Friends and family,

If you find this letter in your posession it means that I am privileged and honored to call you friend. Those that are mere aquaintences come and go, but my friends stay the same. You, whom I call friend, are also a part of my family and vice versa. Everyone I hold dear has the amazing ability to turn my day around when its been rough, and I value every moment spent with them. I just want to extend my heartfelt thanks to each and every one of you. I feel truly blessed to have such people to walk through this life with. It has become apparent to me in the past few weeks that I need to reaquaint myself with everyone. Especially those who are my friends. I thought for a long time on how best to do this, then it occured to me. I should do what comes naturally. 'Tell a story'.

The story I have to tell is of a child and their journey through life. Not just any old life, but one that is on the whole fairly unique. One in twelve thousand to be exact.

The story begins with a child of about six or seven years old, it occured to him that there was something different about himself as compared to other children. The boys he grew up with wanted to play 'army', 'football', or some other aggressive thing. To him these things were just silly. He spent lots of time playing with his sister and the neighbor girls down the street. Oh how He longed to be just like them! He wanted to wear pretty dresses and play with lovely dolls. He began to experiment in private. At first it was just dress up. Then, after a while, it felt like coming home after a long journey each day. He got caught once or twice. He didn't understand why everyone said it was wrong, only that it was. It would deter him for a while, but the lure of feeling like a girl would eventually draw him back. Soon he learned to hide that part of himself from the world.

This continued into adolescence. He lived each day for the time when he could come home and feel 'girly'. He always waited until bedtime, lest he be caught. He couldn't wait for everyone to go to bed! It was pure agony! He would feel giddy, quietly waiting for everyone to drift off. He would creep silently out of bed and steal away to the bathroom. There, in the sanctuary of that tiny space, he could let down his guard and be himself. Noone would know, noone would ridicule him. He lived every day for those little escapes from reality.

Soon he dicovered makeup. He envied all the beautiful colors women got to wear on their faces! He once stole a halloween makeup set from the bathroom cupboard . It was with this little set of colors he learned about makeup by trial and error. He even dreesed up, for Halloween, as a Vampire for years in a row just to wear the makeup! The Vampire had the best red lips and overall look. Makeup was a wonderful thing. Life went on like this for many years.

In his mid-teens he began to date seriously. Things went along in a fairly normal way. He tried so hard to live a 'normal' life. He would purge all of the feminine things he had, then would get hopelessly depressed. He soon realized it was his feminine self come back with a vengence. Life without 'her' was no life at all. So he would begin collecting feminine things when and where he could. It was tricky coming up with such frilly things without embarassing himself, but before long, he would be back to a double life. In the light of day he was a 'normal' male. In the privacy of night she was as Female as any natural woman, at heart.

It was during this period of his life when it occured to him, "one day he would be a woman". He would cross the gender barrier, despite the existing obstacles . He just didnt know how. It took several more years to answer that question. Over the course of those years he continued to date. Trying hard to be as masculine as possible, and living in pure misery, just to avoid immediate problems. He was 'in the closet', but in a different way from most. The few long term relationships he had accused him of being 'Gay'. He tried in vain to explain to them that being 'Transgendered' was far from being 'Gay'. Those words fell upon deaf ears.

Sometime after Highschool a close friend convinced him to do something about the way he felt. By not accepting and dealing with his Gender issues he was speeding down the path to certain suicide . Given those options, he chose life. He decided on a new occupation, went back to school to learn it, and moved away from his home town.

He enrolled in school in Salt Lake City, Utah. It was there, in the midst of the largest city he had ever lived in, he finally found answers. With these answers came friends, hope, counseling, and Hormone therapy. He was begining to feel like he could be himself. Without the fear of retribution by those who knew of his condition. Life was getting better.

Through counseling he learned the name for his condition. It is known as 'Gender Identity Dysphoria' (GID). GID, in general, is the realization that while the body may be one gender, the mind associates strongly with the opposite. It is accompanied by depression, self hatred, and a general feeling of uhappiness. This stems from the belief that he, or she, was born into the wrong body. According to the "Harry Benjamin International Gender Dysphoria Association" GID occurs in 1 out of every 11,900 males and 1 out of every 30,400 females. I am not alone!

After seeing a counselor for a period of months, he was referred to another doctor for 'Hormone Replacement Therapy' (HRT). After a time his facial features softened, he began to grow breast tissue, overall his body changed dramatically. He was no longer trim and muscular. He was now smoothly fleshed and more 'shapely' than before. He was well on the way to womanhood.

In February of 2001 he died (Not literally, but metaphorically) and was reborn. Not in a church, not in a temple, but in a courthouse. He had changed his birth name to acurately fit her new gender. Her name was not the only thing that changed. Along with it she got the right to be her appropriate gender, after all those years! Thats right, in the eyes of the law, She was as female as any other woman on earth. She was in heaven!

That same day she went to her boss and gave him the paperwork. She also went down and applied for her new drivers license. It was a wonderful day! She went to work the next day in full feminine glory, drivers license and all. Life was beginning anew for her. She could see a future, she could see herself living past today. All self detrimental thoughts were gone, or fading. She would live. She was Female, finally.

Life went on for a few months before fate kicked her in the ass. By the things that happened next, it was obvious that Salt Lake City was no longer where she was meant to be. She went to work one day in April at 7:45 AM, she left before noon, permanently. She was so infuriated by the ignorance and pure malice of a few individuals that she resigned from her managerial position. It was not her crew she had issues with, it was the high ranking officials! One of these was the Human Resources Representative! She wound up teaching him how to handle TG issues! She was Furious to say the least.

Being basically forced to resign was merely the hand of fate, slapping her out of the comfortable rut she was creating. She came to realize that it was time to come up with the required funds to finish her transition. She stayed in Utah only long enough to get her life in order and packed away. She decided that Southern California was the place for to be for raising the needed funds. She also had a friend there, who was willing to let her stay with them while she got back on her feet.

So to So Cal she went. Which brings us to the present and the reason for this story. I will soon be going to work as a Massage Therapist, selling my car, selling my bed (hand made by me), and anything else I can to raise the needed funds to complete my transition. In case your still wondering, the child in the story is myself, and I am raising money for Sex Reassignment Surgery (SRS). I need this surgery to be complete and sound in mind, body and spirit. It is not a choice, its a matter of survival for me. This is the all consuming goal in my life now. It must happen, it will happen. I need to get past this surgery to plan for the future. As of now I can see no future without surgery. In order for this to happen I need several things to meet the criteria for elligibility. The criteria for eligibilty are as follows:

and females seeking genital surgery. They are:

1. Legal age of majority in the patient's nation;

2. Usually 12 months of continuous hormonal therapy for those without a medical contraindication (see

below, "Can Surgery Be Performed Without Hormones and the Real-life Experience");

3. 12 months of successful continuous full time real-life experience. Periods of returning to the original

gender may indicate ambivalence about proceeding and generally should not be used to fulfill this criterion;

4. If required by the mental health professional, regular responsible participation in psychotherapy throughout

the real-life experience at a frequency determined jointly by the patient and the mental health professional.

Psychotherapy per se is not an absolute eligibility criterion for surgery;

5. Demonstrable knowledge of the cost, required lengths of hospitalizations, likely complications, and post

surgical rehabilitation requirements of various surgical approaches;

6. Awareness of different competent surgeons.

1. Demonstrable progress in consolidating ones gender identity;

2. Demonstrable progress in dealing with work, family, and interpersonal issues resulting in a significantly

better state of mental health; this implies satisfactory control of problems such as sociopathy, substance

abuse, psychosis, suicidality, for instance).

It is my hope that by asking for help in this manner I have at least given you a little insight into what life was like for me as a male. It is not in me to go back to that way of life, for a way of life it was not. I have removed the mask, and will never put it back on. The older I get, the more likely it becomes that I will have complications. It is not unheard of for a Transegendered person to die on the operating table. I hope you see my urgency in this.

Thank you for reading, and I wish the best for you and yours no matter what your decision.

I love you all,

Belladonna