Becomings
This is about beginnings and the endings that lead to them.
I grew up a devout Catholic. My faith and the pursuit of knowledge—of Truth—meant everything to me. I wanted to know, so I threw myself into everything—prayer, reading the Bible—all in the pursuit of Truth. I had a vision of St. Francis of Assisi showing me around heaven and it brought me to tears. This was my Path. Then, the moment after the Bishop confirmed me in my Faith, a voice rolled through me, shaking me to my core: “This is not your way, go find your way!”
Just like that I was beginning again, looking for Truth with less clue than before. I kept learning, kept hunting for Truth, for my way. I researched and experienced many different faiths and philosophies trying to find my way. I did things for which I am deeply sorry, things I can’t believe I thought were okay. However, bit by bit, things started to take shape. Years after finding Taoism it occurred to me that the word Tao means Way. And a year ago, it happened again.
It was like getting struck by lightning, something filling me until I was no longer there. I saw and understood things in a way I hadn’t previously. It was humbling. I am so very small and the Universe so very large. Words are not the tools to express this experience but they are tools for expressing truths I learned. One truth in particular has given me something to hang onto, some frame to put the puzzle pieces back in. That truth: It doesn’t matter who we were or who we are. All that matters is who we are becoming.
Time is a funny thing for humans. The Past is all a memory, the Future only a dream, and the Present is always now. We are always Now and that’s okay. The entirety of our lives brought us to this Now, so what do we want to do with it? What do we want to become? If each second is a beginning, who do we choose to be?
In my Now in 1999, I was serving in the Army. I had an injured shoulder, was miserable, and wanted to die. There were several reasons, but primarily I realized I was a Transgender woman. I was living a lie; if the Army found out they would kill me, my wife would divorce me, and everything would fall apart. But like I had before, I was focused on the Truth, and if I was Trans then I would become the woman I was meant to be whatever it took. That quest for Truth cost me my marriage and the life I had before but it led me to becoming me, becoming happy for probably the first time in my entire life. Who I was didn’t matter; who I was becoming did.
In my Now in 2002, I started Hormone Replacement Therapy. The meds made me nauseous after I ate. Sometimes even the smell of food would turn my stomach. I was sure that I had made a mistake—that this wasn’t what I needed to do—but I persisted. Then while leaving an IHOP, my stomach churning, my entire world snapped into razor sharp focus. I froze in place for a few minutes. I tried to figure out what had happened, what I was feeling. The world seemed to be in crisp focus as if a fog had lifted from my mind, and I was certain, in a way I had never been, that I made the right choice. What I was experiencing didn’t matter, who I was becoming did.
In my Now in 2004, I realized that my second marriage was falling apart and that a Trans woman training to be a teacher in Tennessee was guaranteed unemployment. All I had going for me were the classes I was taking to get my Masters in English, so I threw myself into them more completely. I at least had hope that I could teach college with a Masters. Then I entered my Victorian Poetry class and met a new classmate. She was wonderful, witty, smart, and beautiful. I was smitten. I told her I was interested, and I waited to see where that went. Who I was—that self-perceived failure—didn’t matter, who I was becoming did.
We went from strangers to engaged to married all between September and March. Meeting her daughter, her family, and her friends was wild and the best choice I ever made. Each moment I choose a future with her. Each moment I choose to be the best partner, lover, and step-mother I could be. Of course I didn’t always succeed. But I was working to become someone.
In my Now in 2015, sixteen years after admitting to myself I was Trans, I had my final surgery to become the woman I was meant to be. However, surgery was not an end or a glorious realization of my dreams; it was a stepping stone to something further, to Life. All of a sudden, I needed to worry even more about hormones, since I no longer produce any natural ones. I needed to worry about dilating to keep the surgeon’s work on my vagina open. Having accomplished one of my dreams, I needed to find something more to become. This was something I did not do well.
After surgery I was unsure of where I was going. Sure, my first professional novel was selling, and life seemed to be my oyster, but things felt hollow. Looking in the mirror, I found myself trying to make sense of who I was, in both the past and the present. Who am I? became more of the question instead of who I was becoming.
Slowly it felt like my life began to unravel, though very little changed. All the ghosts I had laid to rest rose again and the surety of my world began to fall to pieces. With the psychological weight of my gender dysphoria gone, the PTSD from the Military grew worse and my suicidal ideation, which had all but vanished, returned. My trust and belief in my relationship grew weak; my life felt like ash. I kept trying to hold on to something, but things crumbled in my hands. I wanted to weep, to fall apart. Despite working on my PTSD and Depression, I kept ignoring the tools I was given and pretending that things were good, that I had my life under control. After my search for Truth, I was enmeshed in lies. I didn’t know who I was. I didn’t know what I believed. Did I even know how to love? Was I broken? All I really saw was my world had fallen apart slowly, like an abandoned building. I wore a mask, because I was ashamed of the mess I had become. For all I had studied, in so many subjects, for all of my faith, I had no idea what I was doing, no clue where I was going.
In my Now in the fall of 2016, I was desperate to find meaning. Watching a water canon being used on Civilians in freezing temperatures gave me one. I became a part of Veterans Stand and was enmeshed in getting things ready for over two thousand Veterans to arrive at Standing Rock, North Dakota. I was constantly working, trying to help manage the four thousand Veterans who had arrived in the face of lodging shortages and an oncoming blizzard. I was running around trying to deliver a pipe to Chairman Frazier of the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe that had been used in a healing ritual for Sophia Wilansky, the girl whose arm was injured by a grenade. I never found him, despite spending the evening the easement was denied looking for him in the main camp of the Water Protectors and in the Casino where many of the Veterans were being housed. While working on getting people sent home, I managed to send the pipe back to the person I had gotten it from. None of the four thousand Veterans died in the blizzard, and all got sent home safely thanks to our leadership and the tribal leadership ensuring they all had shelter, food, and something to occupy them. It was part of what I was looking for.
In my Now in early 2018, after continuing to work with the Veterans Service Corps, an outgrowth of Veterans Stand, on numerous issues from pipelines to the immigration crisis at the southern border, I felt like I was struck by lightning. I saw the Pattern of the Universe and how Life flows through it. I saw the vast majesty of Life and Death played out in billions of lives. It was stunning, beautiful, and I was unsure how or why it happened to me. I tried to write down what I experienced, but it was too much and words are too limited. Since then I have been trying to make sense of the enormity of what I experienced. And then that little bit of Truth made itself known and things began to make sense again. I realized that I was no longer wondering about who I am, feeling like I was treading water trying to find meaning in my life; I was concerned once again with who I am becoming.
In all that studying about Faith, studying Life, and my search for Truth, I had learned so much of what I was shown from that glorious vista in my moment of Enlightenment; but I had not known it to the depths of my soul. The knowledge went from grainy black and white to High Definition color in a flash, and I finally got it. Life was again about beginnings, of becoming more. All those moments in my past, from being a teen confirmed in the Catholic faith to Enlightenment knocking me head over tail, set the pattern that gave me this moment, this process of writing my truth, of allowing myself to be vulnerable enough to share my failures, my goal to become a better writer, a better wife, a better mother, a better person. I don’t care anymore about who I am because who I am is the past. I care about the endings of what I knew that lead to opportunities and experiences I could never imagine. I care about each beginning leading me to become something and someone better. Sometimes the shattering of the old, the crashing of dreams, brings about something marvelously new.
So, tell me . . . who are you becoming?
-Heather O’Malley
Heather is a Transgender Veteran, a member of several non-profits, over educated, a published novelist, pagan priestess, living in an RV, happily married to an amazing woman, as well as a proud cat momma. She is always chasing the next story in her mind and trying to type as fast as possible.