Transgender Legal Resources
Story
The Beginning
My given name used to be Dennis Lee Heider. This is a name that I have not used, and have not related to since March 16, 1996, when I started my real life test. I am a male to female transsexual. I have always wanted to be female as long as I can remember. Since April 1996, I have been legally and otherwise known as Merrisa Leigh Coleman.
I was born November 2, 1959, in Long Beach California. I am the first of three children of my mother. When I was age three and a half, my mother left my father and obtained a divorce. At this point in my life I had a sister named Elizabeth. When my mother left Olaf, my father, we took a train from Missouri for California to live with my grandmother and my grandfather. I remember the train ride out to California, and how my sister and I stayed with each other the entire trip. I have no memories of my father, other than his hitting my mother just outside of our home in Springfield Missouri when I was at about 16 months of age. I have this memory, and I only know it that it actually happened because my mother confirmed this when I confronted her about it when I was a young adult. Since 1962, I have had no contact from my paternal father.
When my mother arrived in California with my sister and I, my mother started working for my grandmother at my grandmother's restaurant as a waitress. My grandmother set us up with a little apartment and my sister and I shared a room together. I was about 4 years old by this time, and I distinctly remember my sister and I playing with her toys. During the first three years of my life, my mother confirmed to me that my sister and I were constantly together and never separated for any length of time. We played together, took baths together, ate together and played with the same toys.
My Mother Remarries
My mother soon met a man named James, and eventually married him, because she was pregnant with my younger brother. It was not until I was 23 years old that my mother would admit to me that she never loved my stepfather, and that she only married him because she became pregnant with my little brother. At the time, abortion was dangerous and illegal. So, she married James when I was 4 years old.
Anyway, I remember my stepfather yelling at my mother whey he bought me a little metal toy train set. This train set was made out of a cast metal, and had four cars. It was ok, but he got very angry when I stopped playing with it, left it in the middle of the floor, and I went over to my sister and began playing with her and her toys. It was at this time that I was physically discouraged about playing with my sister and her toys.
After that incident, my stepfather didnt take very much further interest in me or what I played with. After all, my mother was pregnant and he was about to have his first baby boy. After my brother Patrick was born, July 29, 1964, I received no further attention from my stepfather.
Age Five Through Seven
From age five, I tried very hard to play with the other boys in my neighborhood. But I just didnt fit in. I remember being so frustrated and angry, however, I just couldnt fight back, I would just cry and go and hide. It would not be until I was a sophomore in high school that I would finally begin to fight back.
When I was still five years old, I remember my stepfather working in the driveway. I remember his green pickup truck, and he was landscaping our front lawn to our house. My stepfather had gone down to the local nursery and picked up a load of manure mixed with redwood to use as a fertilizer. I remember this incident because of what happened next.
Around noon time, I was in the back of the pickup truck, and I didnt want to be there, and I didnt want to help him. I remember that I had to go to the bathroom really bad, but no matter how much I pleaded with my stepfather for me to go into the house to go to the restroom, he told me that I would have to wait. I couldnt wait.
I tried to get out of his truck bed, but it was too late, I had already wet myself. I was so ashamed that I tried to hide behind the fertilizer remaining in the bed of the truck. However, my stepfather eventually found out and he became violently angry. He grabbed me by my arms, and yelled at me that I was nothing but a sissy and a baby. That if I couldnt keep from wetting myself then he would treat me as a baby.
My stepfather then took me inside of the house, stripped me of my clothing and went into the bedroom that I was sharing with my baby brother. He then got a diaper and one of those plastic underpants that you put over a cloth diaper. James then held me down and forced me to lie still. He then forcefully put the diaper on me.
My stepfather didnt stop there. He then took me back outside and put me back in the rear bed of his pick up truck alone with my little brother and the load of stear manuer. He told me that I would stay there until my mother came home, and that I was not to get out of the truck of jide myself. I didn't get out of the truck bed, my friends who lived next to me all saw what my father did and made fun of me, and my mothe didn't get home until late.
When I was six years old, and entering second grade, I remember having a dream that has staued with me until today. In this dream I am woken up by my mother and I am dressed dress. I am not ashamed, but I am laughed at by the other children at school.
In anotherdream that I rememer around the same time period, I wake up at school during the morning, and classes are just starting to begin, and I have no clothes on, and I am forced by my parents and teachers to go to my classes with no clothes on. I know these were just dreams, but in these dreams they were in color and vivid in every detail, and I had no male genitals. In all of the deams I am constantly taunted by the other students.... "Dennis is a girl!! Dennis is a girl!!!....", over and over again.
it was about this time that my mother staarted to realize that I was having a problem and just before Thanksgiving, I was forced to go to the school psychologist eveyday for a half hour. I don't rememer what happened there, butI do think it was because of my acting so differerntly from the other boys my age. I do remember being drilled on my speech, the way I talked and how I expressed myself, and my use of my body language. This went on for the duration of the school year.
When I was around seen years old, my sister was going to be an angel for halloween. I wanted to be one too, and insisted on it. But, in the infinate wisdome of my father and mother they refused to allow it. That halloween I did not go out with my sister or brother, I stayed home. About this time my sister also started to take ballet lessons. I would go with my mother to watch my sister at her lessons. I remember her little tights and her shoes. I remember the steps my sister would learn, commiting them to memory... (little did I realize then that I would use those very same skills later in my life, but more on that later.) It was at this age that I started cross dressing for the fist time. Just after my seventh birthday... I would sneak into the bathroom and get into the clothes hamper and pull out my sister's clothes and put them on in the privacy of the bathroom. I would only do this when I was alone in the house. I was terrified of the ramifications that would result if anyone knew or found out.... (how little did I truely know how bad those ramifications would be), I was exicited!! This is what I wanted!! I wanted to be a little girl, and to wear the beautiful things my sister got to wear!
Over the next several months (five actually) I would repeat this process numeous times and pretend to be a girl. I would get braver and braver, and eventually build up the nerve to venture out of the bathroom and out into the house. Once I was almost caught by my sister as I barely made it back to the bathroom in time. Even though I was almost caught by my sister I continued to cross-dress in her clothes on a continual basis until just before school was to start at the end of summer. You see, my mother came home early from work that day. I had not locked the bathroom door, (all confident that no one would be home for hours), and I did not hear my mother come into the house. Well my mom simply opened the bathroom door, but to fine me standing there half in and half out of my sisters dress and also wearing my sister's panties.
Now everyone has in their life received a spanking at the hands of their parent at one time or another. Grant it some of them justified, actually most of them. but what I received that day was nothing like I had ever received any time before or there after. The "beatting" I got was with a belt. It left welts on my bottom that would not heal for days and would sometimes bleed. the net result drove me directly into the closet for the next 30 years.
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companionship and friendship have more meaning to me than anything else in the world.
at one time I craved a very physical intimate physical relationship, mostly or ratification of what and who I was. But, now, I hesitate at the physical. I don't mean to say that I do not enjoy physical touch or intimacy, but I don't physically or actively seek it anymore. There is the need, the craving, more of a lust for close compaionship; not being alone...........