Redemption came to me on the evening of Monday, November 7th, 2005 between the hours of 6:30 and 7:30.   It was a long time in coming, 47 years.

As I sat, waiting to meet the woman who would become my therapist, I thought about all that had happened during those years; all that had happened on the journey that had brought me to this time and place.

It was a long, dark and lonely journey.

It began on a bright, sunlit afternoon as a little girl who looked like a boy sat on her mother’s bed playing and watching her as she did the day’s ironing.   I couldn’t have been very old, perhaps three.   My mother said something to me, I can’t remember what, but I do remember my response.   I remember hesitating for an instant and then saying: ‘œI’m not a boy.   I’m a girl.’   My mother was startled beyond words.   She stopped, put down the iron and swept me up in her arms, saying over and over: ‘œNo, no, you’re my beautiful baby boy!’

My revelation set off a firestorm in my house.   And thus I began to learn that the world wouldn’t let me be me; that it did not want to accept that such as this was possible.   I learned that I could never talk about what really goes on inside of me.   I learned I must live a lie so that those around me could feel comfortable and secure with society’s faulty assumptions about gender identity.

And so, down through the years she trudged, enduring the torment and ridicule of bullies who thought I was gay, physical education teachers who insisted on trying to ‘œmake me a man,’ the stark and unreasoning terror of having to dress, undress and shower with an entire room full of boys even though I knew that I outwardly looked just like them.

She learned her lessons well.   She made Craig into a perfect little alpha male, an aggressive, competitive overachiever.

In time, Craig became successful and was rewarded with all the things that success brings:   money, power and prestige.   People looked at Craig and saw a success story.

But the truth was very different.   Every year that I had lived that lie a little more of Ashley died inside. But I tried to convince myself that I was content with the hand life had dealt me.

Like so many of us I tried to find happiness in money and all the nice ‘œstuff’ money can buy. I bought lots of nice ‘œstuff:’ wardrobes of designer clothes, trips to far away places, expensive cars and meals in all the trendy restaurants.

Of course, none of this made me happy.   Quite the opposite, the older I got the more miserable I became.   A voice was crying out inside my head.   Each successive year it cried louder and more desperately:   ‘œStop!   Don’t go any further down this road.   On the day you die, do you want to look back and know that you never really lived, that you only existed?   That would be so tragic.   Do something while you’re still young enough!’

By the time Halloween week 2005 arrived that voice was loud and raw and terrified.

For several weeks I had been haunted by a memory from my distant past; a memory of something I hadn’t thought of in many years.

Once, when I was four years old, my mother and I were in a toy store (Marty’s Toyland).   (Ah the days of mom and pop toy stores!   Going into Toys ‘˜R US just isn’t the same.)

Mom had said she would buy me a toy, any one I wanted.   I knew exactly what I wanted.   I’d wanted it ever since I had seen a TV ad for it.   I also knew exactly where it was in the store.   I raced off, took it off the shelf and ran back to Mom.

It was a Barbie Doll.

My mother would have none of it.

I went home with a GI Joe.   (That’s not a doll.   That’s ‘œAmerica’s Moveable Fighting Man.’   It says so on the box.)

On Monday night, October 24th I sat in my den, sipping scotch, thinking about that Barbie Doll and leafing through a stack of Newport News catalogues, looking at the models, knowing that I was supposed to look like that, that I was supposed to wear clothes like that.

I did this for hours and in the end the catalogues were shredded and strewn all over the room and I was huddled in a fetal position crying uncontrollably and saying over and over: ‘œI can’t do this anymore.’

The next day I found the name and number of a therapist who specialized in issues of sexual orientation and gender identity and made an appointment.

At 6:30 the door to her inner office opened and I walked through it.   I spent the next hour telling this stranger all my secrets, all the things that had gone around and around in my head like a cyclone for all those years, things I had never told another living person.

At the end of the hour, my therapist asked me a question: ‘œDo you have a female name you call yourself when you’re all alone?’   I stared at the floor and was silent for what seemed like an eternity.   Then, in a small, tentative voice I said ‘œyes.’   ‘œWould you share it with me?’   What seemed like another eternity passed and then, in that same small voice I said: ‘œAshley ‘¦ my name is Ashley.’

I looked up and into my therapist’s eyes.   She smiled and said: ‘œHello Ashley.   Would you like to continue?’

‘œOh yes, oh yes I do want to continue.’

Overnight my whole world changed for the better.

Two weeks before Christmas, 2005 I went to my first support group.   I went as my true self, the first time Ashley had ever ventured out into public.

On Christmas day Craig gave Ashley a gift, a going away present to remember him by.   It was, quite literally, his very last act.   He found it on the internet (and probably paid too much money for it);

An exact replica of the original 1959 Barbie Doll and the box it came in: the very same one I had wanted all those years ago.

That doll, I think, has come to represent all the precious gifts that you hope for and wish for, but never come to you.   And by gifts I don’t just mean nice ‘œstuff.’   Sometimes those gifts are more complex and ethereal, like the courage to stop running and face life and your fellow humans as you always knew you were.

I finally gave myself that gift.   It took 47 years and cost me $80,000, but it is quite simply the best gift I ever received.

Yes, sometimes in life, the best gifts are those that, in the end, you buy and give to yourself.

Photo credit: stock.xchng.