DISABILITIES CHRONICLES

 I write this book to not remain in the shadows. I write this book to speak freely about what one feels when, deep in their guts and for as long as they can remember, there is this disconnection with reality that is mine, this disconnection with one's own body. I am a woman who has been stuck in a man's body since birth.

I am that woman who secretly put on makeup, not to please anyone else, but to please herself, as every woman does in the morning, to start the day on the right foot ! Yes, I have always hidden. But if that were all...

I lived 40 years in the shadows. A chaotic teenagehood, always trying to speak, to express to my parents, half-heartedly, a malaise whose nature I didn't really know... They didn't perceive it. In fact, they wouldn't have been able to imagine it for a single second. Who can blame them ? Then I had a decisive encounter, that of Mélanie, around which this entire book is centered. Not just a romantic encounter, but a meeting that brought me face to face with this reality : Yes, I am transgender, if only to one day become transsexual.

Life then separated us and I resigned myself ; I also condemned myself to a family life that I cherished, I cannot deny it, but which was not mine. Worse, I knew I was condemned by my own wife and her religious confession. It was impossible to explain my situation to her. Victim of an assault on January 26, 1984, on Rue du Taur in Toulouse, then rehoused in a work apartment 40 years to the day at Rue du Taur in Revel, this sign of life or fate made me realize that enough was enough ; that this daily lie, a poison that was killing me slowly, seeping into my whole body day after day was no longer sustainable. Neither for me, nor for society as a whole, which had always imposed guilt on me without even being aware of it. But who can believe that a woman loves women ? And yet, that is who I am ! And even today, it earns me the wrath of the town hall that I served for 35 years. A whole life of chaos to try to keep this shameful secret intact, which even now in 2025 is not good to disclose : I am a woman.

So to those who will say that I was free not to choose this path, I would respond that I did not choose. To be honest, I didn’t even choose anything, not even my family life. A life of lies, against my will. I also want, and perhaps even more importantly, to address the teenagers who are in the same situation as I was. To tell them that they are not alone, of course, but especially to tell them to have the courage not to just look at their life, but to live it, whatever the cost can be. I hope that my testimony will plant at least one seed in their fearful minds. And maybe, who knows, in this society that still has so much to learn about the diversity of the beings that make it up...