Why now?
That’s a good question.
If I had to pinpoint one thing, that would be the teachings of Terry.
Terry of course was Captain Terry Totzke, my military social worker from when I was a kid.
Terry and of course my own father had such a toxic effect on my development.
You gotta admit that blaming a child for their own sexual abuse is fucked in the head, and blaming that child for the sexual abuse of their sibling was even more fucked in the head.
Sure, there were more than likely other kids growing up in the same period of time that I was who had a different gender identity than what their physical body presented.
But I’ll bet you dollars to donuts that they didn’t have a toxic philosophy being rammed down their throats and beat into their heads by a military social worker.
Prior to working at the hospital I don’t honestly believe that there was a single employer that I worked for in which transitioning would have been acceptable.
And with absolutely no support from home I couldn’t just go shopping around for a job in which I’d feel safe transitioning.
When I started at the hospital, it still took time to ascertain if this would be a safe place. And for the most part it was. Well, save for the outside management company that was running my department.
I had a series of phone calls with my father in August of 2006. These phone calls were the last time I’d ever speak to Richard. After the initial phone call that I made to him in the wee hours of August 7th, 2006 he’d place almost daily phone calls to me. This ended towards the middle of October when I told him of my plans to go after the babysitter.
I honestly can’t remember if I ever breeched the topic of gender reassignment. I don’t think I did. But if I had been talking about the babysitter and Terry, Terry calling me a homosexual for allowing myself to have been abused by the babysitter would have come up.
In 2007 I made the decision to start proceeding down the road towards transition. I started to pick out my new name.
I tried so many different combinations. And there were more exotic names, but they just didn’t work. So Bobbie Garnet Bees was born.
There was the paperwork, the finger printing, the records checks. I got notified in March of 2008 that the RCMP had cleared my background check and that I was cleared to change my name. The rest of the paperwork started flowing in. And in May of 2008 my birth name officially became dead.
I took a change in employment in 2009 due to a previous employer contacting me and connecting me with the new owners of a business that I had worked at.
This didn’t work out, but it did set me up for going to the Supreme Court of BC for an employment matter that we settled out of court.
This settlement convinced me that it was finally time to go after the babysitter for what he had done.
This one decision derailed my desire to transition by 13 years. I can’t decide if this was a wise move or if I had made a very stupid move.
I had absolutely no involvement with the Canadian Armed Forces from the time I was 16 and moved out of the PMQ on CFB Downsview. I had not paid attention to the news stories about the defective military justice system or the rampant sexual assault problem plaguing the military. I was completely blindsided to discover just how big a problem the Captain Father Angus McRae matter had been on CFB Namao from 1978 to 1980, and I was even more devastated to discover the extents to which the Canadian Armed Forces were willing to go to keep the connection between Captain McRae and his teenaged accomplice, the babysitter, hidden and buried in the past.
Who would have ever thought that the Government of Canada would have willingly given the military their own justice system with which the military could use to hide problems and make issues disappear.
Now is the time for my transition.
The government has delayed my ability to obtain medical assistance in dying.
The class action is proceeding. I honestly have no idea of what amount of compensation the Government of Canada is willing to put forth. It’s definitely not going to be anything spectacular, but it will at least be something of an acknowledgement.
I will be able to start to draw from my pension in a few years. Drawing from my pension and taking part time employment will allow me some flexibility to explore different paths.
But, I can’t help but feeling like an idiot for not doing what Richard suggested and just leaving the babysitter matter alone in the past and not gone and stuck my nose into this “shit” as he put it.
Instead of wasting 13 years of my life, I could have transitioned back around 2011 instead of setting myself up to be destroyed by the Canadian Armed Forces for the second time in my life.
I guess I’ll just have to play it day by day going forward.
Beeshive 