It's Just a Phase!

By Angie Brewer

This is a true story. How do I know? Because it is my story and it is my life.

My name is Angela Brewer and I was born in 2010. That does not make me ten years old, but it is the time I started being myself.

I was originally born in 1967 in a boy's body. I struggled with my identity for many years as my previous self Andy changed into Angie before my eyes.

I am now fifty-three years old and I am officially a woman.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Andrew Milner Books
• Release date: Aug 24, 2020
• ISBN: 9781542609692

Book preview

Acknowledgements:

To my mum Janet Brewer: Thank you for accepting me as your daughter and for loving me.

To Pat and Tony Conlon, who are mentioned in this book, and their daughters Jill and Jayne: Thank you for your unconditional love, support and life changing advice. Also for the messages during my recovery from surgery, they were exactly what I needed.

To Andrew Milner: Thanks for helping me turn my diaries and thoughts into this book and for your continued support over the years.

To my friend Kim: You have been there for me from day one. You are a true friend.

To my friend Tamara: You’ve always asked questions, shared laughs with me and helped me grow as a woman. Thank you.

To Aaron: You are wise beyond your years and have always been my lucky charm.

To Sean: You always make me laugh and smile.

To Morgan: Thank you for looking after my house and Salem the cat whilst I was in hospital.

To all my friends who have shown me nothing but love, acceptance and support throughout my journey, I could not have done it without you.

Thank you all so very much.

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Angie xxxx

Foreword

This is a true story. How do I know? Because it is my story and it is my life.

My name is Angela Brewer and I was born in 2010. That does not make me ten years old but it is the time when I started being myself. I was born in 1967 in a boy’s body. I struggled with my identity for many years, as my previous self Andy changed into Angie before my eyes. Now I am fifty-three years old and officially a woman.

I live in Leeds, West Yorkshire and have always worked doing all sorts of jobs but mainly driving. Thinking about it now maybe the driving was the freedom that I needed to feel being on the open road without anyone watching me all the time.

In 2010, I started on the pathway to gender reassignment which is a long process resulting in me starting my hormone therapy in 2016. I started writing a diary of my journey which I am turning into this book covering my life and a long journey to becoming my true self. I have been inundated with support from a society that I thought would turn its back. I want people to follow my journey to surgery and share it with me and I will hopefully answer a few questions along the way.

My previous life is important as it shaped me into the woman that I am today but the person who lived that life has gone. I am now Angie through and through. Imagine as you read this book sitting with me having a coffee whilst we chat and I’m telling you about my life.

Chapter One

I have spent time thinking about this story and because it is my story and it is true I will tell you how to read it. Imagine you are sitting in my living room and we are friends. You have called in for a coffee and a catch up. You have asked me about my past and I am about to tell you. So have a drink, sit back and I will tell you my story. Full and honest, I’ll tell you it all.

What can I say? My name is Angie; I am fifty-three. I tried desperately to cling on for dear life to my forties but they went as quick as my twenties and thirties. I am single but I won’t go into that right now as I don’t want you to jump to any conclusions about me. I want you to learn about me before you make a decision about me and then afterwards you can judge, criticise or just give me a hug, that’s entirely up to you based on what you will hear about my life. At the end of the day this story is the story of my life.

I have had friends and family that have walked away from me because they didn’t understand, nor have they let me try to explain why I do what I do and why I am what I am. We all make choices in our lives how to live and how to behave and can I point out at this stage I have never willingly or knowingly hurt anyone at all. Ever! Let me give you a bit of my background.

I was born on the 14th March 1967 in hospital before going home to an address in Pudsey. For those who don’t know, Pudsey is a rather large town in Leeds, situated between Leeds and Bradford; a perfect place to grow up, ideal for supporting a (once) great football team and finding a perfect curry on a Saturday night out. I’ll leave you to decide which one is which.

So there I was living in a house with my elder sister Jacqueline, my mother Dorothy, my dad Terence and the last to join our ‘happy little family’ was my younger sister Janette. I, being the only boy, had the smallest room at the front of the house, my sisters shared the bedroom next door and my parents had the room at the back of the house. Now for those of you who are observant you will have already noticed the obvious mistake, for those who aren’t and haven’t noticed anything odd, let me recap.

My name is Angie and I am the only boy in the house. Work it out for yourself! So you have now learnt something about me. I was born in the wrong body. The question that I have asked myself a million times (and I exaggerate not), how can god make mistakes? Well for a start he created humans. Big mistake. Look at us. We are selfish, unfriendly horrible things. Anyway at times I digress and I can only apologise for this, just try and keep up. Those of you who know me will know I tend to go on a bit and go round the houses to make my point.

I grew up in a house with two sisters who from an early age I was jealous of. I got to the age where I was aware of things in the world, clothes being one of them, and I remember being jealous that my sister’s clothes were better than mine. Now, we are talking about the seventies here so looking back it’s hard to believe that anyone’s clothes were good but I loved my sister’s clothes much more than my own. I would sit in my small bedroom and wonder when I would get nice clothes like they did instead of the boyish jeans that I was given.

I didn’t do fashion (still don’t), nor did my sisters really, but something about their clothes made me feel safe, it made me feel as though they were wearing MY clothes and I wanted them back. I remember one year when my mum told me to try on a skirt that she had bought for Janette for Christmas. We were a similar size so said she’d be able to gauge if it would fit or not. Well I’m not kidding when I say that she had to wrestle the bloody thing back from my clutches. I really did not want to give it back. I would have quite happily worn it forever. I felt a bolt of life travel through my spine awakening every inch of my inner and true self. This was the first time I fully realised that something wasn’t right; I mean if it was ok for boys to wear girls’ clothes then all the other boys would do it and it had suddenly just dawned on me that none of my friends did. So there I am growing up in my boy body feeling almost out of sorts with myself but thinking that maybe it was perfectly normal to feel this way and I would, as all the other boys must do, grow out of it. I started to try and think of myself as an average kind of boy. I have to say it did work in some cases. In my teens I enjoyed most sports. I loved football and found myself becoming quite a good goalkeeper until a bad injury rocked my confidence but I’ll go into that later. I loved riding bikes, running, playing cricket and golf. I’m not blowing my own trumpet here but I was becoming better than average at all of them and my secret was coming with me.

I was once asked why I wore trackie bottoms when I was playing in goal, my answer was that I just preferred to. This was not a lie, I did prefer to wear trakkie bottoms but the reason that I preferred to wear them was so that no-one would notice my tights underneath. If you would have asked me why I liked to wear tights I’m not so sure I would be able to answer it other than they just felt right on my legs. Obviously I’m talking about being in my teens now as I wore them regularly. Did I get sexual kicks out of it? No. It has never been about sex with me, it was about feeling myself and being comfortable in my own skin. My skin wasn’t the problem; it was the sticky on bits that had been put on by accident. I had a sticky-out bit where I needed a sticky-in bit and had nothing where I should have had two breasts sticking out.

So my uneventful life started and I feel I should share with you the place of my childhood. Pudsey is a large town between Leeds and Bradford and has everything you could wish for. I grew up on a street called Woodlands Park Road. Living on the street were enough boys to play football or cricket and we had plenty of open space to play them on. Opposite my house was a lad called Darren, two doors up from him was a lad called Andy and two doors down from me was a lad called Gary. We pretty much did everything together. At the bottom of the street were others who I will introduce into the book if and when I need to but for now you only need to know about Andy, Darren, Gary and me. All the people in this book are true but some of the names have been changed but anyone who knows me well enough will know who they are so it’s not that hard to work out who is who. I stress that this book is my life. My birth name was Paul Andrew Slater but I was always called Andy.

Chapter Two

So I have briefly outlined the start of my story. Let me tell you about my family. My dad, Terence (Terry) was born on the 14th of August 1941 and my mum, Dorothy was born on the 11th March 1943. They got married in 1963 and had the three children that I’ve already mentioned. Jacqueline was born in 1965, Janette was born in 1969 and I was born smack bang in the middle in 1967.

My dad was very strict and I would say I got on better with Mum than I did with Dad in my early years. I say my dad was strict but it was more so with me in particular, bit of a sergeant major type and someone who I could never relate to; I just feared him. I often thought that he just didn’t like me very much. From what I remember Jacqueline was closer to my dad than either me or my sister Janette and on many occasions Dad would bring us to tears just by shouting at us. I suppose in those days, that’s what dads were for, the discipline. The mother shouting ‘wait ‘til your father gets home’ rang from a few houses on our street, I can tell you. I guess my dad to the outside world was the typical hen-pecked husband. He was always told what to do by my loud mouthed over bearing mother. She was what we would now call overweight and he was skinny. He had a temper don’t get me wrong but he did as he was told by my mother. From this moment on I will refer to my mother as Dorothy. I will explain that later in the story but just go with me on this for now, all will become clear.

I often wondered what his thoughts were when the hospital told him that he had a son. Most dads are pleased to have a boy who would turn into a man and carry on the family name; someone who would protect him in his old age and look after his mother and sisters. I was the one chosen by God to take on that role, only I don’t think he gave me the qualities to match. It is only my opinion here and I am sorry if I offend anyone who takes religion seriously. Obviously it is a serious subject, I’m not suggesting anything else I am a believer myself and I would have loved nothing more at that stage than being the young strapping lad that every father dreams of. I’m not going to lie to you; I was a long way from that. When my dad said something you just did it. He was for want of a better word a complete and utter disciplinarian. He would shout at me a lot and I remember on many occasions watching the spit fly from his mouth when he was on a rant. I was once grounded, and this is no word of a lie, for eight months because I got caught smoking yet he was quite the opposite with my sisters. For the first half of my life the only time I saw him smile was when one of my sisters was in the room. The smoking incident was in April and I was not allowed out until after Christmas, I kid you not. The funny thing was that he himself was a smoker. I learnt it from him. I would watch as he sucked on a cigar and then the smoke would burst from his mouth into the room. It looked amazing and I couldn’t wait to try it. I remember one day whilst sat in my small bedroom, I vowed to myself that should I have children I would never treat them as bad I was treated, it was particularly unkind to have children and treat them badly. Dorothy was the nicer one most of the time yet I would never look back on my childhood and think of her as a loving mother but as you will find out later she took over the nasty role and did it very well and my father went on to become my hero and friend.

So I have two sisters Jacqueline and Janette. I never really got on that well with Jacqueline as kids; she was too much like her mother; miserable. Janette was ok and even though we fought like cat and dog we seemed to have a mutual respect for each other or at least we found common ground where we felt safe with each other. When we were dragged, as most kids are to Grandma’s house we would nip and slap each other. I used to count to make sure I got the right amount back and although Janette would hit me back twice as hard I always received the right amount.

I grew up on a street built in the thirties and then added to in the early sixties stretching beyond my street into beautiful countryside called Fulneck and Tong. It was a street where everyone knew everybody, a real community spirit and one which laid on a lavish street party for the Her Majesty the Queen’s silver jubilee in 1977. Our thirties house was a proper brick built house made sturdy and strong not like the ones today where you put a screw in the wall and the wall falls down. It was a two bed-roomed semi-detached house and I shared a room with Jacqueline and my parents had the other. When Janette came along all three of us shared a room until things got a bit crowded and my parents put up a