For over 30 years, I had struggled with feeling different. I had never felt like myself, like how I see myself in my mind’s eye. Just like the TV show Quantum Leap, it is sort of like that, feeling like I am one person, living in the life of another person.
I used to think that maybe I was an alien and my parents accidentally left me on Earth to be raised by humans. Or perhaps, I was really a mutant and I was waiting for my superhuman abilities to mature. I knew something was different about me, but I never knew what.
I found myself often being jealous of girls. Jealous of their relationships with each other, jealous that they got all the good clothes while all I could wear was jeans and shorts. I started dressing like a girl before I was even a teenager because it felt right. It wasn’t about sex or erotic sensations, just the desire to feel normal. To feel like myself.
I would spend hours a week looking at women’s magazines, staring at the way they dressed, the way they looked, their hair, their makeup, everything about them. When I looked at my first Playboy magazine, I was able to adore the shapes of their bodies, the tones of their skin, parts of the body I didn’t have. Again, it wasn’t for erotic sensations, it was like looking at fine art, admiring all the artist had done to produce his work.
I found myself constantly longing to be able to fulfill the role of a girl, to act like a girl, to look like a girl, to BE a girl. I thought I was messed up. I beat myself up mentally. I hated myself for feeling this way and things only got worse as I got older. I learned from watching society that there are things that boys do not do. Boys don’t wear girls clothes. Boys don’t act this way or like girl things. Boys like boy things, boys are rough and tumble. But I wasn’t. I didn’t like the things boys liked. I didn’t like rough and tumble. Instead I learned to fake it. I put on my first mask.
I pushed down and hid everything that was real about me, and instead, put on more masks so society would leave me alone or better yet, accept me. I was afraid to be me because I was afraid of being made fun of, of being an outcast, of being ignored. I tried to fit in. I wanted to fit in. I played 1 season of every sport just so I might be considered cool. I passed on toys and things I really wanted, for toys and things that I thought might make my peers like me. I hid myself behind masks so well that I didn’t even know who I was anymore.
I met Jesus when I was 17. I heard his voice call to me. It was so clear. As clear as you see the sun rise in the morning and know the sun is rising, I heard him. He called me and I ran to him. I knew Jesus could fix this problem with me. He could take away my desires to dress like a girl, act like a girl, be a girl; my feelings of self-induced shame and guilt, my pain and torture of looking in the mirror every morning, seeing my body, and not feeling right about what I saw. But He didn’t. Maybe it just takes time. So I kept living…surviving…wearing my masks.
I started dating girls in high school, both before and after I met Jesus. I thought I was attracted to girls, but really I was identifying with them. I thought I wanted to date them, but I really wanted to be them. However I wasn’t a girl on the outside, I was born with the body of a guy and guys are supposed to like girls, not want to be them, so I just went with it. I put on another mask. I really hoped that dating girls would make me more of a guy. I dated a lot of girls. I was committed to just about all of them, but eventually the story was the same, they would break it off with me. I couldn’t give them what they needed. They needed a guy to treat them like a girl. I could fake it for a time, a couple of years at most, some less. More masks to wear.
Then I met my future wife. I heard God tell me to ask her out. The same voice that called to me when I was 17, called to me again. I didn’t really want to ask her out because I was tired of dating girls and failing them (for reasons unknown at the time), but I did anyway. The rest is history. When we decided to get married, I just knew this would fix me. I would be a husband, I would most likely become a father and I could put all this girl nonsense behind me. Let’s face it, what’s more manly than being a great husband and father. That didn’t work either. Everything was still there. The feelings, the dressing, the inability to be the man that she needed to treat her like a woman. The first 12 years of our marriage were filled with this. I was wearing so many masks, so well, that she didn’t even know me.
Throughout this entire time, I also struggled with mild depression. The inability to focus and complete tasks on time. The dread of waking and dragging through the day, longing to crawl back in bed or soak myself in some form of escapism, be it TV, work, music, anything to keep me busy. Then there was the anxiety. Watching women live their lives and interact with others thinking about how great that would be and then knowing that I couldn’t do that. It was like being trapped in a box and not being able to get out. I found myself despising them at times because if a woman was more masculine, that was okay. She could dress like a man and no one would care, but society frowns really big on men being feminine and dressing like women. More times than I care to count, I found myself contemplating suicide because things would just be over. No more pain, no more depression, no more anxiety. Just the arms of Jesus. But I couldn’t do it. Knowing I would be leaving scars of pain on my family, my friends, my wife and my kids, I couldn’t go through with it. I would rather wear the masks. Wearing the masks was less painful.
In January of 2013, doctors found a tumor behind my son’s eye. My inability to focus on work and my love for science and understanding had me all over the internet looking, learning about what was going on with him, and in the process I discovered what was going on with me.
Gender Dysphoria.
Gender dysphoria is a formal diagnosis used by psychologists and physicians to describe people who experience significant dysphoria (anxiety and discontent) with the sex they were assigned at birth and/or the gender roles associated with that sex. Medical professionals have found links that point to the biological factors that may cause gender dysphoria. It is a myriad of things that vary from person to person based on genetics, in-utero brain development, hormones of the fetus, hormones of the mother, and more.
The deeper I dug into the research, the more I found a true inner mirror. Everything I read, watched, experienced, was like I was looking at my life. The people who had gender dysphoria were explaining my life, my experiences, my feelings. It really was like looking in a mirror. I read about the causes. I learned about the human gestation process, how the body and the brain form and work together and how people with gender dysphoria are different. I read about the treatments, the success rates of the different types of treatments and the quality of life of those people after their treatments. It was amazing. Finally, an answer to what I dealt with all my life. I sat and cried when I watched others talking about their lives before their treatment and their lives after their treatment. They were so full of joy. An indescribable radiance shining from them. The hope that I too could be treated was amazing. But I couldn’t be treated. What would that mean for my future, my family, my faith. Surely there was another way, a different treatment. Unfortunately the success of other treatments was grim or even sub-par at best.
I wrestled with God for months. I sought Christian counseling to rid me of this once and for all, which turned out to be a waste of time due to the complete distortion of the Word of God. I begged God to please remove this from me, make me whole, make me complete without having to endure the ridicule, ostracizing, and destruction of my family. All my life I had asked God to take these feelings away, to fix me, but he never did. Then in the midst of a nervous breakdown (brought on by the thought that I couldn’t be treated for this), I did something I had never done before. I said, “God, why did you make me like this?” He answered…
“There is an entire community of people who I created, that I love, that I want to know me, that I want to be in a loving relationship with. I want to show them love like they’ve never seen before. I want to take away their sin. I want to heal their wounds. I want them to live with me forever. The world has cast them aside because they don’t understand them. They’ve been shoved down because they aren’t like everyone else. I want them to know I am still here. I made you this way in order to be an ambassador for me to them. I made you in the same way I made them so that they can see that I love them just as much as I love you. I want them to experience the peace you’ve experienced. I want them to experience the life transformation that you’ve experienced. I want to be in community with them like I am in community with you. I will transform you. I will reshape you like the potter reshapes the clay to form it into a new vessel for a new purpose. I will give you everything you need to enter their world, but I want to use you so that they may know me.”
I know you are most likely sitting there in disbelief. I still pinch myself from time to time. After I picked myself up off the floor, I decided that if this is the life I am to lead, I needed to know that His word backed me up. I didn’t want to sin. I didn’t want to live my life contrary to His word. I also knew, from experience, that I could not trust blindly for man to teach me about God’s word, that I must rely on the Holy Spirit (1 Jn 2:27). So in August of 2013, I began to walk through God’s word looking for anything that would tell me anything that was contrary to what I heard. Anything that would tell me I was hearing any voice but God’s. Anything to say that I was in sin for being transgender. I have not found it because I am convinced it does not exist. Being transgender is not a sin. Being reconciled in order to proclaim His glory is not a sin. Being called to use our lives for Him is scriptural.
When God calls us to go, to our neighbors, our city or to another part of the world (no matter how dangerous) to reach a lost people for His glory, we, as a body, never question it. Instead we research what our lives will look like and how we are to be his ambassadors to where we are called. We know when it is God who calls us, because we find a peace that surpasses all understanding. I have this peace that surpasses all understanding and THIS is how I know where God wants me.
March 2013: Began experiencing my dysphoria to a level never felt before
April 2013: Began researching what I was experiencing
June 2013: Began speaking with a christian counselor mentor
August 2, 2013: Had a nervous breakdown because I didn’t think I could be treated
August 2013: Began researching, studying scripture, and praying.
October 2013: Began seeing professional therapists who specialize in gender dysphoria.
January 2014: Medically diagnosed with Gender Dysphoria
April 2014: Began hormone replacement therapy to start healing my mind and transforming my body
November 2014: Legally changed my name to Ashley Nikole.
January 2015: Received Facial Feminization Surgery
April 2015: Declared legally female
July 2015: Received genital reconstructive surgery
October 2015: Began a new full-time position as Ashley Nikole
January 2016: Started dating a wonderful woman
December 2016: Became engaged to be married
Jul – Dec 2017: Lost 70 lbs to find the real me.
July 2018: Got married to a wonderful woman
April 2019: Ran my first half Marathon
December 2019: Voice Feminization Surgery
October 2022: Living a happy and wonderful life fully as me, as I was created to be.
I realize I have been asked to serve in a way that allows me to be healed of what has ailed me all my life, to remove the masks and live a truly authentic life with myself and others, and in a way that God can use me to glorify Him. I am simply a tool to be used to do a job. I won’t lie, I’m scared of what the future looks like, but I do not fear it and I gladly give my life for His service. Jesus came that I, that we, may have life and have it to the full (Jn 10:10).
Shedding Shadows 