5:22 p.m. - Tuesday, Dec. 24, 2002
Strange Xmas cards Part Two
(Trust me. There�s a happy thought at the end of this entry. It just takes a minute to get to it. MsL)

Something they never told me: I�ll never live long enough to get over all this grief.

They convinced me that it�s a good thing, and proper, to allow myself to feel the grief. And so I do. I don�t always even know what it is I�m mourning. It�s a terrible mixture of the people I�ve had and lost and the people I never had at all. It�s a life lived in pretense and a life that escaped me in the meanwhile. So at times like this, and especially like this particular Xmas, when I�m trying to find some level of participation without badly hurting myself, I cry and can�t really say why.

I cry for our young people, sent to far away places where there are people who hate them enough to kill. And then I cry for myself when I see how honored and respected they are for the role they play in defense of us all. I�m not jealous of them. I want desperately for them to return home safely to the deep respect of a grateful nation. I cry because for so many years that respect was kept from me. I wasn�t forgotten by my country, I was hated by it. I was made to feel dishonored and filthy for having done all that I was asked to do. And I have to be honest with you. It really, really hurt.

Now our country has had a time of healing from those dark ages. Memorials have been made, parades have been marched. I am thanked all the time by young people who weren�t born then and have no real idea of what that conflict did to our country. I can understand much of what happened. I can see how cynically and uselessly my blood was spent. But I can never forget or stop feeling the terrible disappointment in and alienation from the society that is supposed to be me.

I have this one thing for comfort:

Every person who returns home to heartfelt hugs and handshakes has me standing behind them. Every victim of trauma who is brought through counseling and helped by caring professionals, as well as friends and family is led to after-trauma counseling by my spirit. I am not the first person to lose life to the roiling aftermath of traumatic events. Shell-shocked soldiers were staring away their lives long before those shells were invented. It�s nothing new. But I am among the first who were recognized and studied in an effort to understand what happens inside a mind after it survives horrible events against the odds.

I was doomed from birth. I now know that I was sexually ambiguous at birth. I know I tried to fill my assigned role as a male to the very best of my ability. I know that my desperate attempts to succeed as a male are what drove me into a military unit that prides itself on being always where the fighting is thickest. And then my experiences there devoured what remained of the possibility that I could ever have normalcy� whatever that is.

No one really understands intersexuality, transsexuality, or any of the other transgender conditions. There�s a long way to go in that area. But today we do have a much greater understanding of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, and we know how deadly it is when left untreated to become chronic PTSD. WE understand it because of me and all the others who have suffered crippled emotional lives because of the disorder. No.. only partly because of us. The other part, and a huge part, belongs to all the people who have built careers on studying and then treating PTSD. Today those people are in large part the children of the very people who so damaged me in the first years after I came �home�. I�ve been told that one of my most meaningful sacrifices is that through what has happened to me, others have been saved. I can�t say I�m proud of that. It�s not a sacrifice I chose to make. But I�m comforted by it.

And I still cry when I see our soldiers coming and going from war. I cry especially when I see them coming home, for as many times as I�ve been told �welcome home� in the last decade, I know that I can never come home. It�s always going to be this way for me.

And now, on to the real reason I�m writing this entry: My other tears.

I guess laughing isn�t going to be easy for me. I only have one way to let my emotions be expressed. I cry when I�m sad and I cry when I�m happy. And sometimes, I just cry without knowing why.

I have tears of happiness today because I�ve gotten letters from the students at UNO who were in the classes I spoke to a few weeks ago. I�m so astounded at their responses and gratified by their level of acceptance and understanding. I�m absolutely leveled with humility that I touched these people�s lives through my own decision to expose myself to them. And I guess I�m encouraged when I begin to understand that, whatever �contribution� I may have made as a poster-child for PTSD, that process is mostly over. I now have the opportunity to move in a new direction, and I think it�s a good one.

The letters are the best Xmas cards I could have gotten. Besides the thank-you letters from the instructor, I have seven from students. Maybe it was homework, I don�t know, but the sentiments inside the letters lead me to believe that I touched some lives in a good way.

I�m so proud of them. I�m going to put the contents of them right here. I�m keeping them so that next year, when I�m feeling desolate and can�t find a happy memory in my soul, I can turn to these letters and remember how they made me feel one Christmas, and how tears of gratitude and joy don�t burn quite so hot as tears of grief and depression.

Dear Ms Smith,

I would like to thank you, as well as the others for taking the time to visit with our class.

As a member of our panel of speakers I found that you were quite generous in sharing yourself as well as your experiences. I can only imagine the tremendous sense of stress that you and the others have had to endure.

However, regardless of your own personal pain, you freely opened yourself up to us. You shared all the pain and sadness but I got the general feeling that you are doing OK.

It is my wish that you find the true happiness you deserve and that one day society will finally discover what I did the night you visited us- that no matter what physical charactaristics are present- you ae a beautiful human being who has, is and will have something to contribute- being a decent person.

Thanks Again,

Dear Ms Leslie;

I just wanted to take the opportunity to thank you for coming to speak with our class. Your insight and experiences have enlightened me on a part of life I was fairly unaware of. I�m glad you felt comfortable enough to be open and honest with your answers.

Also, I have visited your website on a few occasions. It is great. You are a really great writer and I really enjoyed reading about your experiences.

I hope that possibly in the future I will be able to hear you speak somewhere again. Thank you again!

Dearest Leslie,

I can not tell you thank you enough for coming to talk with us. When expecting a guest speaker you don�t know how much truth�s going to come out. I know you were honest with us. When spoke (sic) of your past and the pain you went through you broke my heart. I visited your website and noticed all the  and the feeling depressed days. I hope for you things wil look up. I want to see more  /happy days. You deserve great and good things. I think you are so brave to have bared yourself to us. You are WONDERFUL!!

Thank You

To Leslie Smith:

Thank you for coming to class and your openness about sharing your lifestory with us. I also visited your website. It filled in many facts that I wanted to know.

I wish you all the best for the future and keep up the good work of educating people about transgender . It�s because of you that I am not ignorant anymore about this subject.

Dear Leslie Smith;

I greatly enjoyed your presentation on the transgender topic in my ��.. class. I learned a lot about what goes on during the process of becoming a transgendered person. Also, I can only imagine how hard it was on (sic) going through life feeling that way. You seem to be a very strong person and I wish you the best at everything you do in life. You are a special person. My family is from Wyoming, and Ive been to Utah & know all about it so I realize how hard on you it must�ve been to grow up there. You did well though! It�s good to see that you are a strong person & can tell your story to others.

Good Luck.

Dear Ms Leslie Smith

I am pleased to write this thank you letter. You were one of four panel members who presented information about your life as a transsexual woman. I learned a lot about individuals who are transsexual however I think that there were a lot of issues that we did not touch bases on.

You stated that you were raised a mormon boy in Utah but what is your religious background today and could you elaborate about this issue in your diary? Religion plays a significant role in my life and I want to know if it is a significant part of your life.

One last thing. I remember you mentioning that you disliked people to say that you and others like you are �confused�. Why are you so defensive about people using this term to describe you?

Thank you for being a part of the panel and I hope that you will continue to actively inform the public about your sexuality.

Dear Leslie Smith,

A few months back, you and three others guest speakers came and visited Dr. A�s gender and health class. I was a student in that class and I am very happy that you came and spoke about your ordeal to the class. You provided a lot of information that I did not know, and I can�t imagine the pain and suffering you went through for all these years. Well, thank you again and good luck to you in the future. May God bless you

Sincerely�

Pretty cool huh? Please enjoy the season in whatever way is most appropriate for you. If that means travel, I wish you safety. If it means time with your family.. which believe me, is just as dysfunctional as the rest of us�. Well all I can say is�

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