On this day 14 years ago i arrived in Australia to start a new life! It has been a roller coaster at times especially the last 4 years but in reality i think my transgender journey began back then.
My life has had so many ‘sliding doors’ moments but I firmly believe that everything happens for a reason and while i would like to take some credit for the decisions I’ve made (well, some of them anyway!) i do think that fate brought me here and had much to do with how things have turned out.
My dislike of Christmas was a factor in my being here. Christmas in England consisted of a day of trailing round from one lot of estranged parents to my mothers and on to somewhere else probably to finish the day off. There is absolutely no wonder i was overweight, it’s just a day long food fest which usually ended up lasting nearer a week. The weather is usually appalling so there wasn’t much walking done either. So when we were invited to spend Christmas 2005 here in Australia, away from all the relatives and the bickering which went with them it’s not surprising that we accepted! The chance meeting with Ray and Jan Mountney probably wasn’t as ‘chance’ as it seemed but it was life changing. The death on the flight going home, sad as it was also was a factor. Being made to climb down ice-laden steps to a waiting ‘doorless’ bus to take us from the aircraft’s parking place near the perimeter fence of Manchester airport to the terminal was just another nail in England’s coffin as it were. It was minus 3 degrees! I had just left 38 degrees in Perth, what was I supposed to think? By the time we had made our way through customs my mind was made up! I told myself that if we didn’t like it here in Busselton we could always go back to England but in reality it just was never going to happen, i mean, why would you? Yes, i miss my friends but every day i say thank you for living in the most wonderful place in the world and at the moment definitely one of the safest.
I truly love my life. There have been some very difficult times over the last 14 years but they have been so worth it. If someone had told me 14 years ago that i would be the person i knew i should always have been but had resigned to taking to my grave, i would most likely have laughed at them and in many ways it’s a good thing that we don’t know what is in front of us but it’s certainly a dream-come-true for me and i feel very blessed.