Through childhood the train careered along often coming off the rails, often crashing into dead end sidings as it followed a confused and bewildering path towards its destination. Adulthood was the train crashing through various barriers put in its way to stop its headlong dash until finally there were no more barriers, no more emergency stops and nothing to stop it accelerating into one final dramatic breakthrough dash to the terminus.
During it’s journey the train had to pass through many dark tunnels, especially in that frightening final phase of its journey. At times those tunnels seemed endless, the oppressive darkness seeming to swallow life itself up but finally it got there, emerging into the brilliant sunshine of happiness and joy.
This book describes what it is like to be on that journey, an often misunderstood journey resulting in the traveller being a very lonely and confused passenger unable to stop the train, in no way responsible for the end destination and the route to get there but often having to face prejudice, bigotry and discrimination along the way. Many travellers indeed never complete the journey for it is terminated unnaturally through some form of intentional or unintentional self-destruction.
This book is not a text book on gender dysphoria, it just describes my journey, it is not for me to describe the journey others make in some form of academic or generalised sense for each journey is unique and only the individual traveller knows of their own routes taken and the stresses and strains along that route.
Another thing I must apologise for is the lack of professional editing. This book is about human emotion, the thoughts, feelings, emotions and behaviours of someone confronting some of the most extreme stresses in life that can ever be faced. At times it is raw emotion and I want that emotion to be left raw, not sterilised through editing, my feelings not bottled into academic justifications, my thoughts not being transcribed by clinical psychology, this is me, my heart soul and mind, nothing else, so excuse the bad grammar, the typing errors and sometimes the lack of syntax for human emotion is all about raw edges and I have retained those raw edges.
It is an accurate story, relying as much as possible on known historical fact, but like any story involving emotions, especially childhood ones, there may be others who would not wish to be identified and therefore names of family, jobs, employers and friends who have had no involvement in the preparation of this book have been deliberately altered. Also some incidents that could identify others or identify circumstances that could affect currently ongoing issues have either been modified, omitted or had dates changed.
When I look at the happiness I have now in my life and the various chapters that have led me here I realise just how fortunate I am. I an surrounded by friends and family who have given me unconditional love and support, a partner who for over half my life has been everything anyone could want in their lives, I live in a stable safe country where we take freedom of speech and freedom to worship for granted, I have never experienced the personal disruption of a war at home, I have access to some of the finest medical treatment on the planet. It would be very easy for me to complain that “society does not accept me” when in fact I live in one of the most tolerant and peaceful societies on the planet.
My good fortune can be compared starkly with those peoples across the planet who face only genocidal hatred, who for no reason of their own face murder, mutilation and starvation just because they are the wrong colour, worship in a different way or come from the wrong tribe. Today some of the most desperately oppressed people are facing the evil of genocide in what is probably the worst humanitarian disaster on the planet occurring now, at this minute, in the Darfur region of Western Sudan. I am therefore pledging £2.00, effectively my margin after publication costs, for every copy of this book sold to Christian aid agencies helping those desperately unfortunate peoples.