My name is Amelia Sara Greene and I’m a 31-year-old trans-girl.

For quite some time, I was in denial that I would ever become who I am today. However, it’s refutable that this day would have come sooner or later and hurts to admit that it has taken me this long to finally embrace it. I tweeted the other day that I never imagined myself a member of the LGBTQIA+ community or that I would be seriously facing coming out to friends and family.

It also took me some time to finally write this blog post because initially this blog was hosted on the website for my pen name and while Amelia DeWitt is a progressive open individual, she isn’t transgender – make sense? Good. That is why I moved my blog to a new personal website and finally posted this here. 🙂

I started to write this blog post from the comfort of a Hilton hotel room late one night during Ramencon 2018. I was seated in a huge plush chair, wearing girl’s pink sleep shorts and a t-shirt that said “nerd princess” with none other than a nerdy looking princess above. I had just finished a late-night turkey sandwich. (I’m usually too easily distracted from eating when I’m in costume and enjoying friends who embrace me for being myself.) And my mind and spirit were stirred for what felt like the hundredth time this year alone. With each passing week, I found it harder and harder to continue the charades of a life I had created for my friends and family back home. I was on the edge of my breaking point and I couldn’t remember a time in my life that I was ever more scared and unsure of myself.

I can clearly and sincerely say I dealt with gender dysphoria since I was a very young child. I never felt like I had fit into the mold people expected of me. Other children avoided me or took advantage of me for being “different”. I felt alone and unwanted. And the people who did accept me were either compassionate adults or peers who also struggled to fit in. I was born this way! I wasn’t a mistake nor was I unloved. My parents were great parents who loved me and raised me like their son. I was treated (both by my parents and others) as any other boy, unfortunately, that is where the issues began.

I was constantly medicated to act my birth-gender – more commonly by those who weren’t my parents but I believe there was peer pressure to do the same. I was a compassionate child who loved to care for others. I was soft and gentle. I much more enjoyed dolls and playing house – many times opting to play the role of a mother – I was usually hurt when the other kids forced me to play the workaholic absentee father instead. I never owned any girl’s toys, so I played with my sister’s or the ones that belonged to my best friend. For reading, I enjoyed the American Girl books, however, yet again they “belonged” to my sister. I enjoyed putting myself in the shoes of those brave heroines and can remember wishing I could have had a doll of my own – Samantha, Molly, and Kit were all my favorite.

When puberty came along, I experienced my first major “break-up” in my life. My best friend, who was a girl, decided that she was much more interested in a real boy – his name was Nick. The last time I saw her face-to-face was at her birthday party at a roller rink. I brought a gift basket filled with candy and other memorabilia, however, when it came time to open gifts, she just stared at it and then put it to the side. Afterward, she came out and thanked me but I felt it was half-assed and somehow forced. Girls no longer wanted to play with me because I was a boy and boys didn’t want to play with me because I acted like a girl. I was naive and had no drive to dominate the other boys – I was too gentle.

Loneliness was my downfall. I desired companionship and tried to fit in by acting like the other boys. I fought and liked gross things, I even went as far as objectifying woman – the first time I was caught by my dad and punished. When I finally corrected my behavior I became attached to adults whom I felt accepted me. However, in reality, they probably felt sorry for me and posibly wanted to medicate me further.

One particular adult couple was my youth pastors. I can’t explain the relationship we had but I referred to them as my mentors. They also corrected my behavior far more often than my own parents – I sometimes wonder if I had only called them my mentors because they were medicating me to act my gender and I thought I wanted that. I latched on to their friendship and grew more desperate for acceptance of my peers. I also had a crush on their daughter and was constantly at ends with three other boys who also had a crush on her.

One boy, in particular, decided to try to make it personal and paid a friend to hack my website – I was into web design and programming then too. I confronted him over AOL Instant Messenger and he admitted to everything. I brought the case to my dad, who brought it to the youth pastor, who confronted him in person. I remember the following Sunday our youth pastor talked with me out front of the church and did nothing but victim shamed me for saying some less than nice things. He even leaned on some unconfirmed allegations. I didn’t go in service that day and cried my eyes out in the car.

My crush ended a couple years later when strangely I was told by her father that she was not interested in dating anyone at that moment. However, I felt that he thought I wasn’t “man” enough for her – true or not.

I was a somewhat sheltered child. I was told about the-birds-and-the-bees around the age of twelve and it never really bothered me even if I secretly wished I could one day be a mother. However, where things hurt the most was when my parents were critical of non-gender-conforming individuals. They always said there was no such thing as a taboo subject in our family but my situation felt like one of the few exceptions – we never discussed it until a couple years ago when I finally had enough and forced a conversation, things didn’t go as well as I had hoped.

I don’t have words for it. I was a walking bleeding corpse and no one took notice. Worst of all, the medication was working. They were turning me into a man and all I could do day-after-day was, “Be the good boy you always have to be. Conceal, don’t feel, don’t let them know.” That’s right! I was a pre-let-it-go Elsa. Anger and callousness were becoming my only friends.

I had a best friend who was a “repentant” homosexual that grew up with a difficult family situation. I also became attached to his parents (a story for another time) once the youth pastors left the church unannounced. We were best friends, went to volleyball together and hung out with other church friends. We… were… like… a couple – a gay one likely and I didn’t even know it. I shared more with him than anyone else and he accepted me for being me, regardless that he was zealous for GOD at that point. I even presented a hypothetical to him once alone in the car and asked what our friendship would be like if I was a girl. His answer confused me for many years. He said, “We’d likely not be friends.” Our friendship abruptly ended when the revival movement left our church and he left for unspecified reasons, regardless that his parents continued to attend the church and even climb the administrative ranks. Supposedly he had a relapse in his homosexual preference following that.

My parents pushed me when possible to go out and date following that. I visited other churches and hung out with old church friends that had left our church. I had one date with the daughter of a childhood friend of my moms but it never went anywhere. The truth was, I was absolutely straight, however, girls weren’t the same anymore. They wanted me to become a man and expected a level of masculinity out of me. They wanted a romantic relationship but I still wanted that sister I never had.

I eventually became a pop culture geek and went to my first anime convention at Anime Central 2010. It was so magical that the next day I dressed up in my Japanese yukata and wore a nasty green wig. (I sadly have no pictures of it – or is that a blessing?) It was that weekend that I was exposed to an entirely new world that I had no idea ever existed. I was also exposed to people who dealt with similar issues as me and I felt that my personality was accepted. I tried to make friends but my efforts mostly went unsuccessful. Likely because I was a sheltered Christian conservative republican homeschooler but I digress.

The years that followed I would return to conventions. I had a bit of a pack-rat habit that probably stems from a coping mechanism, which also contributed to me spending all my money to build up a collection of everything “geek”. One community I became very interested in was the Japanese street fashion known as Lolita – not related to the book of the same name. I tried to join the Chicago community and make friends but due to some recent issues with pedophiles, I was silently rejected at every turn. This is also when I was exposed to cross-dressing and learned that there were men who dressed in Lolita – most of them were perfectly straight cis-males. So on top of my growing geek collection, I now started to buy frilly pretty dressed and would dress in them whenever possible – this was a closet habit for most of my life. My first time out in public in a dress was the next following year at Anime Central 2011, I was the perfect example of what the Lolita community calls an Ita.

The other 50% of my time was spent sewing crossplay, I never once dressed my birth-gender unless you count the time I cosplayed a boy in a dress, i.e., Maria Holic.

I spent the next few years in the closet until the day I met a friend at a graduation party for one of my cousins around June of 2013. My cousins were urging me to meet her because we shared similar interest, however, I believe they just wanted to play matchmaker. I eventually felt comfortable enough to show her my Lolita magazines and shared pictures of me in Lolita dresses and crossplay. I for once in my life had a friend who accepted me for being me.

I quickly invited her to come to Ramencon in September and it was my first year in attendance. Long story short; I will admit to being romanticly interested in her, likely because that masculinizing medication had been working. However, she didn’t feel quite the same way and after sharing her feelings during DaishoCon in November, she introduced me to a long-time best friend of hers.

I remember the day she walked into our hotel room. I was half-dressed in a dress and stockings, yet no wig or makeup. After that night, we fell in love. I think my soft personality turned me into a real gentleman. Our friendship was only made stronger because she also accepted me for who I was regardless that she was raised up ultra-conservative but she had been quietly questioning it by that point.

I proposed to her at Osaka Garden (Jackson Park, Chicago) in August of 2014, the year following – she obviously accepted. For the entire thirteen months that we went from friends to a married couple, we went through a lot of hardship together. We were closely bonded because we shared a similar rough teenhood. She initially became the most critical because of struggles with her parents and how they rejected me for being too much of a radical Christian. By this point I was in complete denial that my gender dysphoria was still an issue, I never once considered that I would go through similar emotional hardship such as she did.

We married on January 9th, 2015, and we both went into our marriage with expectations that things would only get better from there. However, my dysphoria started to peak it’s ugly head as I started to see the negative effects of being medicated to act like a man for so many years. I was still hurt from past work experiences (another story for another time) and my struggles with my parents started to make me think as well.

My spouse and I moved into an apartment following our wedding and immediately she took the role in our family as the bread-winner. I owned a small CCTV business at the time that just barely paid my own bills – I had also still been living in my parent’s basement by this point. Life was good and within the year that followed, we moved to Kansas City to pursue a life at a new church that went back to the revival days of Christian Life Fellowship (Monee, Illinois). Long story short; my family wanted to move to KC for many years following the die-off of revival at CLF and Chicago had no longer anything else to offer. Taxes were only getting higher and the politics even windier – playing on the origin of the saying, Windy City. Seriously, go look it up.

Against so many odds, we bought a house making less than $35,000 a year and my spouse got a full-time job at Petco. I had to step down from my CCTV business and step into the role of a homemaker. However, I rarely look back since I enjoy having this role in our family.

And this is where things took a steep turn. That isn’t to say that our unique relationship was the cause of my hardship, neither of us fully conformed to our genders in the first place and when we took marriage counseling, I had to take the advice of the woman and she took the advice of the man – because that was how our brains worked best.

I had always wanted to get into writing but always felt self-conscious of it. But when I got a brilliant idea to write a social narrative fairytale based on my childhood, I finally created an official pen name and Amelia DeWitt was born. I also soon retired (reintegrated) an old online persona, that I had created to dump my hurts into, from nearly eight years prior. Her name was Chiori and she was never apart of me. She was a split identity that was that little girl that came out once I had been medicated to act my birth-gender. The beginning of my realization of what had been happening to me was the first time I caught myself crushing a dining room chair into pieces out of a fit of anger – I hated myself for that and Chori was very likely a coping mechanism for the anger and depression I had felt.

I had no use for her anymore because my spouse tried to help and encourage me to start discovering who I once was and to seek healing from my teenhood. I was free to wear what I wanted and be what I wanted. I discovered once again that feminine “labeled” hobbies and personalities made me happy. The honest truth was my personality never changed and I was still a little girl at heart. She was put under lock and key and desired nothing more than to come out.

Adventuring to reinvent myself I finally cosplayed Princess Anna from Frozen. I saw her as my spirit princess for a few years by then and I felt I was ready to express myself through her persona. I felt one with her and we shared similar hurts and struggles, such as feeling distant from friends and family. We’re also both outgoing goofs. I ended up sewing her traveler’s dress and summer dress, the first of which was terrible but with practice and perseverance, I became much more comfortable with this new outward identity that became much more integrated with my own as time went by.

The sad truth is, during this time I wasn’t honest with friends and family – including friends I had made at our new church in KC. I continued to fear rejection and afraid of what people would say or think if I revealed the feminine personality that I had uncovered from my childhood. I had probably only mildly recovered from the callus and angry self that had taken over my person and wanted to seek out more. However, I was far from ready to change who I was around those who knew the old me.

I didn’t realize that for many year I had been lying to protect myself, it was likely yet another coping mechanism and my spouse knew I wasn’t happy. She tried to help me in many various ways, once by encouraging me to open up to geeky church friends, which I did and it helped. However, like most things, it was only another bandage on the root problem.

Today I look back on old photographs from in my late teens and early twenties, and all I can see is hurt. I was never happy. I was never the true me. All I was was a child who identified with what society labeled as being feminine. I might have adjusted better if people just let me be me, however, there is no going back and fixing that nor would I ever know if that would been the solution.

Additionally, I never wished to be normal. I loved me for who I was. And for the last twenty-odd years, I prayed for two things; either for GOD to take away the hurt that robbed me of my true self or that he could just make me into a girl. I even used up all my birthday wishes to be turned into a girl. That is all I ever wanted and I never felt like they were answered. That’s not to say GOD didn’t answer my prayers, he did and I can recall him giving me temporary relief from the pain but I felt like this mountain was something he would not remove from my life, regardless that I believed he was more than big enough to do it.

So fast-forward to the last couple of months. I came to a point of having multiple late-night mental and emotional breakdowns, I would rant every waking hour and I had gotten very little sleep – that included my spouse. We pulled money from savings for me to see a therapist and I only used her long enough to get over the initial problem. One evening, I had finally prayed aloud, “GOD if you don’t remove this mountain I might find myself doing something crazy and there is no telling if I’ll come out okay on the other end. I’m attached to you and I will never leave you no matter how hard it gets. But you need to either use it or remove it. I’m tired of hiding it, I’m tired of pretending to be that perfect boy.” Part of my emotional breakdown was over the guilt for lying to people, I had either lied that I was a normal masculine male or I would lie that my gender dysphoria was no longer an issue.

Over the next few weeks, I felt an awakening in my spirit and finally came to accept that doing the crazy might be the only option – let’s call it my Elsa moment. I continued to pray and seek GOD for help and answers. I asked for wisdom, I asked for strength, I asked for peace, I asked for guidance. All were things I felt were given but yet the mountain remained.

One issue that had added greatly to my struggle since marriage was our inability to get pregnant. I remember on our wedding night, the condom broke and I freaked out that we would end up like so many other newlyweds we know who got pregnant almost immediately following their wedding. We wanted to be far more responsible and to our benefit, a broken condom did not lead to an unplanned pregnancy.

For the last three years, I had wanted for us to see a fertility doctor but there was always a reason we couldn’t. Then earlier last month I finally told my spouse that I would first see a doctor and we’d take it from there. Well again, long story short; it wasn’t as easy as it should have been. No one would see me because I had no established medical history. But my chiropractor recommended I look into KC Care Clinic for starters. I had an appointment soon thereafter and brought my concern up with my new doctor. She ordered a semen test, which came back with a slightly low sperm count but we figured it was a fluke. I also privately ordered an entire slew of additional blood tests elsewhere, which also came back negative for any concerning issues – even my hormones (besides Estrone) levels were near perfect.

Eventually, I shared my desire to have been born a girl with my doctor and she hinted at there being something we needed to discuss regarding that but never went into detail. This was a turning point. I had considered for the first time in my life that I might decide to transition to female. This was obviously not anything new, I entertained the idea since I was a child and usually backed down because I believed I could eventually find a place to live as a normal male, be it a z-type male. Nonetheless, I started to look into where I needed to go but was quickly worried that it would be extremely difficult. Plus there were now also other concerns.

My main concern was us never being able to have biological children, my spouse had wanted to adopt ever since we met but I continued to hold out hope. I talked transitioning over with my spouse and she claimed that she would be perfectly content with never having biological children if it meant I found a place where I could once again be happy and free to seek GOD. I had to personally deal with it but eventually came to the conclusion that I needed to do this sooner rather than later. I’m also not so keen on spending thousands of dollars on fertility treatment if it meant we could only have one biological child. If we wanted to birth multiple children then it would be in our best interest that I remained a “man.”

I prayed and sought GOD. And this brings us back to my opening. I had worked up the courage to attend Ramencon 2018 as Amelia. My spouse was very supportive and the entire weekend was perfect. I felt like I was at home for once in my life. I felt like I could be me and dress in pretty clothes. GOD even put a few people before me who I got to share how GOD had worked in our lives and how we could still see him working. That night was stirring because it finally brought me to the decision that I needed to get much more serious about transitioning.

The week that followed I went to an LGBT game night and met some people from the local community, I wanted to see what I was getting myself into. I cross-dressed in my favorite outfit, put on makeup and went full on girl mode. I even got to use the woman’s restroom for the first time ever – I very well couldn’t go in the men’s restroom dressed like I was. I got called ma’am and was treated like I saw myself, a cute innocent girl. I even think the waiter was hitting on me but he stopped once I revealed that I was married. That night I drove home and prayed for the third time that month that if I shouldn’t be doing this that GOD would send a huge warning sign. I gave it a week and no warning sign had come. So I prayed something that I never thought I would pray. I believe that gender and a decision such as mine are sort of on the level of deciding if you’d go to a baseball game – just this game is forever and you technically can never leave. I don’t believe gender is something that often concerns GOD as many Christian believe it does.

So I prayed, “GOD if you’re okay with me changing my gender and you could still use me to the full extent you promised all those years ago, (i.e., I once felt GOD put a mission in my heart to reach/influence a great number of people.) make the process extremely easy and effortless.” Meaning if I have to force this then I would reconsider.

On top of looking into trans-clinics in KC, I had also read that most people agreed that KC was one of the hardest places in the US to find a good doctor who prescribes hormones or who didn’t have a super long waiting list. Most said Planned Parenthood on the north side was the simplest but because I’m pro-life I had some convictions about using their services. However, when I went back to see my new doctor on October 4th, 2018 and reminded her of our prior visit, she said their clinic was fully set up to handle informed consent. Obviously, a newer concept to the transgender community but nonetheless not unheard of. (BTW, Planned Parenthood would also be informed consent.

She was nearly ready to send me home with a prescription for hormones but due to a computer outage and because she felt I needed to talk it over with my spouse, she told me to come back when I was ready. And that I am.

SO I WILL BE STARTING HORMONES ON OCTOBER 25TH, 2018!

I’m super excited and can’t do anything but feel anxious to see the changes I can expect in the near future. This month I also gathered the money to start laser-hair-removal, something I wanted since I witnessed the bearskin growing on my chest and back from the age of fifteen.

On one last note about my doctor’s visit; I had a physical exam and the examiner noted some concerns. We didn’t discuss them in great detail due to the discussion about hormones but the consensus is I have Varicocele. A problem with the blood supply to the testes and usually contributes to fertility issues, such as low sperm count. This helped explain why I had chronic testicular pain for the last two years. Unfortunately, understanding the condition is in its early stages and the most successful surgery that should fix both the pain and fertility costs $12,000 and only adds a 50% change of fertility – most still require assistive reproductive technologies following the treatment. Take this at face value but I would rather use that money to adopt and it also liberates me of feeling that I was robbing myself of my reproductive duty by transitioning.

For now, this is the end of the story but I will post more once I have more to share. I’m sorry for making this post so long but I promise they will be shorter in the future now that the cat is out of the bag.