. I thought
that I needed them to walk in on the road to happiness.
Things got real bad and then things
got worse. God wasn't negative space this time. I felt like I was a
fish suffocating on oxygen. For weeks and weeks, it was building up
inside of me. I was tested for pneumonia, but it game up negative.
Then, I collapsed and blacked out. My head hit the linoleum floor
with a wet crack. My co-workers circled around me, but I didn't hear
a word they said.
Everything went black. And then I was floating,
like a warm dream. I thought I saw a cartoon character on the screen
of an old TV set from the eighties. I just thought I was asleep. They
never found where the blood clot started, but it wound up in my
lungs. I was in the hospital for months. The first night, they gave
me a fifty-fifty chance that I would live. I was put on drugs and a
breathing machine. It was probably due to my obesity in combination
with birth control pills.
I knew I wasn't going to die like I
knew that the sun would rise. I didn't know until years later that it
was so bad. I was more concerned with the piled unpaid bills. I
didn't get a paycheck for the time that I was laying around,
struggling to live. I lost the house and the car.
In World of Warcraft, I didn't have
much to worry about. I had people to talk to. I had a community of
weirdos to take shelter in. I had my new toy, Merris, who I became
more and more fond of. I had Rachel, a best friend. Our friendship
was founded on a lie-- but she was funny and charming and our stories
were blooming like a field of wildflowers in the spring.
Then, things got better. My husband
got a good job and we moved out of the cardboard box. I was able to
quit my job at the bank and dedicate my time to myself. I lost some
weight, but was still on the chubby side. No matter what I did-- I
was a steady 250 lbs. I was trying to be happy. I was trying to focus
on me.
And the more I did the bigger my
secret grew. It was a massive black hole. Merris was my Mary-Sue. He
was my ideal me. He dressed like I would dress myself in my head. He
was goth, and I had always wanted to be goth but couldn't pull off
the fashions. But, oh—if I were only male! I knew how to be cool. I
was never cool but I knew how to do it, if I only had the chance!
But, fate is a fucking bastard and life was a joke set out to make
fun of me.
Merris loved art and classical music.
He loved science and things that were weird and creepy. He had a dry
sense of humor. He decorated in skulls and bats. He wore a top hat
and had long black hair. I grew up on classical music. I also sang in
our church choir. I didn't sing in it because I had a love for god. I
just liked Gothic architecture and loved the organ music.
When I lived as a woman, I mostly kept
my hair short. I gave up. I knew I would never be pretty. But, if I
were male, I knew I'd have long hair. I'd dye it black. I loved the
Victorian goth look. I'd have a beard and wear tail coats. I love
fashion and makeup, but I saw it as an art form.
Merris had a laboratory. Rachel and I
had so much fun with our marionette puppets. We played with our
little cut-out dollies and made them kiss (now keeth!) Our stories
were about the same things, over and over again. They met, and fell
in love, and lived happily ever after.
But, some shit happened along the way.
When Merris met Lillandyr-- they met, they fell in love, and the
universe imploded. Does life imitate art, or the other way around?
Rachel said she was in love with me. I told her I loved her, too.
But, I was married. And straight. So, the universes collided and some
shit happened along the way.
I had a choice. I could stay and live
in Michigan as Rose. Things wouldn't be so bad. I had financial
stability and my friend. I knew what life would be like the next day.
Or, I could move to Oklahoma and be a step-parent with a woman I had
never met before. I'd have no job and not a dime in my bank account.
I'd have no car and no family. I had no friends. I had never spoken
to her children. I'd be a lesbian in the buckle of the bible belt--
even though I had never kissed a woman before.
I got on the plane and didn't look
back.
I packed up the things that were
important. My clothes and my watercolor paints. When it came down to
it, the only things that mattered to me in life were my stories and
illustrations. I left the photo albums and the memories behind. I
only had two hundred dollars to live on for the rest of my life.
In my mind, we were sitting side by
side in a convertible, driving through the desert on our way to chase
the full moon.
We were running away together. I wore a headscarf,
sunglasses, pearls, and fire engine red lipstick. She had a pink
Mohawk and fishnets. We met in person and exchanged gifts. She gave
me a compass. “No matter what happens,” was engraved inside. She
told me a charming story about how getting it engraved was a colossal
disaster. In the end, it all worked out and cost her only thirty
dollars. The compass is why I have my tattoo.
We fucked and we made love. We cried
and I decided I indeed—was, very, very gay. I met her sweet
children and fell in love three more times. I realized that I had
made a good decision, despite the risk. I had a new life ahead of me.
I wanted symbol to celebrate the change in taking control of my life
again. So, I dyed my hair and hair extensions black. I had always
wanted black hair. It was the first step to becoming me.
God shined in the negative spaces. The
Books of Belshalara began as love letters written in code between
Rachel and I. The passion from pen to person carried over
exponentially. Immediately, we began to fight.
The fights were daily. When I was
married to my friend, we never fought. I had never had an argument in
any relationships I had been in. Merris the character was a deeply,
deeply flawed man.
He had social anxiety and wasn't good at talking
to girls. While he excelled in such eccentric topics such as
taxidermy and the occult, he wasn't at all the Casanova type.
Merris avoided conflict and arguments,
and so did I. I didn't even meet eye-contact in conversation,
actually. So, these fights flustered and baffled me. I felt frozen, a
deer about to get smeared onto the pavement by a semi-truck. I was in
love and I was drowning.
My new and only friend, a transgender
woman by the name of Maddy, told me of her friend that had
Aspberger's.
“It is a mild form of autism,” she
said matter-of-factly.
“People with Aspberger's suck at
arguments,” my fiance said. “And you really, really suck at
arguing. You're doing everything wrong.”
And that was something I actually
wasn't going to argue about.
It was a godsend. I found out people
with Asperger's are obsessive and like weird things. They thrive in
routine and sound exactly like me. Down to the letter. It almost
seemed like my entire personality was a diagnosis. It just sort of
meant that I was an uber nerd. It all made sense.
Halloween is my favorite holiday. I
was goth in high school, but gave it up when I thought I could never,
ever pull it off right. I mean, I knew that if I were a guy, I
dreamed of wearing tail-coats and spats. I'd embellish it with
polished, silver skulls. I'd be the most dapper gentleman in the
world.
Meanwhile, the closest I could fly to
the sun was written in the pages of fantasy. I tortured my gothic
self to death appropriately. It was beautiful, dark, and dramatic. He
almost gets the girl in the end. It was a tragedy Poe would be proud
of. Ravens, gravestones and skeletons flew out of his butt. It was
the gothiest thing in the world. And it was fun. It made me happy,
which I knew I could never be.
So, on my first Halloween with Rachel,
I thought I'd dress up as Merris.
“You look handsome.” She smiled.
I was handsome, and I just glowed like
a little star.
We went out dressed as our book
characters. She was so cute in her outfit. We were in love and the
kids were happy. We never knew where we would get our next meal, but
we didn't care. Then, we started arguing again.
She later told me that she was scared
of the conversation.
“How do you tell your girlfriend
that you think she's a man?”
“She left her husband for a woman,
she wanted to be more feminine and be happy. Telling her she's a man
won't make her feel more feminine.”
I could understand her fear. She
worried about crushing my esteem. No woman wants to be told they are
'manly.'
Well, that's the crux.
She told me I looked handsome, and a
feeling of relief washed over me. She could see a light in my eyes. I
was handsome for once. Not pretty. I never wanted to be pretty. Not
like that, anyway. I loved makeup, but I'm not a woman. I'm a pretty
man. I'm a goth man.
Weirdly--I have a photo of 'Merris'
six years before I met Rachel. God is found in weird places. I took a
photography class in college. The assignment was to take a
self-portrait. I took a picture of myself in a top hat and tailcoat.
I angled my head in such a way to look androgynous. I wore a black
and white striped scarf to give it a carnival feel. In the second
photo, I wore my top hat and ducked behind an umbrella like a little
sprite. I put a sepia filter over it, giving the picture an
otherwordly look, like I was a ringmaster for a carnival of freaks. I
think it was just the dark, black secret peeking out to say hello.
We talked for days and days. I worried
about the children. I worried about things like losing custody. I
worried her family would shun her. Then, we would be alone and no one
would ever help us when we were starving. It would be my fault, our
family's livelihood would be ruined because I wanted to be selfish
and transition.
How would we afford it?
And we live in Oklahoma.
This was the second leap of insanity I
had to take.
Ohgodohgodohgodohgod—who isn't even
there.
We published The Dog and the Serpent
and had mild success. I began selling my paintings and we quietly
made a big decision. We already made a promise, “no matter what
happens,” and had so far been keeping it.
We used all mighty Google again and
found out that Tulsa has an Equality Center. Fate is a strange road.
We didn't see it at first because it was a flicker in the corner of
the eye. Sometimes, it was a shadow moving. Hand in hand, we began
padding down an uncertain road. The wind howled and things seemed
treacherous. Words like, “syringes,” and “one hundred and
twenty dollars,” rattled around our heads. We weren't sure if we
should jump. No matter what happens—I said. We knew that
testosterone was going to change my body chemistry. It was possible
it could change my sexuality, too.
What if I didn't find her attractive
anymore? Would we break up? No, she promised me. We would be friends.
She never would kick me out. We were too close-- and had come too
far. No matter what happens, the compass shifted. No
matter what happens, we will make it work. So, we did. We scraped and
saved and slaved for money to pay for my appointments. Then, the
first shot came.
I
was excited. Chest hair. Beard hair. More hair. Hair hair.
Hair was everywhere. I was carpeted in it. I have polycystic ovarian
syndrome, so I have hirsutism
along with it. I dyed my magnificent facial hair black. It was my
step-daughter that said it first.
“You
should be Merris because you're him.”
The
transgender person's first right of passage. Choosing a name. That
was easy.
And
oh, the wisdom of a child!
She
was just very right. Day by day, the drug built up in me. Every day,
I looked a little bit more like my self. It was like water dripping
against stone, wearing down the mask that was Rose. She began to melt
away, and he began to burn for the world to see. Rose chipped away
and Merris then emerged.
“But,
you don't look like yourself anymore,” they said.
“That's
because you've never seen what I looked like happy before,” I
answered to the crowd.
I
learned a lot about myself when I inadvertently wrote myself into a
dark fantasy novel. I was divided in half as two people-- both male
and female. And that's what the story of Merris and Lyri is all about
in the Books of Belshalara. The struggle of some heroes isn't the
battle against an outward force. Some heroes don't fight dragons and
monsters. Some heroes are flawed human beings trying to overcome
themselves. Even when everything is against you, you need to keep
being yourself. Merris had to fall in order to grow. Because he kept
following his path, he got the girl. In the end, he learned he needed
the wisdom to see he had the love he wanted all along.
Rachel
transitioned, too. She hated her name. In Hebrew, Rachel means,
'sheep.' Rachel is not is sheep. She is not a follower.
“Whenever
I played games as a little kid, I pretended my name was 'Lillian.'”
“Really?”
I asked, shuffling my feet against the November leaves.
“Yup,
that's why Lillandyr's name is Lillandyr.”
“Makes
sense,” I said.
“Would
you care if I changed my name?” she wondered. In the Books of
Belshalara, Merris' last name is Osterious. It was a surname Lillian
made up. But, we Googled it randomly and found that there is an
asterion
bone in the skull. 'Asterion' sounded so close to 'Osterious.' The
asterion bone is a small fragment right behind your ear.
Approximately where someone would lean in and whisper secrets to you.
Additionally, Google told us Asterion
was a Greek river god. Asterion was one of three Greek river gods,
the other two being Inachus and Cephisus.
(Cephisus, a name very close to Kiaphus, my first roleplay character.
Cephisus, in Greek methology, is the father of Narcissus, and
narcisium is the downfall of Kiaphus.)
I
thought that was a cool as fuck coincidence! A name we made up is
both a Greek god (with weirdly similar ties to names that sound like
our characters) and part of a skull! So, I did a little more digging
on the god, Asterion and found out that he was a minotaur and a star
god associated with Taurus. I am not sure if this is an issue with
translations. I am not an expert in this subject. But, it is very
beautiful and poetic, none the less.
The
best I can find can be read here.
There
is also a graphic novel called “Asterios Polyp” by David
Mazzucchelli, but I have not read it.
It
was the most beautiful name. Gods and stars. Lillian Asterios. She
took my old name and, as a tribute, put it as her middle. Lillian
Rose Asterios. It all seemed like it was written in an old, dusty
book, a long long time ago.
Picture of Merris about four months before transitioning:
Merris now:
