Jillian Celentano - Transitioning Later in Life: A Personal Guide

TRANSITIONING
Later in Life

A PERSONAL GUIDE

Jillian Rae Celentano

Mea very long time agowith my assigned male gender.

I was born on February 4, 1961, at approximately 2:35am. The doctor announced to my parents, Its a boy. But was I? Well, he had my sex correct but not my gender. The doctor looked at my body and based my gender on what was between my legsan error he was unaware of because unfortunately in 1961 there was no education available to explain the differences between sex and gender. Most medical professionals simply believed that sex and gender were binary, based on the childs genitals. Needless to say, this was not going to be good for me, and little did I know it was going to take me over 50 years and a lot of therapy to correct the gender that I was assigned at birth. This is my gender journey of rediscovering my true self all over again and how I began my life again at 55. My journey has been challenging but truly rewarding. I hope this book will give you the courage to create a plan to guide you in becoming your authentic self and, most importantly, learn to love who you are and live a happy life. Yes, you can be happy, successful, and transgender.

Like so many transgender people, I knew at a very young age that something did not feel right. The first four years of my life were uneventful because I was unaware of what gender was and did not think about girl or boy things until around the age of five (the age when most children begin to become aware of what gender is). It was right around this time that my awareness of feeling female began, causing some major confusion at five years old. Even at that young age I remember believing my body would automatically transform into a girls body. But, of course, that did not happen, so I began praying every night to God that I would wake up as a girl in the morning. Does this sound familiar? I bet most of us have said a prayer or twoprobably more like thousands of prayersin the hope of waking up in a different body. The reality of being stuck in this body began to hit home when my prayers were not answered, and by age six confusion and depression had already started to become prevalent in my life. The thoughts that constantly existed in my head as a child were that maybe this is something I will grow out of as I get older; or maybe every boy and girl experiences these feelings but is too afraid to tell anyone; or most terrifying of all, maybe nothing will change and I will be stuck in this body for the rest of my life.

The unfortunate reality of my body and gender not aligning left me with the dilemma of deciding whether to share my secret with somebody or keep it to myself. I chose the latter because I was too afraid and embarrassed to tell anyone, especially my parents or family. Unfortunately, with silence comes shame, so this was the beginning of my acting careerpretending to be someone I was not in order to survive. Throughout my early years I pretended to be a boy: I did boy things, dressed like a boy, and lived my life as everyone expected me to. Needless to say, I became really good at fooling everyone into believing I was a happy, normal kid, and nobody had a clue about my inner turmoil. There were many days when I would daydream of how different my life should be but I was quickly brought back to the reality of living as this boy character for the rest of my life. I essentially became the ultimate method actor who should have received a lifetime achievement award from the Academy.

I began to experience feelings of body dysphoria. They were constantly in my thoughts and continued to become stronger and more difficult to ignoresort of like a science fiction movie of an alien entity growing inside me, taking over my body. Much inner energy was needed to keep my secret hidden from the rest of the world. As soon as I awoke each morning, my first thoughts were about my gender, soon to be followed by thoughts about betrayal by my own body. Thinking about gender daily is a feeling that cis people will never have to deal with and can never truly understand. Every day I had to remind myself that I was a boy and to make sure I acted like a boy, which after a while becomes extremely exhausting, as any trans person knows. As overwhelming as this was, I always thought I could suppress and bury these feelings deep enough so I could tolerate and manage my sense of unbalance. Unbeknownst to me, I was unaware of the emotional impact this began to have on my life at such a young age, and before the age of ten I was already an unhappy child pretending to be happy. My anxiety and depression quickly developed and grew more intense. I was a sad kid who felt alone, because as far as I knew I was the only one experiencing this kind of conflict with my gender and body.

My sad eyes and fake smile.

For the first ten years of my life I was lonely and felt disconnected from the rest of the world. The more I hid my secret, the more numb my feelings becamea tool I used for my survival. They say the eyes are the window to the soul. Well, when I look back at any photos of me before the age of ten, I see a totally different image. Most people see a cute little kid, but in any of my photos as a young child all I can see is a fake smile and empty, sad eyes. I was a sad, lonely kid who felt alone while trying to figure out how I was going to pretend to be someone I was not for the rest of my life.

My teens were not much different. In fact, they were a lot worse because puberty was beginning and I was about to go through the wrong puberty. The loneliness and sadness I felt as a child began to evolve into more intense feelings with the onset of puberty, and these feelings that I had been able to manage in the past were growing and becoming more difficult to ignore. My feelings of conflict were becoming too difficult to control and were beginning to be replaced by anxiety and depression because I truly believed I was the only person going through this, making it difficult to seek any kind of help. The older trans population grew up without the internet or social media, so we had no way of reaching out to others who might be experiencing the same feelings, or finding professional guidance. I watched myself go through the wrong puberty and was terrified, but it was out of my controleverything I hated and feared about my body was happening. It was like being a lab rat in a cruel experiment that I could do nothing about. My thoughts turned to trying to figure out how was I going to live and survive this way, but I began to concede that I was stuck like this for the rest of my life, and my hopes of feeling peace and harmony with my mind and body began to fade away.

My body was now a male body, with male hormones and male sexuality, but my mind was female. I kept asking myself how I was going to pretend to act like someone I was not for the rest of my life. My anxiety and depression were getting worse by the month as I was in constant fear of exposing my true identity to others. I was a very sensitive and caring person, but I grew up believing this was a sign of weakness in a male. However, I could not help being the person I was, so I lived in constant fear of my secret being exposed. Obviously, my beliefs were pretty distorted back then, but gender roles were pretty rigid in the 1970s so people would be quick to criticize or make fun of you if gender roles were blurred. To make things worse, I attended a Catholic middle school and high school so I had to fight the religious guilt of being different, which meant I was living in sin with my impure thoughts and beliefs. This was difficult because religion was important to me and I felt I was being forced to make a choice between my faith or being my true self. This was just another internal tug of war I had to deal with.