Memoir Shorts

My Daily Routine In Trans Conversion Therapy Saved My Life

This one neat trick taught me how to survive

This is about how The NeverEnding Story and Stranger Things saved my life, helped me overcome PTSD, and recover repressed memories.

PREVIOUS MEMOIR SHORTS I Am Trash (surviving trans conversion therapy) Kite The Book I Risked My Job To Publish That One Time my Beard Saved my Life I Was Today Years Old When I Understood My Family Sent Me to Trans Conversion Therapy What Do I Do Now That The World Didn’t End? (…yet) How to Support Your Girl

My routine

I woke at six AM.

I took a long breath to prepare for the cold once awake.

I shook off whatever I could from the meds I couldn’t name.

I went to breakfast with the group of boys they’d put me with.

I ate what they put in front of me and hid what I hated.

I cried when the staff caught me and made me eat it.

I saw therapists who taught me how to pretend.

I went to their version of school.

And in the evenings, I read.

My evenings

I sat at the wall of windows in the recreation room while the boys played. Whatever violence they could get away with found its way into their hands.

When the staff joined them, they played games. Dominos, board games, gambling if the responsible staff had gone home. They taught me how to play a few. Mostly I wanted to watch movies.

I’d brought a bunch. They were VHS, because it was the 90s. Staff checked the movies before they let them into the collection. A lot of those boys were there for how aggressive they were if they felt excited. Especially with girls. Or with each other if someone would pretend.

I sat in the far corner of the room.

One of my favorite movies was How to Make an American Quilt. I want to watch it again someday, but there’s one scene in the movie…it’s the one those boys kept rewinding to watch again, and again, and again.

The Void

I learned how to escape into other worlds from a young age. I talked about it briefly in my memoir short “I Am Trash,” which goes into an uncomfortable level of detail about the OTHER side of being in the kind of place that would try to turn a girl into a gay boy.

Trans Conversion Therapy (published right here on Medium with Prism & Pen) isn’t what gave me the power to go to the Void. But it is one of the experiences that taught me to go there as often as I could. A person will do all kinds of things when our survival is at stake.

STEPHENIE RECOMMENDS: “JK Rowling breaks silence on Roe vs Wade, with transphobia” by Gemma Stone in An Injustice!

In the Void, I didn’t need a book. Paper and pen were merely tools for storytelling. You could use anything else to tell a story, whether that be your mouth or your mind.

My family had one rule: don’t think, don’t speak, don’t feel.

Well, unless it was what fed their addictions. And since resisting or feeding them had equally landed me in Trans Conversion Therapy, I’d learned that for me, their rule had no exceptions.

I would be silent. And in silence, I would be safe.

I would use my mind to tell stories.

The Memory Palace

The Memory Palace is a place inside the Void. It isn’t where I go to imagine. It’s where I go to remember.

For a long time, those rooms were emptier every time I visited.

Those memories were like precious marbles left behind with each fulfilled wish. In a fate similar to Bastion in the sequel to The NeverEnding Story, the cost of getting what I most wanted was any memory of what I’d lost.

A cost greater than the loss

Brene Brown is a role model for me. She’s a strong, intelligent, courageous woman. And I mean Courageous in the way SHE means it with a capital C. Her research on vulnerability and shame transformed the way I approach my relationship with myself (and thus other people ❤) and how I pursue health and wholeness.

Judging from the popularity of her viral Ted Talk “The Power of Vulnerability” (released January 2011 and now at 17 million views and still counting), I’m not the only one affected by her work. I’ll link it here and embed it below. It really is worth watching or listening to, even if you’ve already seen it a dozen times (or more).

One piece that stuck with me is the idea that we can’t separate pieces of ourselves and expect them to function independently. Our emotions exist on a spectrum, so if we work to wrestle control over one, we’re not facing one emotion. We’re facing all of them.

My emotions were too much to fight. Too much to control. My only hope was to numb them.

I couldn’t hope to numb all of them. Look at those eggs above. Would you try to swallow the whole carton at once?

(Please hold all comments from the bodybuilders. Some of y’all drink baby formula to stimulate muscle synthesis.)

But like Brene Brown illustrated in “The Power of Vulnerability,” I didn’t have to swallow all of the eggs. I only had to swallow one.

So I numbed my fear. I numbed it to the point that I couldn’t feel it.

I numbed it so that no matter what I faced, I would feel safe.

I numbed it to feel safe even if I wasn’t.

You numb one emotion, you numb all of them.

The only place where it was safe to feel anything was where I could feel someone else’s.

That’s where I went when I sat by the windows. That’s where I went when I opened a book. Most of the time, I wasn’t even reading. It was just an excuse to be left alone.

I needed the solitude so I could make my escape. I could hear a siren’s call from far beyond the glass.

There was something waiting for me on the other side. Maybe enough worth waiting for until it was safe enough to find out what — or who — it was.

I saw one of your memories, and it made me feel something

Most of the plot of The NeverEnding Story II — the one with Jonathan Brandis as Bastion, and my god do I weep for the pain that took him from us too soon — is about Bastion losing a memory for every fulfilled wish.

(on the other hand, the movie features John Wesley Shipp as his dad, and that’s the guy who played The Flash in both the 1990s show and the reincarnated multiverse version of the same character in the ongoing CW-verse…for now)

Bastion’s heroic nature means that each wish tends to be for the good of Fantasia. If he occasionally benefits, well, he’s just a teenager. He’s allowed to want something for himself.

I don’t think I’m spoiling too much to say in the big climax, he must face the conflict of how to sacrifice those final memories for a wish that could save everything — but could also accomplish nothing and lose that last part of what remained.

The first movie threatened Bastion and all of existence with a great Nothing that would come from outside of us.

The second movie threatens Bastion with a great Nothing that comes from within.

And it’s in recognizing what that essence is that Bastion finds the means to defeat Xayide, the true villain behind the wolf Gmork and this new plan to make Mad Titans stop in their tracks.

Seriously, Thanos said wow, all of existence? Let’s stop at half.

Xayide said nah. I want to erase it all.

She would start with an innocent child’s memories.

In taking them, she would try to take the very essence of that child.

There was, however, one thing she couldn’t take.

One thing no one could take.

Not even if The NeverEnding Story were seen as an allegory for a child trapped in Trans Conversion Therapy.

I wish for you to have a heart

The thing Xayide couldn’t take from Bastion — the thing no one could take from me — was the part of me that can never be taken from anyone.

It’s the part that belonged to me the moment I came into existence. The part that belonged to you, too.

It still belongs to us.

I have no idea when it’s fair to say *I* came into existence, but the part of me that shows up as the Loving Parent I never had but definitely deserved looks at me at every points of that existence with the unconditional love of a Mother.

She reminds me that no matter what I feel, what I think, do, don’t do — no matter how those actions take me through as much success as failure in my one shot at existence — there is a part of me independent of whatever happened in what I think of as my life.

That is the part that deserves to exist simply because it does.

That is the part that deserves every opportunity to thrive.

That is the part that could never not deserve to do so.

That is the part that deserves to discard the three phrases that imprisoned any of us.

“Don’t think. Don’t speak. Don’t feel.”

We remember those phrases only to know that they never need to be spoken again. We have a new faith to guide us.

“I am here. I am in my body. I am alive.”

DAILY ROUTINES BECOME A DAILY PRACTICE

I sat as often as I could at those windows. I escaped into the Void. I built rooms for the Memory Palace so that the previous parts of me had a room to hide until it was safe. I built rooms for me, too. And then a few extra for the parts of me that would come after.

Maybe that’s why as the years went on and I waited for the safety I’d promised myself would one day come, I kept returning to those windows. Wherever I lived, wherever I traveled, I found them. Because where I found them, I also found peace.

A few days ago (or however long since it’s been when you read this), I published stories with Transgender Soapbox, Queerly Trans, and Prism & Pen that told secrets buried so deep, I forgot they were there. I forgot what I’d hidden, and what part of me had disappeared with it.

I’ve felt terrified ever since those stories came out. The people I mention in those stories were cruel in ways I still struggle to describe. I did my best in those memoir shorts. Some of it, I’ll never be able to share. I don’t understand how they could do things like that to me, and I accept that I never will.

Today, I sat to look out the window of my apartment and the room I use as my office. There’s a cool breeze despite the summer heat of the desert. I know the grass in my front yard is unnatural. The ground should be made of sand and spice, not grass and dirt.

There isn’t just the economic concern. Water? Grass? In the desert?

I can’t shake this feeling that no matter where I go or what I change, I promised myself it would one day be safe. But how can I ever know when it ‘s really okay?

I’ve felt safe before and discovered I didn’t know better after all. Growing older, building a career, getting married, earning degrees, none of it saved me from my decision to connect myself to people who were not good to me or for me.

I couldn’t trust them. And I couldn’t trust myself.

Silence is not simply calmness or quietude

When I wake up each morning — sometimes while I’m still asleep — my heart still races. I usually spend an hour in the morning crying, meditating, crying, meditating. My body holds everything that happened. I could wish away every memory, every emotion, but I’m a real person. This isn’t a movie.

(…is it?)

At some point, I had to take a chance. No matter how young I am or old I get, I’ve only got so many years left. I just need a sign that it’s okay to give safety another shot.

Yesterday, I looked in the grass.

Here’s what I saw

Cars whistled by on the street just over the shoulder-height wall of my apartment complex. It was midday, so the breeze was cool and yet warm. The desert is a strange place. It’s what draws so many of us here.

I looked down at the grass and saw my dog.

Sydney’s joy at the simple bliss of being is contagious. It quiets my own anxiety enough for me to truly listen again. To pause and understand that even if I’d stopped paying attention, that siren call had always been there.

The one that had called to me from the other side of the windows at the hospitals.

The one that called to me still.

I carried Sydney with me back inside. The place that siren call wanted me to visit couldn’t be reached the usual way. You could walk forever and never quite arrive. I had to take back out the tools that had gotten me so far.

I went back into my room. I looked out the window. I faced what I would find.

To be continued…

BUT UNTIL THEN…

SOMETHING FUN: Top Ten Vocal Feminization Videos

SOMETHING SERIOUS: Ten Extremely Bigoted Questions Most People Ask Anyway (including you)

BONUS STUFF FOR FANS OF THE NEVERENDING STORY

1. “La réponse d’une histoire sans fin…”

You’ve heard the theme for The Neverending Story a million times. But did you know it was sung by French singer Limahl? And did you know he also recorded a version in French?

(is it just me, or does the chorus sound like they’re saying “Sitting on a sooooooofaaaaaaaaaa…”)

The lyrics in French (offsite link)

2. STRANGER THINGS HAVE HAPPENED THAN A NEVERENDING STORY REVIVAL

I couldn’t believe my dang ears when the English version of the song popped up in Stranger Things Season 3. Dustin and Suzie killed it. Can we really accept anything from Season 4 if it doesn’t include another cover from them???

While we’re finishing things up by listening to awesome alternate versions of an awesome theme song, let’s give that Stranger Things cover a listen …!

3. THE NEVERENDING STORY’S CONNECTION TO MARVEL, THE MCU, AND LONGSHOT

Limahl, with the hairstyle he sported circa 1984, was illustrator Arthur Adams’ inspiration for the look of the Marvel Comics X-Men character Longshot.

CBA: The general look of the character, was there an influence from Michael Jackson with the costume? Arthur: I don’t think so. This was actually the early days of MTV, 20 years ago, and there was a group called Kaja Googoo, and I saw the lead singer and said, “Oh, that’s weird hair! I don’t see anyone in comics with that kind of hair, I can use that for Longshot!” I’m not sure where the rest of the costume was from, I was just trying to make it look different than other costumes that I was aware of.

The Art of Arthur Adams (offsite link) A career-spanning chat with the celebrated artist/writer on his comics Conducted by Jon B. Cooke Transcribed by Jon B. Knutson

THE END (DAMN GIRL, THAT’S DARK)

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