Becoming Myself: The True Story of Thomas Who Became Sara (15 page)

One of my proudest achievements as senior union representatives was to give encouragement to the craft unions and the staff association to enter into discussions on my proposal to create an inter-union group that would combine all our resources and strengths in dealing with our common interests and issues. This was a complete break from the old divisions that had existed. We set the group up and it was a great success. I was nominated as the senior spokesperson of the group and this meant being the principal negotiator on behalf of the group. This created a very positive atmosphere in which people felt hopeful for the first time in many years. It was truly groundbreaking and I was proud to have been a part of it.

A very great personal frustration for me working in Gilbey’s was being surrounded by so many feminine women and by my need for female friendship. Their sense of style drove me crazy and reinforced the growing conflict I was feeling on a daily basis. Fridays and special days were the worst. The girls would make great efforts to look well and they succeeded. The problem for me was that I was so envious of them being able to dress as they wanted and to be so comfortable in their femininity. It was stressful and it was extremely difficult not to make comparisons. My own body language was also starting
to become more pronounced as were my efforts to befriend the girls, which I did with a degree of success, until they became curious about how I knew so much about women’s problems and being able to give them such good advice, especially in relation to the way they allowed the men to treat them so rudely. In some cases this was misinterpreted as me fancying them, which wasn’t true and even if it was, there was no way I ever did anything about it. I really did just want to have some real girl friends and to feel that I fit in with them; to feel normal.

This period sticks with me for other reasons; it was the period when reading and writing became a major part of my life as did going to the National Concert Hall to see the National Symphony Orchestra. I have such wonderful memories of Handel’s ‘Messiah’ and listening to Beethoven’s Pastoral Symphony. I went to the theatre to see plays and to various concerts in the Gaiety and Olympia. I tried to share all these interests with Barbara, but she wasn’t that interested in them, which made them rather lonely at times. Years later I took my friend Kathy to the
NCH
for her birthday and it was so exhilarating to have someone I cared about really enjoy the experience and be as excited about it as I was.

G
raduating from the National College of Industrial Relations was such a great experience that it motivated me to go on and do other courses, this time through correspondence. I took two diploma courses with Kilroy’s College, one in business communication skills and the other in business administration. Between my spiritual growth and my academic achievements and life experiences, I was becoming a more rounded person, but I still hadn’t the confidence in my abilities that others evidently had; everything I did came from that same determination to prove I was just as normal as everyone else and an innate desire to make some kind of a positive difference.

In 1989 I started to attend Grosvenor Road Baptist Church in Rathmines. It is the most affluent Baptist Church in the south of Ireland and it showed. I got involved in the Thursday Club, set up for the local children, who would come in and play games and learn from the Bible. I enjoyed the work and had some good fun with the children. I stayed with Grosvenor Road for a year and then moved on to the Evangelical Church Fellowship which met at the Dublin
Christian Mission, across from the Four Courts. I was very well received by the pastor, Liam Joyce, and his wife Sheena. Liam immediately recognised my potential as a pastor, but there was something else he recognised in me that affected him in ways which he did not disclose but had a significant impact on our future relationship.

In order to get to know each other better we went for a walk around the Phoenix Park. We walked and talked for about four hours and I shared my life with Liam in a very open and honest way. What I did not do at this time was confide in him about my wearing women’s clothes and the fact that I was experiencing a gender conflict and the fact that I was also struggling with my sexuality. I was twenty-nine at the time and it was to take another several years before I would share this with him. In the meantime, Liam assured me that I had a very special purpose for my life and that God was going to use me in ways I could not even begin to imagine. He wasn’t wrong there. I told him of my previous aborted attempt at sixteen to write my life story and how my mother, once she uncovered my notes, had taken them away and destroyed them. Liam told me that I should write my story and have it published; in fact, he was unusually insistent upon my doing it. He told me that he saw me as a ‘pathfinder’ and that this would mean treading a very lonely path, but that I would come back and show others the way forward. I could not have imagined just how accurate that prediction was to prove. It is fair to say that I am profoundly indebted to Liam and Sheena, not just for their friendship, but also for their significant contribution to my personal growth and development.

In 1992, Gilbey’s announced that they were downsizing the business and closing the Naas Road plant and moving the
operation to Nangor Road, and so I would be made redundant. This announcement exactly coincided with my deciding to apply to Bible training college in Wales. These were truly exciting times. And, after some months of counselling, it seemed that Barbara was actually becoming interested in us having a marriage after all. She even went so far as to commit herself to coming to Wales with me. With the announcement by Gilbey’s, it seemed as if God was placing His seal on my plans. I was on a spiritual and emotional high and was feeling extremely positive about the future.

This positivity was overshadowed by tests Barbara had had done in February, just after I’d left Gilbey’s. She was being tested for possible Multiple Sclerosis. We were not too troubled about it at the time, which optimism had more to do with not knowing the seriousness of this bloody awful condition. I left Gilbey’s on 7 February and was feeling very excited about our future prospects.

On 30 March we received the devastating news: ‘Barbara, you are
MS
positive’. That is exactly how it was said and was followed with a phone number for the
MS
Society in Sandymount. The doctor made no attempt properly to explain the diagnosis, or, for that matter, to give any kind of prognosis. She said we could get counselling from the
MS
Society. And that was that. Needless to say, nothing was ever going to be the same again.

My protective nature kicked in immediately and I put plans in place for us to cope with the situation. It is fair to say that Barbara was entirely passive throughout this whole episode. I felt that it was imperative that she learn as much as possible about her condition and what she could do to cope with it. I made an appointment for us with the
MS
Society and attended within a couple of days. It was here we learned
about the true nature of the condition and what we had to look forward to as our future. Again, Barbara remained passive, almost nonchalant, in her attitude. I got her to join the
MS
Society and I joined with her. I made it my business to learn everything I could about the condition and agreed to join a steering group for the purpose of creating a new branch of
MS
Ireland in west Dublin.

One of my first decisions on learning of Barbara’s diagnosis was to withdraw my application to the evangelical college in Wales. At this stage, Barbara told me that she had changed her mind: she had had no intention of ever going and she had decided this before I had been accepted. I was devastated at this news and went into a depression. Not only were my hopes of going into the ministry destroyed, but now I was faced with looking after a woman who neither loved nor respected me. It was too much to take, but take it I had to, because I still loved her and was determined to do the right thing for her, and because I took my commitments as a Christian very seriously.

So it was that I threw myself into the work of setting up a new branch of the
MS
Society with my colleagues on the steering group. We were hugely successful in establishing a branch that was second to none. One of our favourite activities was the social evenings. We booked a function room in one of the local hotels and brought members out for the night. They were very enjoyable events and extremely popular. I made it my business to visit members of the branch in their homes to see how they were and how we could help them. I was in a privileged position as members would take me into their confidence and share many of their intimate problems with me; some of which were quite shocking and very sad. I can say in all truthfulness that it was my work with
the
MS
Society that prepared me for my own diagnosis and transition.

However, at the time, the situation looked bleak. I had no job and was facing the future as a carer for someone who did not love me and did not want to be married to me, who had already had one affair and had tried to leave with an old boyfriend for England and clearly resented me for my constant efforts at trying to make the marriage work on some level. What in the name of Jesus was I doing putting myself through all that? Why could I not have more respect for myself and leave before it got any worse? The answer is, I genuinely believed that God wanted me there and that he would turn it all around. In faith, God would deliver me from all these feminine feelings and from the need to dress. He didn’t. My faith was under severe strain and was to be tested to breaking point.

I found it near-impossible to find another job after leaving Gilbey’s and I was determined not to go back to being an operator or doing manual work. I couldn’t anyway on account of having developed fibromyalgia, a muscular condition which prevented me doing physical work. It was time to learn new skills and get new qualifications. I applied for innumerable jobs and got the same reply each time: ‘We don’t have a position suitable for someone with your qualifications and experience.’ It was dismal. The redundancy money was running out fast and it was imperative that I find something soon as our debts were mounting and the dole money was seriously inadequate to help us cope. So it was that I signed up for a
FÁS
course in business management. The course was run in Finglas so it meant a lot of travelling, but it was worth it. I remember my tutor, Joe Chaney, with affection. Joe took
a shine to me and once told me that he had a soft spot for me. He told me that I would never be a millionaire but that I would be very successful in whatever I did. It was really nice to have someone believe in me like that.

Unfortunately, though, the course was doing very little for my job prospects and I was knee-deep in debt. The low point of that whole period in terms of money problems has to be the day I went to the city to buy myself a much-needed pair of shoes. Nearly all my shoes were completely worn out, with holes in the few pairs I had. There was a closing-down sale in a shoe shop on the corner of Mary Street and Henry Street. I saw a pair of boots for just £10 and decided to buy them. I felt some relief at the thought that I’d been so prudent, but it only lasted as long as it took me to get out of the shop and into the street. I stood facing the shop and agonised about whether to return the boots and use the £10 to pay off a bill. I decided to keep the boots and live with the guilt.

I finally got a job, as an insurance salesman with Canada Life, and from 30 March 1992, when Barbara received her diagnosis of Multiple Sclerosis, to my departure in August 1995, I committed myself fully to looking after her and did everything in my power to fight for her rights. It meant looking after the cooking, cleaning, and collecting her Ensure energy drinks, her incontinence pads and so on. It also meant sitting around waiting to see politicians to get them to lobby for her benefits and to get her a home help who could assist her while I was at work. I also got her two dogs for company as she had been saying for years that she would love to have dogs around the house.

With all of this pressure, I came very close to my first ever serious mental breakdown, in April 1992. I was having an epic struggle with my cross-dressing, as I understood it then, and
my faith seemed utterly useless to cure me of it. No matter how much I prayed, fasted, attended church, prayer meetings, conferences, preached, did street and door-to-door evangelism, Sunday-school teaching, had quiet times and so on, nothing could deliver me from this increasing need to be a woman. I was so desperate for God to deliver me from this gender conflict that I would prostrate myself on the floor of my study and, with outstretched arms, cry my eyes out to God, begging Him to deliver me from this great sin. I cried so much and spent so much time pleading and begging that I left myself an emotional wreck from it.

There were times when I would get a sense of euphoria at the belief that God had, in fact, heard me and that I had the strength to resist the temptation to dress and feel like a woman, and while I was in that state, I would take what few women’s clothes I had and dump them. For a few days at least, I would have some peace, but it was a false peace as the conflict returned yet again and the need to buy and wear clothes returned, only stronger. My former pastor and Barbara were the only two people who knew about my continuing struggle with this issue and Barbara was completely indifferent to it.

In 1994, I was given a much-needed boost by being awarded the Trainee of the Year award by
FÁS
, for developing a system for helping people to work through their debt problems and writing a book on the subject of family finance, having completed an enterprise skills course at Ballyfermot Training Centre. I was allowed to bring two people to the awards ceremony so I asked Barbara and my regional manager at Canada Life. He told me he was honoured to be asked and I was thrilled he felt that way about it. But still I had my doubts. I was wrong.