Introduction of my life

Hi, my name is Saraphiene Allison Haldritch, but call me Sara. I was born a boy to an amazing and loving family. I did not grow up in a broken home, I was not abused or misunderstood. Infact I was a pretty normal kid.. with one difference, a secret I did not understand. As a kid I enjoyed playing with dolls as well as with other girls mostly, but I still did alot of boy things such as playing with my GI Joes, or even building things but even now I look back and see more creativity and femininity in the things I made. At anyrate I lived a pretty normal male childhood and male adolesence but all the while wishing I was female and not understanding why.

In high school with testosterone pumping through my veins I met the woman of my dreams, her name is Teresa. I never dated men or even really looked at them as most women would have back then, mostly because it was simply not ok, nor understood, let alone accepted in the school and town I grew up. Plus with being in puberty and all that testosterone I just naturally became attracted to women. After high school, being happy with the choice of the love of my life but still wishing all the while I was female. I had decided to do the most masculine thing I could think of to truely be a man, so I joined the military.

I did all the grunt work I could, crawled through the mud, did everything I was suppose to but during physical training (Gym/track) I'd choose to run and go off by myself so no one would see me when I broke down in tears crying as I began to truely understand what was wrong. I constantly questioned who I was, god, my place, always ending up with more depression and more confusion. A month after my fiance's 18th birthday we eloped at the base I was stationed at in Florida, not telling any of our family. This was mainly because my mother didnt really like my wife, but that really was because she didnt know her nor trust her quite yet. Years later my mother has come to love my wife as a mother would to a daughter.

My wife and I had 3 kids, two girls and lastly a boy. At this point my only real love of life and ambition was being an amazingly good father to my children. I carried on through my 20's wandering from job to job, apartment to house to apartment, not carrying about my life but only my wife and kids' lives. I refered to myself as the "successful failure" because I was always failing at everything, finances, car, jobs (never getting fired just not happy with what I was doing). When one refers to scrapping the bottom of the barrel, that was me, or at least thats how I felt. The one thing that kept me going was my wife and kids and my desire to be there for them no matter what the cost was. There was years where I couldnt afford to even have a car so I'd walk miles on end between work and grocerie shopping always seeing that my wife and kids had everything they needed, including me with them as often as possible. I unfortunately gained alot of weight through out the years and my health was never a priority of mine, and the more weight I gained the more depressed I became. I eventually found comfort in food and that was the main center of "entertainment". Looking back knowing I was a good father, the best I could be, I realize now how much my depression impacted me family, our way of life, eating habits.

All this time I knew what was wrong but there was no way to change or fix it, I was 6'4" and well over 300lbs. Reality set in and I knew the only way for me to be what I should have been born as (female) was to die and hope my beliefs in life after death/reincarnation was true so that I could be reborn as I knew I should have been. Thoughts of suicide plagued my mind devling into the deepest corners of my imagination, every situation I came acrossed be it shopping for groceries, driving down the road, walking down a street, etc.. every single situation manifested in a form of death for myself. For death was the only answer. The only, and I mean ONLY reason I never commited suicide was my love for my wife and kids, knowing that my death would cause as much or more pain then I endured being in the wrong body. Reguardless of what I wanted and could not have, I often danced with the ideas creeping from the darkness of my mind.

To view the following year of darkness please go to the page marked "All my darkness", it was seperated from this entry due to graphical and violent content.

Then one day everything changed, something inside me switched on like a light switch over night. I cant tell you what changed or how because I honestly dont know, but I recieved a drive, an energy to screw my "fate" and "destiny". To screw what people told me I could and could not do. To stop this downward spiral to my grave and do something, I decided fix things, to become a woman. How seemed to become clear on what I had to do and the peices started falling together like a masterpeice turned into a jigsaw puzzle to easy to solve. I spent hours apon hours researching transgenderism, sex change, and other like topics on the iternet. I also stopped drinking carbinated drinks knowing it only weakened my joints and made the pain in my back and legs worse, this all happened in the beginning of December 2009.

Though for years my wife knew about my desire to become a woman it was never a reality until now. She and I talked about it constantly, me more so then she but we talk alot about everything. Together we decided to go through with it, to become a woman. The helpful part was my wife's unending support and her secret of being bisexual. We were life mates so reguardless what gender either of us were, we were going to be together for eternity.

I quickly learned everything there was to know about getting a sex change, going on hormone replacement therapy, and changing who I was. I learned that I did not need to die to become alive again, more alive then I had ever been. On January 1st 2010 I began my life change. I had tried to diet countless times though out the years and they all failed, it was now, on this exact date I simply knew what was wrong. How to loose all the weight I gained, how to become the woman I really should have been. I dont know how I knew these things it was simply like an epiphony, I knew if I tried to diet I'd only fail.

So instead, on January 1st 2010 I made a lifestyle change. I changed how I eat, where I ate, what and how and what we cooked. My largest obsticle from completeing my dream was my weight, food was my comfort and thus the cause of my weight.. I had to start there. What I learned during my research into getting a sex change was I had to get under 200 lbs in order to have the surgery to begin with. In that first month I lost over 50lbs, I also sought out Dr Sara Becker whom was a specialist in transexualism/transgenderism and started HRT (hormone replacement therapy), I also started laser hair removal sessions for my face and neck. And on March 14th 2009, I submitted the legal paper work and the $160.00 to have my legal name changed to Saraphiene Allison Haldritch, which was approved and changed on March 30th 2009.

Well that brings you to speed of where I am at, what I have gone through. The rest of this blog will be more like a journal with daily, weekly, or monthly entries detailing what I am going through. What this means to me, and most importantly, how I was reborn.

 
Eternal Whispers: a gender change story © Saraphiene Haldritch 2010