What follows is a transcript from Ruschelle's video, which you can watch here: https://youtu.be/c7ImhZEAGoA
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Hi, I am Ruschelle.
I'm transitioning. I'm 57 years old, and I started about 17 months ago.
I identify as a female transgendered woman. I responded to her and she, and always have been that in my mind. I'm just making my body equal to that now. I always knew I was in the wrong body, but I only came to the decision [to transition] recently, and I've only become happy recently.
MY STORY
I reached high school, and people were pairing off and they were going drinking and going to the park and partying and I had never heard of this marijuana. I went deep into that because I was very uncomfortable around girls. I mean, I didn't really have any idea what I was maybe gay or something else. I just knew that I was just... it just wasn't easy for me.
I mean, it wasn't easy for other friends too, so I thought I was relatively normal but I mean, time went by and it just never got easier. I just got drunker and drunker.
I would be the guy who was always really drunk at the party and this was a party of teenagers that were really drunk. And then I started doing LSD. That would really cover it. No one expected you to speak too much when you are on LSD. So I did over 200 years of LSD between 13 and, I guess, 20-21. Yeah. I just sort of blocked out my whole teenagehood. In high school I was just a stoner.
I had another really good friend who was, I think he was maybe a closeted homosexual in high school we got along very well and we were very very popular for funny guys and we were always smoking joints and so we we stuck together quite a bit then we went together into hospitality management and we got jobs in the hospitality fields as managers in our twenties. And that was the eighties and I still had no idea what was going on with me. I just assumed I was gay then, and I couldn't deal with it.
In my late 20s, I'd met a girl. And I fell in love with her and I fell really quick. Before we had made love, when we did try to make love, I ended up telling her about myself and she said “See you later. I'm not gonna be doing that.” If I wanted to go by myself, it would always be about. You know women's clothing or women’s underwear, or what I’d look like with pretty hair, and I just thought I was like, (what do you call it?) a fetishist, you know, I'm just a weirdo, so I wouldn't talk to anybody about it. I just kept it quiet and I did it. Oh it just made my stomach rumble. Huh, I just need another beer, another shot of vodka. I just thought I was a sickening disgusting human being and I decided to move out to Banff and continue my debauchery in alcohol. And I did that for... 1993 through 2014.
And I don't know how I survived. I don’t know how my liver took it. But yeah, I survived. Finally when my body just said no, you can't do this anymore. And my nerves sort of got shot and I've never had any problem with drinking. Drinking was the thing that saved me. Now the thing that saved me, I couldn’t do it anymore. It was like, oh my god.
So I phoned my lovely sisters in Toronto and said “I’m going crazy, please help me! I’m going to kill myself!” And they said come back and you can live here for as long as you want, don't worry about it. And then I came back and I finally said I’ve got to tell them how I feel about myself. And I did and they took me to the doctor and my doctor got me hooked up for CAMH and then I went and they sent me to a rainbow drug treatment and alcohol treatment there and I met a doctor there and he really helped me, and he prescribed medication, which just, I don't know how it did it but it sort of, it really helped me and I stopped drinking for about I don't know, about three months, which I had done before, just out of free will. But this time when I fell off the wagon and I started drinking again, I got so sick. And the doctor said, no, the medication isn’t supposed to make you sick. So I don't know if it was the fact that I was on hormones and it was changing my body physically, but when I drank after not doing it for so long, I got so sick.
I basically completely quit smoking and drinking it just... I don't want to anymore. It made me sick. So now I feel very healthy and with the hormones, I feel very happy. Now I have normal human being problems not crazy drunk, want to be transgendered woman problems.
LIFE NOW
My hope since dreams for the future? Well, my hopes and dreams for the future are to finally be happy. Constantly. Well not constantly. I realized that everyone’s life is not necessarily constantly happy, but what drives me, what makes me happy, is developing friendships. But most of the people I've met since I started a transition. I’ve met most of them online or through Sherbourne Health Clinic’s Mature Trans Women meetings. Just meeting them in the park and getting to know them and speaking to them through messenger and a couple of zoom meetings and so I really want to nurture those relationships.
When the patio did open here on Church Street, (I live very close to Church Street) me and a new friend I met online went for drinks and I had to meet her over (for drinks… not alcoholic drinks) for drinks on the patio and I had to walk over there my place on Sherbourne Street to Church Street, and I’m walking over there, I'm all dressed up. And I'm walking by some guy and he points at me and he just starts laughing. So I guess I'm gonna have to start getting used to that.
When I'm starting these relationships with people, I'm making sure every single thing I say is honest, it doesn't matter what it is, there's no lies that I'm saying I'm not saying, like I did before, “Oh yeah, I’m macho this. I didn't lose.” I can just be myself and it's so much better to be able to say things like that. I mean. Having somebody to empathize with you and having a girlfriend is... just love it.
Oh my god. I have all these things I want to do but there’s not enough time. Yeah, I want to meet a guy and have a happy relationship. I mean, my expectations aren't really crazy or anything, I just want to have a happy life but yeah, those relationships are the thing that's keeping me going. If I didn't have those, yeah, I would be really bad because at the beginning I was like that, when I first moved out of Pat's house and was just beginning of my transition.
LOOKING BACK
Well, if I could go back 10 or 15 years ago or longer. I would tell myself to transition, do something. Change your life. Talk to someone, talk to a doctor. I mean at different points of my life I thought different things about how I was or how I, and I think that at any time of my life I could have gone to a doctor and asked him and told him how I felt (or her). And they may have, or maybe not, they may have steered me in the right direction. I mean if I had a therapist or a counselor, someone to speak to about it. It would have helped. And remember that you're not the only one there's so many other people that are like you and they haven't made that decision yet. So you tell that person. Make sure that along with your happiness, you work to make other girls' lives a little bit easier.
RUSCHELLE’S MESSAGE TO YOU
Well, if I had anything to say to the world about me; Please don't think I'm scary. I'm just a person that was in the wrong body. I was a man. But I was me; a female. And as that man, as that female in that man body, was a terrible person. I brought pain to so many people, men, women, professionally, socially, romantically.
I am so much better now. I've only become happy recently. So my life has just started.
And I'm happy.
Richelle my dear you are such a beautiful soul. I'm writing this on my phone with tears of happiness for you. It truly is a spectacular world when lived authentically! I just received my OHIP approval for GRS Montreal. No matter what happens you've already won your happiness!Love you sister.
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