My last 6 years or so at school was hell, a confused, alienated child who felt different but could not articulate why, who's confusion translated into a ferocious hair trigger temper, who's alienation resulted in three years supervision by the child psychology unit of a major london clinic, who's pain resulted in a massive attempt at suicide.
This was the child that left school with no qualifications but a burning desire to prove himself the equal of anyone and to firmly bury any doubts he felt about his masculinity by being more macho than macho. My First career was just that, almost a wandering renegade of controlled anger, I was one of the best there were at my job, a job that promised little in terms of financial reward, much in terms of leading to a broken and wrecked body and massively macho in terms of high level physical danger.
However I also became a husband and Father. Whilst pursuing career number one I studied and the degree came along. When common sense and responsibility to my family dictated I should choose an occupation less damaging to my physical well-being and offering more opportunity of survival I followed career two into business. I joined a leading Multinational as a fledgeling analyst in their financial management department. I needed a specialist education, they were willing to pay for it, even more so had bursaries at a leading UK Business School so I secured through them an external place studying for a Masters Degree in Business Administration.
After a faltering start my business career was brilliantly successful, pursued with the same focused ferocious energy as the first. I found myself headhunted by one major company after another until throwing my lot in with the managers of a small division of a national transport company, orchestrating a management buyout then becoming the biggest predator on the block.
Crash!! At the tender age of forty my world collapsed as my body, no longer able to take the furious pace of life, exploded into a tumult of searing pain and disabling neautalgia. Overnight I had to retire to focus all my energies on just staying alive. A body torn apart by neurological pain was also creaking and groaning from the accumulation of the stresses and physical damage imposed by my earlier career and for five years I struggled to keep going. During this time I followed Doctors orders and took up walking, except with being a manic gender-dysphoric type person I chose to walk from Lands End to John O' groats, a 1,000 mile plus journey that I completed three times in successive years, twice with Joan, my long suffering partner, raising funds for a charity that helped physically disabled children. . During these journeys I wrote a series of short, comic, self-deprecating narratives that were published in various magazines and finally combined to form my first book length publication.
Recovering from that meltdown I had to find another career, not to earn a living, career number two had been so successful I had no need to think about an income, merely to keep busy, to be distracted from the pain within. Gender Dysphoria is never cured, it nags in the background until there is no other opportunity of distraction left.
I combined three of my great loves, writing, history and travelling and formed a tour company specialising in military history tours. For the next four years I was never still, commuting from one continent to another, trecking from one country to another, surviving tornado's, avalanches and dust storms and researched, wrote and directed tours across some of the greatest historical itineraries on Earth. In the meantime, whilst writing footguides to ancient Rome, I learnt to speak Italian and whilst learning to do that diverted myself into attending some of the finest cooking schools in Italy. I finished the whole lot off by studying Wine and Spirits and being awarded a diploma in wine studies. Whilst in the United States I studied as a research student at an East coast University and the Virginia Miltary Institute producing dissertations of original research that subsequently counted towards the award of a PhD (mil.Hist.)
Eventually the frantic pace of life again took its toll and I sold the lot and yet again "retired", but Gender Dysphoria does not retire and I needed to keep busy so I threw myself now into a number of charitable causes, using my personal wealth to promote a charity helping abused and limited life kids, creating a housing project for the homeless, internet support worker for abuse survivors, campaigning against the proliferation of "child art" on the internet and helping a police force in the UK by acting as a lure to allow them to investigate activities of a predatory internet paedophile, all with my typical "gender-dysphoric" obsessional energy.
Even this had to end, ironically by my name being linked with a major national police investigation and after a 9 month mentally and physically exhausting battle of the most vindictive kind I finally had to "retire" for good. Now, the manic driven fuel of Gender Dysphoria had no where to burn, to be distracted. Jennifer finally had to emerge. What happened next is well documented in my emergence narratives. My manic life ended, Jenni was born.
Still a writer and author? Yes, I still am, now only for leisure, for interest and for relaxation. When you look at me now you look at someone who has finally found herself, who is at peace inside, someone enjoying life, not enduring it. I live in the West Country with my wife, soulmate and best friend for the last 36 years and my second home is in Chiswick, West London where I am currently engaged in producing a food and wine guide to the high road.
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