Transitioning Home
by poetheather

For Sergeant Thomas Simmons, getting injured in Iraq was just the start of an adventure that would throw him down the rabbit hole into a world where nothing made sense anymore. Having to restart his life, this soldier has to take his battlefield courage and turn it to a different arena in order to face this newest set of challenges. He just wonders if he is strong enough to handle this newest change in his life.

Fifteen

The whump of the IED rocked the Humvee. The lead vehicle skewed and tumbled under the force of the explosion. The eruption of gunfire was immediate, from the vehicles and the Fedayeen who were on either side of them. The gunfire from the AK-47’s slammed into the Humvee and right through the thin skin. A few men screamed as they were injured. The sound of the .50 cal started and dirt was torn up as well as bodies. Thomas and the four others in the vehicle leapt out and began to move from cover to cover closer to the ambush. Staying in the Humvees was suicide.

Thomas was using a palm tree for cover, returning fire as he had been taught. The fight wasn’t supposed to be like this. They had won the war. Iraqi units had broken under the might of the US forces and then the victors went about trying to help rebuild the ravaged country. The 101st had worked hard in Mosul, trying to fix just about everything there, as a gesture to the Iraqi’s that they were only there to help. And then the attacks began. He chose his next bit of cover and moved under the cover fire of Peterson. The 249 rumbled on full auto, keeping the insurgents heads down.

He opened fire and dropped one of them with a three round burst to center mass. The figure spun slightly as it fell. The man had been dressed like any other Iraqi he had seen on the streets of Mosul, with the exception of the headscarf covering his face, like some sort of bandit from a western. He supplied some cover fire for the movement of a few other guys in his squad. He had moved close enough to the insurgents that he could hear them jabbering in Iraqi. There was not going to be any way to figure out what they were saying, as their translator had been in the Humvee that had rolled. A quick glance showed that at least one medic had made it over there. He pulled the trigger and nothing happened.

Cursing, he popped out the clip and yanked one free from his LBV. It slammed home and he pulled back the charging handle three times, as he had been taught in basic training, to get the weapon ready to fire burst. He spun around the rock to engage when he heard someone to his left yell out grenade. The explosion was loud and more than dirt was falling of the hard packed sand. Thomas rolled out of cover and rushed the position.

All that was left were the remains of three insurgents, bodies torn by the grenade. They didn’t have the benefit of Kevlars or flak vests to reduce the sheer trauma. One of the guys to his right yelled, “Clear!”

He joined in. A couple of soldiers were congratulating Hernandez on his throw. Thomas merely headed back to the Humvee, the sound of gunfire still rattling his ears. The faces, or what had been left of them, just lingered there in his memory. He shuddered at the thought that maybe he would end up like that.

* * * * * *

Thomas was tangled in his sheets, his skin clammy from all the sweating. He was nauseous and his heart was racing. He struggled free of the sheets and sat up, groaning. Grabbing his cane, he used it to help lever himself up. His nightgown fell to his knees and he limped to the bathroom slowly. Splashing water on his face, Thomas rubbed the skin of his face, the slight stubble skritching his palm. He looked at himself in the mirror and frowned. There were dark circles under his eyes and they looked red and puffy. He started at the face that looked back. His heart was pounding faster and he had to tell himself that what he was seeing was real, that his hair was now longer and it was him looking back. Really.

The longer hair certainly made him look different, changed the shape of his face and the look of everything else. He just looked at himself, breathing slow, trying to calm down, trying to connect to the foreign reflection. Pushing a strand of hair behind his ear, Thomas closed his eyes and tried to use the calming techniques he had learned in his counseling for PTSD. They were slowly helping him in a number of areas.

Once he was done in the bathroom, Thomas limped out to the kitchen and got himself some water. He drank about half of what he had poured at once and then he refilled his glass. He sat down heavily at the computer, the chair creaking under him. It was five in the morning and he had been planning on getting up in two hours, so he figured that he would remain up. There was a short wait after he turned on the computer while it rebooted and ran through his email. He pulled up the pictures that the girls had rendered. It was impressive how close the pictures they had made looked like him with this new long hair. Since he had dressed, he now saw how much they looked like him. It had really done a great job of giving him a preview of what he would look like.

It was totally bizarre. He was so not used to seeing himself in any other way except with short hair. The hair was also something tough to deal with. It had ended up in his mouth several times and he had to keep brushing it out of his face. While it looked good, he was still trying to get used to it as he had gone from short to long hair quickly. The two girls had laughed at him as he had initially struggled with it, as he made faces and coughed several times when it ended up going wildly all over his face. They had told him that he would get used to it in time and not to worry about it all that much. He was sure it was easy for them to say.

His email had a response from the local support group down in Nashville, letting him know that he could come to their meetings. It also gave him the directions to the church where they were meeting in Nashville. He smiled seeing that. This would let him go out and meet others dealing with this. It was one of the things that the Doc had mentioned would be very helpful with his transition; the whole being able to talk to people who were actually dealing with the same things he was. Apparently, the group had a few people who were involved in the national transgender scene and wrote articles for some of the more prominent magazines. He figured that there would be a lot of experience he could draw from and he was looking forward to that.

Thomas sent off a reply, letting them know that he planned to show up at the next meeting, and then used MapQuest to figure out where the hell the meeting place was. It was just a little off of the interstate so he figured that it wouldn’t be too difficult to find, which was nice. Next weekend he would go and meet these people and see if they would be able to help. He sighed, realizing that he also would have to start classes next week. Rhymer brushed the hair out of his face again, where it had drifted over one eye. Maybe he should use a scruncii-thingy to make a ponytail out of it? That would help him cope with it a bit better until he had gotten used to the longer hair and besides, he had seen lots of guys with ponytails. He was sure he could play it off and still come across male, when so much of himself seemed to scream female.

Supposedly, Stacy and Tiffany would come over later to help him learn how to do things with his hair so he could tame the wild animal. He wasn’t too sure how much of that he wanted to learn as it seemed overwhelming to him, parts of who he was were rebelling at the idea of learning these things. True, it was one of those supposedly feminine skills that maybe he should learn some of but he really wasn’t all that interested in some of these… skills. Taking care of his hair in a trouble-free non-complex manner might be all he could handle. He had been like that with his own hair when it had been short. He had known a number of guys who had exerted effort with their hair and he couldn’t understand them, that much work didn’t make much sense to him.

And the whole makeup thing also made him feel uncomfortable. Thomas utterly understood the reasoning behind military face paint, but this? What purpose did it really serve? He had read a few articles on makeup online but he really couldn’t figure any of it out. What the hell was he supposed to do with some of the tools and items that were mentioned? That and the… eyelash curler which looked like it was some sort of medieval torture device. Was he really supposed to use that? He wasn’t sure that he could even use something like that without flinching. And the whole idea of putting make up on in order to look like you weren’t wearing any was just bizarre. The whole concept was bewildering and he really didn’t need any more confusion than he was already dealing with.

He turned off his computer and made his way to the couch, rubbing his hip which ached slightly. He sat down, looked across the dark room, and thought about things. What the hell was he thinking, doing things like this? Was he really thinking seriously about this whole girl thing? Shouldn’t he be more worried about finding a wife? Getting a good job, so he could afford a family. Act like a responsible man instead of a willful little girl? He rubbed his tight neck, moving his hand under his hair. The two bands of muscle of his neck were tight and he tried to work them loose with his good hand, trying to knead the unyielding muscle. Everything that he had seen and experienced pointed to the diagnosis of him having Gender Dysphoria as being accurate but parts of him were still unsure. Thomas had never really thought about things like this before, thought about his life in this way. He had played football, he had joined the Army and done well in it. At no point in any of this had he felt like he wanted to be a girl. Thomas had never felt those jealous feelings about girls before he had gotten injured. He thought he had been happy as a guy but the diagnosis of Gender Identity Disorder seemed to fit everything he felt and experienced now, but could it be anything else? Something less girly?

Everything the Doc had told him about hyper-masculinity made sense, a lot of sense when he thought about it. All through his life he had done things that fit that particular framework and he had been utterly unaware of it. Thomas had been an aggressive child, from about fourth grade on. He had been in fights and stuff, all to protect himself against taunting due to his smaller size. He had gotten into some extreme sports, like skateboarding, dirt bike riding, and inline skating, trying to emulate all the stunts he saw on the X-Games. He had become a bit of a daredevil, which had actually helped him in both football and the service. He had always gone full tilt at any barrier, any objective that they had been told to take and flung his body into harms way without a second thought. The Infantry had harnessed that mindset of his and turned it from simply risking his life for himself to risking it for the members of his unit. He had thrown himself laughingly at death over and over again.

However, was acting like that covering something deeper? Something inside him that he was really afraid of, that he didn’t want to face? Had all of those things been simply a means to hide? Was it all just a way to prove to himself and others that he was a man?

Thomas took another pull of his water and thought about this whole situation, staring straight ahead at his white wall, with only a TV for decoration. It looked blank but he thought it was good for thinking purposes. There was nothing there to distract him since the TV was turned off. This was something he really needed to figure out.

Was it possible to find out that you were not the person who you thought you were? To have been hiding things so deeply inside that the lie affected you, made you believe what you were telling others?

Thomas wasn’t sure. The idea seemed ludicrous at first glance but there was the simple fact that he did fit the profile and that the dressing felt good, almost as if he was wearing the right clothes for the first time in his life. It was unnerving and very surreal to think that different clothes made such an amazing difference to him. Thomas sat there in his nightgown and felt weird. He felt like what he was wearing was what he should have been wearing all along, making his past seem to be an appalling and uncomfortable dream. He felt like he really had nothing real to hold onto through all of this, like everything was some sort of fantasy, like he was delusional after the injury and this was all a dream. He felt like he was in freefall. What the hell was he?

With a free hand, he rubbed his forehead, hoping to work out the headache. To a degree, thinking had never been his strong suit, even though he did more of it than anyone in his family or in his Unit. He had always just tried to coast along without ever having to think any deeper than he had to. Was this a sign that he was trying to avoid seeing himself, to avoid working this whole issue out? Another way for him to hide who he really was? He didn’t know for sure but he thought that it felt likely. He had thrown himself into the purely physical in an attempt to not have to think about things that made him uncomfortable. This whole question about gender made him extremely uncomfortable which meant it could either be a yes or a no.

Thomas tried to work the tension out of his shoulders, rolling them. He ached pretty badly and the movement only aggravated things. It was weird how his body got all tight whenever he started thinking about things, like it was trying to distract him, to keep him from working things through. The pain wasn’t working at the moment as all Thomas wanted to do was to figure out a way to be who he was, who ever that turned out to be. At this point it seemed as if his future was going to be Emily rather than Thomas.

If the discomfort was a way to lead him off track then maybe he needed to go into that darkness and try to find what was being hidden so carefully from him. Maybe it would show him that he was a girl or that there was nothing to worry about. Maybe he would need to take that leap into the dark to try and find out what lurked there? Find out what was making him so crazy, so willing to freak out over this issue. What else could he do except sit there and take it like a man.

He absently brushed a few stray strands of hair from his face and back behind one ear. All of that thinking was well and good but how did that help him in the here and now, where he was unable to go to sleep with his thoughts churning and too many ideas crowding forward. He took a deep breath and exhaled slowly, like he had been taught in basic rifle marksmanship classes in Basic Training, it would help him relax. After a few breaths, the churning slowed in his mind slowed and Thomas could follow one train of thought at a time. What was all this really about?

He ran over everything he had talked to the doc about, everything he had done in terms of exploring this problem. He tried to see how everything lined up, how it all fit together, to try and find some sort of pattern in it. Each time he had an answer he went through the process again and again, trying to niggle out anything that might disprove the answer, that might make the end result something different. Each time after going through all of the things he could think of the same answer kept coming back: he was a girl. His actions in the service, his actions as a kid, the way he had treated women, hell, even the way he treated himself all fell into place with the diagnosis of Gender Dysphoria. That diagnosis even explained his love of writing poetry and his indifference to watching sports. He had tried to hide both, one successfully and one not so much, as evidenced by his nickname. He sighed and rubbed his eyes, tucking some hair behind his ears to keep his face clear as he fought off tears. There was no denying it anymore, he was a girl.

Part of his mind rebelled at that statement, pointing out that he had a penis. Thomas was well aware of all of that fact, aware of his body in the way that only the severely injured could be. You didn’t cope with a permanent disability without getting to know your body, to learn your new limits. He knew he had a penis and that generally, if you had a penis you were a boy. Nevertheless, the more he thought about it, the more he realized that he was actually indifferent towards his penis. It was just there and not even something that really interested him or that he gave much thought to. It only came up when he was aroused.

He exhaled loudly, saying to himself, “I am a girl.”

That sounded right. It felt so right. So he would ride this as far as it would go, doing everything he could to make sure one way or another he found his answers. He had discovered that he really did like the cross-dressing, that he was comfortable in what he had been wearing. Nightgowns were comfortable in his opinion and he liked their look and feel. He shook his head; Thomas figured he would never say anything like that in his life. With the way things were going, the way his thought were turning, he figured that he would have to get used to being called Emily as it seemed to be his inevitable future. He might be able to do that but it would be strange for a while.

That realization led him to another problem that he had been avoiding, his family. He wasn’t sure how they would react to this news, but he figured that there was no way that they would take it well. Thomas hadn’t gone to church since he had left North Carolina when he enlisted, but he knew his family were certainly big church goers. Considering their opinion of faggots and freaks, he figured that this might just make them insane. He would be in effect become something for worse than just a faggot. He would be a freak and a deviant and a crime against God. However, did he really want to go through life leading two separate lives, being himself here while lying to his family over the phone? He wasn’t sure if he could do something like that, wasn’t sure he could keep all the lies he would have to tell straight. He really did hate lying, having figured out long ago that it was disrespectful to both himself and others.

He hung his head down as he tried to figure out a way to play this that might manage to be less traumatic to both himself and to them. Could there be anyway to explain this that wouldn’t set them off, wouldn’t get them to disown him? He loved his family, but he wasn’t sure what they had in common any more. He had left town to join the Army, to go out and see the world, without any real plan of coming home since he had wanted to do twenty years in. Now that he was out, he still wasn’t all that interested in going home and being around his family. The thought of it depressed him. Besides, dealing with all of this gender stuff around his folks would be a lot more difficult if not impossible, especially if they got temperamental and contrary about it and he was sure that they would be.

That still didn’t answer his question about how he should go about the whole thing. What was he supposed to do in terms of dealing with his folks? He was at a loss as to what to say to them, let alone the way to say it. Maybe he should talk to the Doc about this? Or maybe, he should talk to Tiffany and Stacy about the whole thing. They might actually have some ideas about what to do. He certainly didn’t. Talking to both might be a good plan as well.

He yawned, sucking in a deep lungful of air. He was still a bit sleepy, or maybe his brain was just fatigued from all the thinking he had done. He probably should have made himself some coffee earlier. He started his coffeemaker and then headed in to take a shower. As he washed his hair and shaved he looked down at his rather hairy legs. Since he had just admitted to himself that he was a girl, shouldn’t he shave his legs? Some of the skirts and stuff would look weird with hairy legs, so it might be a good idea. The warm water was helping him clear his head.

He used his shaving cream to lather up his sore leg, propping it on the lip of the tub. He drew his razor up some but it got clogged with hair quite quickly. He repeated this, a small amount of shaving and then a longer time trying to get the hair out from between the blades. Finally it was done and only with a few nicks, small cuts that bled lightly. His leg felt weird, colder, slicker.

After he moved the shower curtain some he sat down and repeated the process on the other leg. Again, only a few cuts. His legs looked strange, but in a good way he figured. He rinsed himself on the cooling water had thought of something else. Underarms. He had never met any girl with a lot of underarm hair. Sure there might be some but the thought of a girl with bushy underarms was not pleasant and since he was a girl….

Thankfully he managed that task without cutting himself. He felt a little weird, as his legs and underarms felt different in a way that he couldn’t really put into words. In a way he felt like he looked more clean. If that made any sense. He wasn’t sure it did but there was little he could do about that.

Once dried, he wrapped his towel around his waist and went out for coffee. This day was undoubtedly going to be long and Thomas was rather sure that the girls had something planned for him, but he had no idea what. He wondered if any of it would involve removing the rest of his body hair? That sounded daunting and hadn’t Tiffany mentioned something about wax and eyebrows? He definitely needed the coffee if he was going to survive any of this.