Steve Labus:  

Yeah...so, my picture is not really me. That is the picture closest to who I was. I have found a great many things about myself. I want to share a narrative essay I've written for school. I am enrolled in online courses to become a psychologist. This is my story: "Imagine, if you would, waking up every morning with the first thought of the day being “Oh, crap, I woke up”. Then, as you draw your carcass out of the bed, you wonder what fresh hell is going to come your way today. You absolutely hate all of humanity, especially yourself. No matter what happens, all you see is the negative, and feel that everyone is going out of their way just to irritate you. By the end of the day, as you crawl in bed, you wish, pray, and dream of being something you can never be. How would you feel? What would you do? For me, it was horrible. I took my feelings down a self-destructive path, and I didn’t care whom I harmed on my way out. I had my weight up to 315 pounds. I managed to get a stent placed at the ripe old age of 40. I didn’t brush my teeth daily; causing me to lose several of them. I shut out most of the world. I had very few friends, and most of my family didn’t speak with me. I avoided interpersonal contact with almost everyone. When entering a new area, I would check for a means of avoiding people, and escape routes to get away from someone who came too close. This was not living; it was a sad lonely existence. I felt as if the world would be better place without me in it. I was ready to die. This is how receiving Counseling and Hormone Replacement Therapy(HRT) saved my life. After I admitted that I had a problem, I sought help. I went to a psychologist at a Veterans Affairs(VA) Facility. I went into her office, afraid. The first meeting was as much me getting to know her, as her getting to know me. I wanted to fix myself, but I didn’t know how. We talked about my dreams of waking up a woman. We discussed my irrational activities aimed to transform me into a woman. Guess what, prayer, magic spells, begging, wishing on a star, or asking Gaia or God, doesn’t work. I tried everything to make it so the world would have always known me as a woman; except the only thing that works. That would-be HRT. My therapist and I focused a lot of time on my gaming habits. One of the things I did, was that I always played a female character. I almost never deviated from this. The only exception, was when I didn’t have a choice. She asked me how long I had been doing this. I had been gaming as a female character for, approximately, 30 years. We talked about the amount of time in a week, that I spent as a female in the digital word. I spent too much time as my alter egos. I spent over half my waking hours either at work, or as a female in a video game. We further discussed my past friendships, noting that most of them were female. Of the few male friends, most were deceased or, as I found out later, have transitioned themselves. Most of my deceased male friends had committed suicide. The transgender suicide rate is between 18 and 19 times the national average (Ford, 2015). I often wonder if they were transgender as well. I ...Expand for more