Lisa Salazar:  

Hello, fellow classmate! Since the cat is out of the bag, might as well get it straight from the horse's mouth. Yes, there have been lots of changes which were a long time coming. I am no longer Santiago, or Jim, or whatever you knew me as. I am now officially and legally Lisa since July 2008. That is the reason I chose not to attend the reunion in 2008 -- I did not want any undue attention and did not want to hi-jack conversations. I did share my reason for not attending with a handful of people, and I know the word has gotten around since then. I thank those of you who sent me messages of support and acceptance. ****** I came to terms with what seemed like a paradox and contradiction, if not absurd chaos, fairly late in life, when I realized the identity I had constructed for myself had to be tossed out and I needed to start over. I was 58 when I began life as Lisa. Most people don'™t have a clue of what goes on inside the head of someone who is gender dysphoric; the questioning and the persistent sense that something is wrong and that the gender they identify as does not quite align with their body. The contradictory aspect of all of this is the absolute sense I always had, from the first memories of this chaos until today, that I am deeply loved and cherished by God. However, this sense of being loved did not stop me from asking the most basic of questions in our human repertoire, "Why this?" and "Why me?" From childhood, I did the only thing that seemed most logical. But this, of course, was a subjective interpretation, it was using a logic rooted on the social constructs around me: my family, my circle of friends, and the larger social an cultural environment I existed in. My logic was based on what other said, this defined me. But inside me, there was a raging conversation going, a debate of sorts, ”and at times a screaming match that lacked words. Without a vocabulary, it meant that this "condition,"” or whatever it was called, ”would have to be kept gagged and shackled. How does one cope or deal with this kind of absurdity? When others are...Expand for more