11 years have gone by

I ran away from my family to follow my dreams to find unconditional love at the age of 18. I knew my grandparents cared for me but needed time to except my authentic self, my mom and dad and step mom plus aunt and uncle love me for me but I just couldn’t deal with my family toxicity when it came to certain subjects and always saying agree to disagree on it , instead of really taking about it then just shoving it under the rug which would build pressure on me for all the unsaid things I would want to say but just didn’t have the right words or definitions till I researched about my true self for 5 years and had my experiences trying to become a sailor in the U.S. Navy and then being called a disgrace on the family name due to tapping into my true emotions of home sickness and girls being catty to me when I was trying to be a leader and help everyone out but I would cry myself to sleep every night cause no comfort stuffed animal and all my safe space had been stripped from me and then I moved back in with my mom and tried my first job at Wal-mart in the garden center but I felt back slash from my family and my dreams where someone else then Montana and I no longer wanted to be sheltered and my religious views are so far different then my grandparents and my political views as well. So I flew the coop with the help of my best friend and she took me to the airport and I moved to Texas and was a Correctional Officer for 9 months and tons of crazy stuff happened with my coworkers and the warden of the jail just couldn’t stand I was transgender when I came out in my last 3 months and so I just quit instead of getting something bad on my record due to being me. Things fell out with my girlfriend I had in Texas so then I contacted an online friend I have been friends with since middle school and asked if she could help me if I moved to Kentucky and I ended up living in two different hotels for a month and then a women’s homeless shelter but my depression got the best of me and I got kicked out cause I didn’t understand how the program worked and was on the streets for a week with just a bottle of water and some books in the woods and then I walked over the boarder to the bus station in Ohio and called my dad and he got me a bus ticket to Bakersfield,CA and then my depression was so bad I isolated in my bedroom at his house and my step mom tried to get me therapy but I was just feeling like a lost cause and my dad kept giving me ultimatums so I took him up on them and contacted a transgender housing group on yahoo and found my God mom on there and moved in with her in Riverside,CA. I helped her start a nonprofit but was dealing with my depression and alcoholism cause I would go to the gay bars and do karaoke and only pay for one drink and get many more due to my singing. Then when my God mom had to move back to Ohio for her mom I moved to Lake Elsinore with a family from the PFLAG group I would go to and things started to look better for me but then the mom gave me an eviction notice and my boyfriend at the time asked his grandparents if I could move in with him and they allowed it. Then at work at Wal-mart in Murrieta I had my first major mental break down in the bathroom and took a week off from work and didn’t know that was the tip of my iceberg moment that sent me down my rabbit hole to learn I have bipolar like my mom and I went to a mental health hospital with my girlfriend and she stood by me through it all and became my wife.I was homeless with my girlfriend and then we reached out to my pastor and she had me checked out by a mental health worker and said to ask my other pastor if they knew of any resources in San Bernardino cause Riverside screwed me over the first time I got out of the mental hospital and went to rehab and then they couldn’t find me housing so I became homeless. I then went to a mental health group for teens and young adults called the Stay program and then went into rehab for the second time and got into a sober living and started my legal name change with the help of my wife and then found a transgender doctor and started my transition in 2017 and now its been over 4 years on T-gel , had my emergency hysterectomy in 2019 and Top surgery in 2020 and feel like a whole man now. Sure it’s still rough with my family but I have always stayed in contact with my mom be it phone calls or snail mail. I have a way better relationship with my dad and step mom then before. My grandparents still call me by my old name and old pronouns but I know they mean well and love me unconditionally. I’ve tried to get back in contact with my aunt and uncle but they have a farm they are running and its rough having to deal with my uncles family and my family at the same time. I just wish I could explain to my aunt why I used her as my scapegoat as a teen to get away from all my demons I didn’t understand that where bothering me till I went to therapy. So now I am going to college to be a veterinary technician and I have therapy every other week still working on me and how to be a better husband for my wife. I’ve come a long way from how I used to be as user and abuser to just try to get love the wrong way and with T-gel I now have every emotion known to man at my finger tips which can be very overwhelming because now I feel everything even more deeply and my wife wishes at times I could be the stereotypical man but that is not me, I’m Mr.Emotional. I’m the one still searching for unconditional love be it from a friend, partner or animal due to having a rough childhood that looks so pretty on the outside but inside I was struggling. I had to grow up faster then normal due to my mom’s mental illness and I rarely got to just be a kid and that was when I went to my aunt and uncles. Everyday is a struggle for me and I’m trying my best to make the most of my life out of all this craziness.

Family

So if you’ve been following my blog for a while or are new to it. I have a rather rocky relationship with my family. I was born in Bakersfield, California and raised by mom and dad till my moms mental health turned for the worst when I was three and I took my first solo plane ride to Bozeman, Montana to stay the summer with my grandparents on my moms side Grandma Poppy and Granddaddy. The summer vacation turned into my grandparents getting legal guardianship of me when I was in 5th grade when my mom and dad got divorced. And every summer from then on in july or august I would see my dad and my mom was in and out of mental hospitals and she is in warmsprings mental hospital at the moment,pray for her. So with all of that I was raised by my Grandparents and in the past I made them look like the bad guys of my story till I went to theraphy for 4 years and learned the biggest lesson of my life- “You can’t change people, you can only change yourself.” I got from my therapist after months of internally battling with myself that I could change my grandparents 1950s sterotypes of a woman and a man and all the Marine Corp values they instilled in me. So my first 5 years of transitioning from female to male socially I blocked my family out everyone but my mom. Then I went through some major depression and an ex of mine reached out to my grandparents and they suprised visited me at work at walmart. Thankfully my boss was nice and said look like you are working and you can talk to them and I was rather harsh how I put them down with my wants not getting needed when I was younger and finally had words to explain why I felt like I always was a boy when I was younger but they where not listing to my gender transition fully becaIuse I was still pre everything and they wanted me to be 110% sure that if I medically transitioned its what I wanted for my body and mental health. So in November for 2017 I got my first dose of Tesosterone gel and started my medical transition. I decided to document my changes on youtube on a new channel under my new name Kaydian Anderson. With the push from my wife Cynthia, I legally changed my name to Kaydian Micheal Anderson. Then had an emergency hysterectomy in 2019 due to my depo shot aka progesterone ending and being on tesoterone gel wacked out my hormones thus needing to get a hysterectomy. I had larcospoic and still have my ovaries due to insurance issues. Then in October 2020 I had top surgery aka bilateral mysectomy with nipple graphs. That finished my medical transition fully for me. So I am on better talking terms with all my family now and send them photos of me and my wife for the holidays. 5 years later , now 10 years since I first came out to my grandparents as transgender,Im accepted as family again. Sure its still rough calling me my full name but they call me Kay for short and always working on pronouns. Im proud to have a loving family now that I never dreamed would come back. Plus my wifes family fully supports me as well. My wedding was lovely and my wifes best friend was our bestie for the bride and groom and we had christian and pagan roots added. I never dreamed in 2011 after I graduated highschool, bombed college and the Navy aka whole other story that with all my travels for 10 years I would find my aunthentic self and my family again and an extended one with my wife. So this year Im going back to college to become a dream job of mine when I was a kid to work with animals as a vet tech and have everyone behind me cheering me on for the best in my new adventures.

Internal Revolution, External Evolution

My talking my poem out that I did off of a friends tattoos.

Evolution of Kay

The evolution of Kay Micheal Anderson

 

Here is a little back story about my family:

 

My mother after having me went into a downward spiral due to her mental illness flaring up right after she had me. My father did his best to help her in every way he could but in the end had to send her away to the California mental health hospital so she could get well and he sent me away at age 4 just to go on vacation to see my grandparents on my mother’s side of the family. 

He told me, “Mommy is not doing well. So, she had to go to the hospital and you are going to go see Grand daddy and Grandma Poppy and go on a vacation and then you will come back to mommy and daddy when mommy gets well. Okay.” 

“Yes, Daddy.” I replied. 

So, He packed up my favorite clothes, toys, and stuffed animal. He took me down to the Bakersfield, California airport. He kissed me on my forehead as I was about to board the plane with my stuffed animal in hand and the sturdiest took a special pin and put it on my coat and took my hand. I waved good bye to my father and was on the plane and headed to my grandparents in Bozeman, Montana. 

 

Well that vacation turned into something completely different. It ended up from just a few weeks that my father thought to years. My mom and dad got divorced when I was in the 3rd grade to the 5th grade and in the end my Grandparents on my mother’s side of the family got legal guardianship of me. 

 

The Evolution of Kay 

 

 When I was at the age of 9; 4th grade, and had started learning about girls and boys bodies changing due to starting puberty. My Grandmother, Grandma Poppy gave me an old book back from the 80’s when my mother was growing up about puberty and had pictures of male and female bodies from elementary age up into adult hood that where shown in black and white photos of a female on one page and a male on the other. It then went into detail about them both in further chapters of the very slim educational book. 

 

I read it over and over again with full curiosity for my grandmother wanted me to be educated in the changes that where going to happen to me and thought a book would better explain the changes and then I could come to her with questions when those changes happened. 

 

Yet I was overly fascinated with the male anatomy versus the female for I had never seen a male’s body before getting that book. And read about what happened to a female versus a male and started to cry and grabbed a red piece of paper in the bathroom where I was reading the book and wrote on it “God, why did you make me a girl instead of a boy?”  and then threw the piece of paper on top of my bathroom supply box, dropped the book next to the toilet in the bathroom. Ran crying into my room, grabbed my Harry Potter diary and wrote in it. “God, why did you make me a girl instead of a boy? Please write answer below.” And left the rest of the page blank, hoping for an answer.  After I wrote that I curled up in a ball and just hid in my room. A few hours past and my Grandmother went into the bathroom for she was doing laundry  and found the red paper. She opened my bedroom door and confronted me on the paper. We had a yelling fight over it and in the end I just put those thoughts to the back of my mind and we never talked about it ever again. My grandmother just saw it as a phase I was going through for I was allowed to be a tomboy and all my friends where mostly guys and I only had one girl “friend” at that time back in elementary school. 

 

So, puberty was hell for me through middle school. Always feeling in the wrong body but always pushing that thought to the back of my mind. Just being a sort of happy tomboy girl and going to church and youth group and being as much as an angel for my grandparents. And only ever rebelling about how I wanted my hair, clothes I wanted to wear, and toys I liked to play with.  For my grandparents generation gap always got in the way at times. For them having the 1950’s society stereotypes of how a woman should be versus a man. I didn’t fit the model at all and at times had to wear a mask just to get by and hide my true self deep down inside. 

 

So, when high school started for me in 2007 as a freshman things went okay in the beginning but then slowly things started to get hectic. I went from the social butterfly to the shy kid in the background.  For all my old friend and myself we started to part ways for own interests just didn’t meld well anymore and I found myself becoming friends with the outcast group of people. And started to be a friendly counselor type of friend to them. Where they could just talk to me about there problems and I would just listen and comfort them. And in doing so in my 4 years of high school they opened my eyes up about many things that I myself questioned. 

 

And by hearing my friends stories and how they intertwined with my own I started to look into the LGBT (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender) community in my free time after school in the high school library. 

 

 I first came out as Bisexual to my friends and family in 2008. For I was raised Christian and to be straight by my grandparents. But Christianity never was my cup of tea and I am more spiritual then religious.  So, that was when my grandparents gave me my first taste of the right winged agenda on gays and they bashed me with hateful slurs. It was worse then just there usual verbal abuse they gave me over me being more like my father then my mother and their personal hatred over my dad due to my mothers mental illness and just things they didn’t like about my dad. And me never conforming to the female ideals they had planned out in there mind about how they wanted me to be, my grandmother was far more outraged then my grandfather over the fact of my personal sexual orientation. But with time they stopped with the gay bashing and things just went back to normal as if it had never happened. 

 

Then in 2009 a good friend of mine named K was dating a friend of mine named H and they had just gotten out of a relationship and I knew that she was a lesbian due to the previous relationship. I asked her shyly if she would date me with her being older and such. And with my cute shyness she said yes. It was just me holding hands in the halls with her and everything felt right to me for the first time then when I had previously tried dating guys just to make my grandparents happy. But I had to go behind my grandparents backs which made me feel kinda guilty over it all. One day my grandmother saw me holding hands with her and it was more then friendly. And in the car ride home I ended up outing myself as a lesbian and I thought gay bashing was bad when I was Bi, oh boy was I wrong. It got ten times worse at home. And in the end I just had to put a mask on just to make my grandmother happy. I grew my hair out long past my shoulders, wore more “girly clothes’ once a week to just make her stay quite about me being gay and got more girl “friends”. And just played a part in a play for two years my sophomore and junior year in high school and it ate at me and made me feel sick inside.

 

 So, when my father’s medical illness became worse my grandmother drove me from Montana to California to be with him for the end of my junior year in high school.  I went to North High School in Bakersfield, California. And my group of friends the outcasts again helped me be more open about myself and fell comfortable in my skin as a really masculine lesbian. And my father and step mom didn’t have too much of an issue with me being gay. They just wanted me to be happy as me. 

 

Things didn’t work out with my father and step-mom in California my junior year in high school. Due to my depression and suicidal tendencies due to not fully being happy with my body and my self and the tape recorder of my grandparents hate in my head. 

 

So, my senior year in high school was back in Montana. I became the Vice president of the GSA (Gay Straight Alliance) which I had to do behind my grandparents back but was the only place where I could be me and learn more about the whole LGBT community other then what time I got on the computer when my grandparents where not watching my every move on it to research the L, G, B, and T for the LGBT. 

 

So, I graduated high school in 2011 as a kinda proud tomboy masculine lesbian.

I tried college in Montana at Montana State University and went to the local QSA (Queer Straight Alliance) for support and meet my very first transgender woman there. But it was not as supportive as my high school and I was an outsider to that group and with the gay bashing I received as the only out lesbian on the all girl floor of my dorm just made my college life hell. Plus with a previous break up and only going to college to make my grandparents happy, I ended up dropping out.  

 

I then enlisted into the Navy, for my grandfather was in the Marines for 25 years and also my grandmothers father was in the Marines for 28 years. And with the military upbringing and family history of it I thought it would be a good fit for me for not anything else fit. Well, the Navy was not for me. I only lasted a month in boot camp and red flagged myself when I went to medical due to not having a waiver for my counseling and ended up getting sent to separations out of regular boot camp. But in separations I meet a lot of lovely women that where in every spectrum of the LGBT and got to learn the difference between sexual orientation and gender identity and started to question myself even more. And meet a girl by the name of L in the navy and we started a relationship in separations.  

 

I got sent home from Navy boot camp to Montana. My grandfather told me I was a failure and ended up getting a job at Wal-mart in the Garden center. It only lasted a month due to wanting to be with L and was having major family issues.

 

I quit my job at Wal-mart and got a plane ticket to Texas where L lives. 

Moved in with her in 2012 and her family and came out to her and her family as trans. I also told my family and all of them rejected me. 

 

I got a job as a correctional officer down in the Texas prison and my relationship with L didn’t work out. I ended up having to move out of her house and to a friends. Got fired from my job due to coming fully out as trans to my boss and him discriminating me and only lasted 9 months at that job. 

 

Couldn’t stand living at my friends place due to the issues going on there and moved to Kentucky to be with a friend. Lived in hotels for 2 weeks and then ended up living in a homeless shelter due to my friend not being able to have a place to shelter me like she told me. But she was having her own issues as well. So, I got discriminated against in the homeless shelter for it was a woman’s shelter and women are nosy. I tried to explain things to them but they just would all tell me that I am a confused lesbian and am not a transgender person. With them not fully understanding what a trans* person is. 

 

So, I ended up not having things work out for me at the homeless shelter and ended up living at a friends house in Kentucky named C and it was her husbands place. It was a hoarder house that they where renovating and in the end cops came by and condemned it and I ended up living on the streets homeless. 

 

For 4 days I lived on the streets and then ended up calling my father in California and he got me a bus ticket to live with him and my step mom. They had cooled down about me being trans* and just wanted me to find a job and get up on my feet. 

 

For the past 6 months I have been living with them. And have been in a deep depression due to my past with my grandparents and finally coming to terms that I am a transgender man, I am FTM (Female to Male), and also pan-sexual. That I love people based on there hearts more then parts. It has been over a year since I have come out as trans* yet I still have issues having that come off my tongue.  

 

For my whole life I have repressed that fact that I am a boy, a man that has been mentally trapped in a female body for 20 years. Due to never ever being able to express myself fully and always having to people please my family. And just wear a mask and act in a play as the female stereotype that a female is suppose to be due to the patriarchal way that our society is.

 

When deep down I knew I was a boy and now I know my label, a Trans Man. It makes me sick to my stomach at times that my family didn’t see the signs as fast as I did in the past and we both just repressed it all as a “phase” I was going through. 

 

 From Katy Marie Anderson, to Kay Scott Anderson to finally Kay Micheal Anderson.

From Bisexual, Lesbian, to Pan-Sexual Trans Man.

I am relieved and frightened now to know why I am the way I have always been.

TED Talk: Ending Gender by Scott Turner Schofield

Trans* 101 by Scott Turner Schofield

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Chelsea Skye

Heart’s Missing Pieces