26 | OutBoise Magazine | NEWS
OutBoise.com | Issue 5.2 | March 2015
Introducing Nicole Weaver
My blood and my
tears built the story I
am about to share. My
chosen name is Nicole
Dawn Weaver and
choosing my name was
a decision that rocked
me to my core. It called
into question every
thought, every feeling,
every goal and every
hope for the future that
I have ever had. In the
end, it shattered me
and gave me a chance
to rebuild on the ashes
of who I used to be.
I came into this world unknowing of the pain I would begin to
suffer in four and a half short years, though I am told I screamed
just the same. That was the age I realized something was not right.
Not only was it not right, something was seriously wrong! I wasn’t
allowed to keep up with the other kids I considered my peers. I
couldn’t hang out with them the same way or play with the same
toys.
The problem I had was that I was born wrong. Not just randomly wrong, but very specifically I was born with the wrong physical
gender. I knew the issue pretty much immediately, but was not
sure how to articulate it. By the time I reached an age where I
could begin to talk about it, a particular uncle came into my life
and made it a living hell. He wasn’t the only one by any means,
but he was the one who haunts me to this day, over 25 years after
he realized he hated me.
I started reading at a ver y young age. I spent much of my early
school years in the library, reading about my condition. Understanding my condition did not help me cope with it. I was punished by the other kids and certain adults in my life for anything I
did to correct the problems I saw. At times it felt like I wasn’t even
allowed to think in ways people didn’t like.
of line, even if they simply tripped. These other people who called
for love seemed to be filled only with hate.
I fought my feelings for nearly 30 years. Trying to convince myself I could live as a male, that I could somehow overcome these
feelings and live a “normal” life. I just wanted to be loved and
accepted, not feared and hated. The spectre of losing those things
and how I saw others being treated kept me living in fear.
I was afraid that someday my friends would discover my secret
and I would lose them all. I was convinced that my entire family
hated people like me and would abandon me if I spoke out. I was
terrified I would lose my job and everything I had worked for over
something I was convinced would make it impossible to ever earn
those things back.
Then something happened. One day, wounded beyond pain,
utterly tired of hiding, I realized that I was thinking about my
death. I had started to consider dying by my own hand to be as
normal as getting breakfast. It was sad, in that I had everything
that someone of my outward gender supposedly wants. I owned
a nice house, a fast and fun sports car, I was blessed with an intelligent, beautiful and strongly supportive girlfriend and a group
of friends the size of a small army. Yet, I was so dead inside that I
couldn’t come up with a single thing I wanted to live for.
I came to a stark realization in that moment of clarity. I wanted
to live. I wanted to live so much that I was willing to risk every
single thing in my life, without hope of ever again getting it back,
just on the hope that I could find something out there to live for. It
was a risk, a scary, horrible, destructive risk that nearly broke me.
I was prepared for it all to go away and to end up alone in a dark
corner of an empty subway tunnel... but I would at least end my
days as I felt I should have begun them, as a woman.
I had a lot of ideas, so many beliefs about what mattered in my
world. I began to challenge them. First I started telling some of my
closest friends in an effort to build up to the people in my life that I
was most afraid of losing.
It was hard. Not only did I have to tell them, but every night
I had nightmares about my uncle beating me with a pipe in
my sleep. To punish me for what I was doing. I would wake up
terrified, so real a dream, I was convinced that I had actually
been struck and that he was hiding in the dark to hit me again.
My uncle, the worst of the lot, had the rest of my family terrified.
Then something amazing began to seep into my terror filled and
He would slam me into the wall and threaten to kill or maim me
distraught mind. My friends still loved me. Let me say that again,
fairly regularly. It was (and still is) believed that he had murdered
the people I loved, having been told my darkest and most horrible
people before, so this truly and utterly terrified me. He struck so
secret; still loved me! They hugged me, they cried with me and
deep that to this day I occasionally have nightmares about him
they understood.
discovering what I have done in choosing my name... and coming
to get me.
I was floored. I myself couldn’t understand. I was lost in a
daze for the entire week as I continued to tell more and more
After years of trying, I gave up the faith I was born into because
the one secret I had never told anyone. I was doing something I
it wasn’t designed to allow me to be myself. This problem that was
had never done before, I was giving them the chance to accept
beyond my ability to ignore was considered so wrong and abomime for who I really am. It was glorious! It was not without probnable that some wished to kill those like myself. I saw how people
lems but, most of all, it was finally real.
with my pain were treated. How they were driven from their
families and their faiths. I saw what happens to those who step out