Teenage and Transgendered

For the next couple of months, Burden and her mother barely spoke. Burden was working for a temp agency, and she and James took classes at North Lake College. James wanted to be a forensic psychologist or special education teacher. Burden dreamed of being a singer. One day, standing in the religion section at Half Price Books, they decided to get married. Burden was considering moving out of her family's three-bedroom apartment, and she would spend hours adding up bills, per-hour pay and monthly budgets. One night in November, she did it. She called James and another friend to pick her up, then dialed her father, who was driving his truck through the Southwest.

"Have you told your mother?" he said.

"No, but I'll tell her tonight."

"I wish I were there so I could be there for your mom."

Burden was hurt. What about being there for her, his daughter? "If I don't do it now, I'll never do it," she told him.

"Well," her father said, "If you really feel like you have to do this, TYA [tear your ass]...I guess all I can say is I love you."

Burden hung up and walked into the living room. Her mother was sitting on the couch with Burden's 7-year-old sister, Ali. The game show Gay, Straight or Taken? was on the TV.

Burden announced to her mother that she was moving in with Nick, one of her and James' friends.

"Do you have the money to do this?" her mother asked, her face expressionless. Burden told her she'd worked it out.

"Fine," her mother said. "But you're going to tell your sister." Her mother got up and went into her bedroom.

Burden sat Ali down in her lap. "You know how I'm getting to be a really big girl?" she said. Her sister rolled her eyes and said, "Yes."

"Well, I'm going to go try to be a big girl on my own," she told her. "I'm going to move in with Nick."

Her sister's blue eyes grew worried, scared. She wrapped her thin arms around Burden's neck and started to cry. Burden rocked her, told her it would be OK. Their mother came in to take Ali to bed. She practically had to pull the girl away from her older sister.

Crying, Burden began throwing her things in garbage bags. Clothes, books, crayon drawings from her sister, University of Texas football flags, a ticket stub from a Ludakris concert. As she collected her bags and hauled them out into the living room, her mother stood there, watching. James and Nick called to say they were waiting outside. Burden's mother hugged her daughter and told her she loved her.

One evening in late August, James called me. He told me he and Burden had broken up, and that she had checked herself into Green Oaks, a mental health facility in North Dallas. What happened? I asked. The last time I talked to them they were talking about in vitro fertilization.

"I needed my space," he said. He paused. "She was having suicidal thoughts."

The breakup happened first. James, like most 19-year-olds, wants to "grow and develop" as an individual and had been doubting he could do that while in a relationship. Meanwhile, Burden had already had a complicated summer. She hardly talks to her mother, hates her cashier job and wants to go back to school after having dropped out. Not to mention the whole androgynous thing, which she refers to as "finding myself and figuring out who I am." When James broke up with her, even though he said it might not be permanent, she became depressed and began having visions of suicide. "I could think of six ways to do it just walking to work," she told me. "I thought, 'This is bad, I need to do something.'"

She spent two days sitting in group therapy sessions and talking to counselors and other patients at Green Oaks. Asked what it was like, she said, "Well, it's a nuthouse. I was with all the crazies." Most helpful was having time away from everyone she knows to think about what she wants to accomplish in life (college, travel, kids). Since she checked herself in, she could check herself out once the staff determined she wasn't planning to harm herself. She left the facility armed with antidepressants and once-a-week appointments with a counselor. That night, she and James talked for hours.