Becoming Myself: The True Story of Thomas Who Became Sara (16 page)

On the day of the awards ceremony, we were escorted around the side of the presentation area, which was closed off with screens, but through a gap in the screens I could see the scrolls and plaques. It suddenly began to dawn on me that this was serious. When we reached the presentation area we were greeted by a lot of people, including some dignitaries and members of the press, along with photographers. I was called up to receive my scroll and plaque. I received a Trainee of the Year certificate and an award for excellence. I was beside myself with delight. I was then asked to pose for photographs and to give an interview to the papers, especially the
Ballyfermot People
, who highlighted the fact that, of the 1800 trainees that went through the various courses that year, only two from Ballyfermot were considered to have excelled. This really was a red-letter day for me and one I remember with great affection and appreciation.

It was ironic that great professional success happened at the same time as I was battling my personal demons, but it was in the summer of 1994 that I finally focused on getting help with my cross-dressing or at least to discover whether I was gay and if this could help explain my strong feminine instincts, which were growing stronger by the day. I heard of a nightclub at the Ormonde Hotel called the Temple of Sound and that there were men there who dressed as women. I went along to see what was happening and if I could answer some of the questions that had been vexing me for so many years. It was the first time I had ever kissed a man and it felt okay. But as the man was dressed as a woman, it still didn’t answer the question about my sexual orientation. What it did do was help me to realise that I definitely was
not
a transvestite or cross-dresser and that my problem was
something completely different. The difficulty now was that I really hadn’t a clue where to go and get the help I needed.

However, other events were to take over and distract me. It was during 1994 and early 1995 that I made my last efforts to salvage something from my marriage, but to no avail. It was on Christmas Night 1994 that I accepted that the marriage was, in fact, dead, but it was to be a few months more before I finally gave up on it for ever.

It was nigh impossible to share with anyone what was happening in my life at this time. All my Christian friends were interested in doing was quoting passages from the Bible and reminding me of my duties to attend church and to take care of Barbara. Prayer was to be the answer to everything. But it wasn’t for me. Everyone knew where I lived and how to contact me when they wanted my help with preparing
CVS
, job interviews, advice on Bible study and Sunday-school preparation etc, but not with providing me with the warmth and support I needed. I was desperate to go for a drink, or meet for a coffee, just to talk, to no avail. All of which made my sense of isolation and loneliness harder to bear, especially as living with Barbara was getting worse by the day and my health continued to deteriorate.

The loneliness was consuming me, in the way a black hole consumes everything that comes into its orbit. I was heading towards the abyss and the terror of it was, I could see it coming and there was nothing I could do to stop it. It seemed that there was no-one to help me, not my family, not my wife, not my church or my so-called friends. I simply couldn’t communicate my distress to anyone.

I began to feel that the Christian message was irrelevant to the needs of people such as me, suffering all manner of trials and tribulations, unemployment, financial difficulties, family
problems, health problems, crises of faith etc. What mattered more was that you had the right theology, the right church attendance; that you hung out with only the right brethren, that you went to the right sort of conferences and seminars, and that you remembered your place as a miserable, unworthy sinner. But Liam and Sheena Joyce and Chris and Helen Robinson were the exceptions to this rule. They showed us immense kindness and I am forever grateful to them for all their support.

But there was no support from either of our families. The exception was one of Barbara’s sisters, who had many problems of her own. Yet she was the one who provided us with the most practical help and was by far the most generous and supportive. When she went shopping she would bring some food items for us as a gift. She would call in and spend several hours at a time keeping Barbara company and helping out around the house. The trouble with this help was that it wasn’t always the kind of help I needed.

There was no emotional support, no friendship in the way I needed it. I needed to have a best friend and confidant, not just a counsellor. I needed friends with whom I could go for a meal, walk and talk about other things apart from the Bible. I needed people who would call me on the phone to see how I was and not just to talk religion. Nor did I need people constantly reminding me of my Christian duty to look after Barbara. Of course they were not to know about her behaviour or for that matter the affairs, nor the violence and verbal abuse. If I was to leave her, I would simply be that ‘bastard’ who left his disabled wife.

All the strenuous efforts I had made to try to make our relationship and marriage work were brought to a sudden halt on
Christmas night 1994. One of our neighbours had been invited in to have a Christmas drink with us. The evening was pleasant enough and there was not a sign of anything being amiss; nothing to arouse my suspicions. In fact, it was strangely nice to have Barbara being so civil to me. But all that changed around midnight when Barbara went to the kitchen with the dishes to do the washing up — an unusual event in itself — and the neighbour offered to help, as I had prepared the food. They were away for a considerable length of time and I was becoming increasingly concerned. I felt more and more that something wasn’t right, so I went into the kitchen to see if everything was okay. As I walked towards the kitchen, I could hear them muttering and Barbara telling the neighbour that she really did fancy him. He told her he felt the same and then I heard the ruffle of clothes. My heart was pounding as it dawned on me that they were fondling each other. When I put my head round the door, they were kissing and had their arms around each other in a tight embrace. Her hands were fondling his bottom.

In an instant I knew that all my efforts at trying to salvage something from the situation were a complete waste of time. I confronted them while they were still cuddling each other. The neighbour was mortified about being caught and tried to let on that there was nothing between them, only making himself look absolutely pathetic in the process. Barbara, on the other hand, was quite brazen and made no attempt to disguise how she felt about him. The game was well and truly up for all of us and I really was in a complete emotional meltdown.

I felt a state of panic on the one hand and feelings of elation on the other. Here was the proof, if proof were needed, that she really did not love me or want me. It couldn’t have
been clearer. But what to do about it next was the problem. In the meantime, the neighbour stopped coming in and Barbara made her resentment obvious, blaming me because he would not come in to see her.

Over the coming days I had to come to terms with the whole ugly situation, and added to this was the fact that all my earnest prayers, fasting, loyalty and faithfulness were to prove utterly useless. Aristotle’s words were to taunt me: ‘good deeds shall not go unpunished’. From this point on, my life was to enter into what I call the ‘winding-down’ phase. By that I mean I developed a deepening depression and an overwhelming sense of despair, compounded by a growing crisis of faith. All my years of believing and serving the gospel, of church-going and witnessing, of prayer and fasting and the ridicule and rejection I faced constantly because of my public profession of faith, all came to naught. I really did have nowhere to go and no-one to go to for comfort and support. I was absolutely alone and desperate.

Part Two

Letting Go

I
first got to know Maria through a phone chatline in early 1995. The conversation I had with her was to prove the first life-changing event in a life-changing year.

No doubt there will be those who will smirk at the idea of my using chatlines, but at this point it was either do that or drink and drug myself into oblivion. It wasn’t ideal and under normal circumstances I would never have done it, but these were far from normal circumstances. I felt so isolated, so rejected, and so lonely, and the irony is that using a chatline and getting to meet Maria most likely saved my life; I am certain of it.

The more I shared with Maria about Barbara’s illness and its debilitating effects, the more she demonstrated her concern. When I had shared with her the very difficult financial situ-ation that we were in, Maria vowed to help me. When I confided in her that Barbara was drinking and smoking our money away, Maria sent her £80 and one hundred cigarettes, which Barbara accepted without showing even the slightest
appreciation. In fact, she had to be shamed into phoning Maria to say thank you.

It was in April of 1995 that I noticed a serious deterioration in my health. The panic attacks were getting much worse and my depression was deepening, to the point where I was no longer contemplating suicide as a thought, but was now considering how best to do it, when and where. The frequency of the panic attacks was increasing and with this came a very noticeable increase in pains in my head. On one occasion the pain was so bad that I was convinced I had a brain tumour. Once, I was driving from my office along the South Circular Road, towards the junction with Clanbrassil Street. The pain was truly overwhelming and my vision was blurring. It was very difficult to drive. I stopped the car in the middle of the road and got out, walking around for a few minutes while other cars had to drive around mine. I eventually got back into my car and drove home.

Barbara had a dinner ready for me but I could barely look at it, never mind eat it. ‘What’s the matter with you?’ she asked, in her usual indifferent tone. I was unable to answer and my head collapsed onto the plate of hot food. I remained like this for a few moments and then made my way to bed. At this stage the pain was worsening and I was also feeling very sick in my stomach. As I lay on the bed I curled up into the foetal position and swayed back and forth.

Barbara eventually came into the room and sat in the chair by the window without saying a word. After a few minutes, she asked if I wanted a doctor, but I was unable to answer. She then said that I could suit myself and left the room. A few minutes later she came back in, at which time I was in floods of tears and convulsing. She looked at me and asked for
money for dog food. She never called an ambulance. I could hardly believe my ears.

The next morning, I went to see my
GP
in order to get some help. He promised me that he would get me into counselling and prescribed Prozac. He never got me the help and I came off the Prozac very soon after, because I was having bad side effects. This meant trying to cope without any medical intervention whatsoever. It was indescribably difficult trying to function on a day-to-day basis. Work was also becoming more and more stressful and I was getting ever nearer to my breakdown.

Maria contacted me a couple of days after our conversation about my difficult situation and asked how we were getting on. I told her about what had happened over the past few days and she was shocked and concerned. So much so that she travelled all the way from Limerick to lend her support. It was then that she invited Barbara and I to go to her home in Newcastle West for a weekend, as she felt a change of scenery would do us both the world of good. She had no idea how bad our relationship was at the time and all she knew from me was that I was trying to be as loyal as I possibly could under very difficult circumstances. I hadn’t let on about the events which had taken place at Christmas and their effects upon me.

We both accepted Maria’s invitation, but as was so often the case, Barbara changed her mind and suggested that I should go on my own as I needed the break more than she did. I had mixed feelings about this, but I was happy at the prospect of getting away from Dublin and the whole situation.

Maria lived in a cottage which was just up the hill, off the main street in Newcastle West. It was very quaint and it was
definitely designed for shorter people! I lost count of the number of times I banged my head going through the doorways and coming up and down the stairs. I loved the house and the back garden, where we spent some time talking and getting to know each other better.

As I got to know Maria better, I could not help liking her, but I also learned of how sad her own life was and how she had been through the mill herself. She had recently had an operation on her womb to remove cancer. The cancer eventually took her life some years later, at just 48 years of age. As I would later discover, Maria was also mentally ill, and this illness led her into actions that were not normal and caused a great deal of distress and hurt for other people. Maria suffered from multiple personalities and it was under this influence that she did many strange things. That said, there is absolutely no doubt in my mind and the minds of others who knew her that she genuinely did not know she was doing the things she did. Maria was also the first person who had been a real friend to me, and for that I am truly grateful.

While I was on this weekend break I felt a growing sense of the full enormity of how damaged I was and how my life had been one unbroken stream of abuse and rejection. My feeling was that they were the root cause of my complete lack of self-worth and confidence. It was this abuse and its effects, I thought, that made me feel useless and feel that I must always prove myself to everyone around me. For the first time since being a teenager at the holiday home Coolure House, I felt I could not cope with going back to Dublin and the people who had collectively destroyed me. I was dreading the return so much that I told Maria I could not cope with the thought of going back. She told me I didn’t have to and so I phoned Barbara to say I was staying over an extra night. She was indifferent.