What place in the world do you never want to visit? Why?
I would never want to visit National Defence Headquarters in Ottawa, Ontario.
NDHQ – where truth and integrity go to die.
Not that I would ever be invited.
But it is an organization of liars and deceivers.
The ultimate impenetrable boy club dedicated to buffing their own public imagine using the blood of its many victims.
It’s an organization that is more concerned about its own prestige and reputation than it is about justice and truth.
NDHQ in Ottawa is the seat of power and policy for the Canadian Armed Forces.
It is where the decisions are made.
Decisions like keeping the investigation of the death of a trans military dependent in the grasp of the dysfunctional CFNIS.
Decisions like willfully allowing the CFNIS to conduct dog ‘n’ pony show investigations while knowing full well that prosecutions for pre-1998 service offences are fully impossible.
Decisions like fighting a group of former army cadets since 1974 over compensation for an officer of the Canadian Armed Forces allowing a 14-year-old cadet to play with a live grenade citing that as these kids were cadets the military wasn’t legally responsible for them.
Decisions like refusing to acknowledge the fact that as children living in military housing on military bases we were often exposed to the same chemicals and hazardous materials that our serving parents were due to provincial safety regulations not being applicable on the bases across Canada.
It’s where political favours are called in, and where truth, decency, and honour go to be sacrificed on the altar of military pride and tradition.
National Defence Headquarters is not a place that I would ever go visit.
And I don’t think that there’s anything wrong with that.
Death won’t be an option until 2027, and there’s still no indication if M.A.i.D. will be legalized for mental illnesses or not, but I am still hoping to be “allowed” to die.
Isn’t that the funniest of things?
I’m not allowed to die, but I also didn’t choose to exist.
My mother and my father got drunk one night. An exchange of DNA occurred. And 9 months later I popped out into the world.
Through my early life all sorts of people with their own agendas were making decisions about my life based upon their own ideas and interests.
And here I am at 52, burnt out and tired, and unable to make a decision about my life.
But Bobbie, I thought that if you transitioned that you would be happy and that you’d want to live?
Fuck no.
With an official delay in M.A.i.D. until 2027 I thought that I would avail myself to fixing the one thing that I had always wanted to correct all of my life but was unable to due to circumstances beyond my control.
Transitioning in and of itself is not the cure for my desire to die.
My desire to die comes from my rancid childhood.
Growing up on Canadian Armed Forces military bases was hard enough under the best of circumstances.
Growing up on Canadian Armed Forces military bases as a sexually abused male was an absolute fucking nightmare.
Growing up on Canadian Armed Forces military bases as a sexually abused gender non-conforming male during the days of CFAO 19-20 was a fucking soul destroying experience.
Growing up on Canadian Armed Forces military bases in a dysfunctional family in the era when the military’s policy towards members with mental issues meant that the military just outright ignored these issues meant that there were none of the normal experiences that children require to grow up mentally healthy. In fact my father’s alcoholism and his out-of-control and unacknowledged PTSD meant that the experiences that I grew up with caused a shit ton of mental issues that have plagued me for my entire life.
How bad have these issues affected me?
Here’s some moulds made of my teeth by my dentist in a last ditch attempt to save what’s left of my teeth.
Yeah, I’ve worn my teeth down to absolutely nothing.
That’s ’cause I wake up in terror some nights grinding my teeth away.
I’ve had night guards before, but I usually grind through them in a few weeks.
So Bobbie, if you still want to die, why are you transitioning?
I’ve never identified with being a male at any point in my life.
And this has nothing to do with the babysitter, Captain McRae, Captain Totzke, or Master Corporal Gill.
I’ve never identified as a boy. I always thought that I was a girl.
Around age 10 or 11 I remember hoping and praying that I would wake up the next morning with breasts and all the rest.
And everyday that I didn’t wake up with the much hoped for changes, I was devastated.
And was I ever jealous.
The girls at school were starting to fill out, and I wasn’t.
So, I intend to spend the next three years-or-so getting some of the changes that I’ve always wanted.
I’m not going for bottom surgery. I’ll get some items removed, but I’m not going for vaginoplasty.
And for the topside, I’ll be happy with what the hormones give me. I’m not going the augmentation route.
Body wise? Yeah, I’m already enjoying the muscle loss. It’s hard to explain, but I’ve always felt that my body is smaller than what it actually is. By losing muscle mass I’m hoping to finally get my body muscle structure down to what feels more natural. I’m already getting some of the fat redistribution, but the full effect won’t be for another year or so.
The goal of this all will be that when I finally go to sleep and escape this fucked up existence, that I present as close to a female as I can.
Never wanted to be a male.
Never identified as a male.
I don’t want to die as a male.
But, in the meantime I’m going to keep on with the hormones and the changes.
The Canadian Armed Forces had an extensive amount of say over my childhood.
I will not allow Canadian Armed Forces to say single fucking thing about my remaining days or my death.
My coccyx seems to have healed, so I’ll be able to resume long bike rides again.
A cracked coccyx is not a fun thing.
I have my first blood test tomorrow to see how my body is adapting to estrogen.
I had no idea that a woman’s breasts went under their arms. As mine are developing I can feel breast tissue growing under my arms.
I still don’t really have much to show, but I did notice yesterday for the first time as I was out walking and drinking a coffee that as my arm swept upwards on my chest I could feel my arm lifting my breast.
I might go to Whistler for a few days after the Whistler gondola opens for the season.
Might also pop down to Seattle, Portland, or maybe even L.A..
Other than that I have nothing really planned for this year.
Probably do a lot of bicycle riding and scooting locally and put my camera to good use.
I’m tired this year.
I think the legal frustrations and fights that I’ve endured over the last 12 years are finally eating away at me.
On one hand, learning the truth about how things really were back then, and the number of cracks that I fell through, and the number of rugs that I got swept under has somewhat freed me from the past, the past has still taken a significant toll on me.
No matter what I’ve learnt about the past I will still be plagued by all that I missed out on and all that I was never given an opportunity to experience and enjoy.
So far as the “question of the day”.
I don’t know what my taglines would be.
I suppose that my taglines would change drastically prior to March 5th, 2011, and after March 5th, 2011.
WordPress sometimes prompts me to write about a certain topic. It’s geared towards “family” type events.
There are very few that actually seem to apply to me.
Today’s prompt was somewhat interesting.
I think the biggest fear that I had in my life was my father.
I overcame that fear somewhat in 2006 during a series of phone calls that I had with him.
Then there was his death in January of 2017.
That was a major relief.
My brother thinks that I’m over exaggerating my fear of Richard, but as Dr. Gabor Maté observed, “no two children have the same parents”.
The most significant fear that I had of Richard was his temper. Richard had very poor impulse control and very poor control of his anger. He also couldn’t take into account the difference in physical strength between himself and the person he was lashing out at.
My fear of Richard only grew more intense when I became involved with military social worker Captain Terry Totzke.
Richard is dead and gone. And the world is probably better off for this. But his effects still haunt me and have left their traces upon me.
My grandmother was another person that I feared as a kid.
Her anger and her impulse control were worse than Richard’s, but at least she lacked the physical strength of Richard.
Alcohol. I’ve always feared being an alcoholic.
Both my father and my grandmother were intense alcoholics. Both were happy drunks for the most part. Conversely both were intensely angry people when they were sobering up.
I’ve had so little alcohol in my life I can almost remember every exact time.
The last time that I had a drink was back in July of 2011.
Before that it was January of 2010
Before that it was August of 2006
Before that it was September of 2005
Before that it was May of 1994
Before that it was sometime in the winter of 1990 in Gagetown, New Brunswick.
Before that it was sometime around 1986.
I can’t remember all of the “sips” that my father or my grandmother would give me when they were drunk.
I do remember the beer that grandma made me drink in the summer of 1984.
Most of these were just casual get-togethers when I was changing jobs and moving up the so called ladder.
But becoming an alcoholic has always been one of my fears.
Growing up on military bases I was exposed to a significant amount of alcoholism. It was as if being an alcoholic was a requirement to join the Canadian Forces back in the ’50s through the ’90s.
Being a “homosexual” and subsequently growing up to be like the babysitter was always a major fear of mine. Both Captain Totzke and my father would keep telling me that if I didn’t stop kissing, hugging, and being interested in other boys that I would grow up to be just like the babysitter and the priest from Namao.
Imagine the type of fear that would instil into a 9 to 11 year old.
Being told that you’d be going to a psychiatric hospital or jail for “allowing” the babysitter to do what he had done.
I’m currently on patch #3, tomorrow will be patch #4
Things seem to be mentally more clearer.
Not better, just clearer.
Make sense?
Didn’t think so.
A co-worker asked me if I was still contemplating M.A.i.D..
I don’t see anything changing at this moment.
In fact the BC Human Rights Tribunal directed my complaint to the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal.
2027 is still awhile away.
In a way it’s my desire for M.A.i.D. that has given me the freedom to transition.
As I’ve said before, I really wanted to transition since the ’90s. But the fragility of employment along with the absolute lack of family support meant that transitioning was always going to be a far off desire.
When I could no longer control my desire to transition and I changed my name I made the fatal mistake of going after my babysitter from Canadian Forces Base Namao.
That put me 14 years even further behind.
So it’s either transition now or never.
And I chose now.
Body changes so far?
I’ve noticed that some fat seems to be moving around.
My desired muscle loss hasn’t happened yet, but it will.
My long sought after breasts haven’t started growing yet. They are puffy though and their texture is starting to change. So I know that something’s brewing.
I’m off for the month of June, but I’m hoping that when I go back to work in July that I’m sporting a noticeable pair of bumps.
Surgery to help things along?
Nope.
I’ll be happy with whatever estrogen has in store for me.
I have no intentions for any type of surgery except for removing things.
I’m currently on patch #3, patch #4 will be on Wednesday.
Not too much noticeable in the way of changes, but there are some changes.
My facial hair isn’t growing as fast.
My nipples have started to change shape, and now it feels like there’s an empty void behind them.
And my testicles are smaller.
Other than that I’m still waiting on the muscle loss.
I did go for physio last week and the one thing we noticed is that my muscles aren’t as stiff and tense as they usually are.
I don’t expect the really noticeable changes to start occurring much before June.
June is my vacation month, so I am expecting to go back to work looking a little different than I did before my vacation.
That should be very entertaining……..
A co-worker of mine whom is aware of my blog and my desire for M.A.i.D. has asked me if finally being able to transition will put an end to my desire for M.A.i.D.. I told them that we’d have to wait and see. We’ll have to see what awaits in 2027.
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 