Atypical Transgender Late Bloomer

I have huge holes in my memory. There's lots of important things I don't remember, or I won't remember. I've been in therapy for four years with multiple focuses going on simultaneously: a gestalt practitioner, an EMDR practitioner, a family systems practitioner, etc. I've remembered more of my youth. I remember violent beatings from my father. I remember a priest raping me for three years. In Fourth, fifth, and six grade the parish priest was in my ass and in my mouth. I was 8, 9, 10 years old. I met a woman and we got married. We had kids. I had one recurring dream for decades about Dan which couldn't be true. But it was true. Now I remember Dan. Now I remember Allan in 7th grade and Ronald in 8th grade. Now I remember a man in Virgina, and a man in Spain. Now I remember David. At the time, I closed them each into an internal box and put them away; they were inconsistent with what I'd been told I should be. Otherwise: bad boy , and I couldn't...

Assignment: describe yourself before and after your Dad and your Priest. Before my Dad and the Priest. I would place this at when I was age 2.5 years, because that’s when the beatings started. I was happy, enthusiastic, and curious. I had a big mop of curly hair like Harpo Marx; I greeted days and people with brio. I was happy in the house and out of the house. After my father started beating me, I was careful and wary. He started calling me Crisco (fat in the can) which I hated. He cut my hair short at home when my mother was out. Decades later, he told a sibling: when [me] was two and a-half, he had beaten me like he beat prisoners in the station house. He was a cop. Being outside was better than inside, being with others was better than being with my parents. I learned my block and my neighborhood. I still had most of the core of myself when I was out. I became a reader because he respected reading. Years later he’d say I had my head in the books too often, and why did I ...

Sometimes I remember things that I've forgotten or suppressed. Today I remembered: On the evening news (Channel 7, ABC) Roger Grimsby talked about how people can report child abuse by calling the operator. That was just a setup. I was in our house on East 48th, it was daytime, and I sneaked into my parent's bedroom to use their phone. I was young, and this may have been the first phone call I made. It was a rotary phone. I called the operator. I remember how long it took for the dial to rotate through all the digits. "Operator" . I told her, I wanted to report my father for child abuse . She asked a question and I said, he hits me a lot . Then I heard my father come on the line, using the kitchen phone. He was a shift-worker; my mother was out. He said, who's on this phone? I said, I am. That was an insufficient answer because he said, Who are you talking to? The operator identified herself. Over the phone line my father asked, what are you calling t...