In 2016, in the middle of August,
I was sitting at my house, by myself.
I don't know why it was that night or what happened,
or what made me do it but I just simply could not take it anymore.
I had antidepressants here and I had painkillers from when I had an operation,
and I just, I went and I collected them all up throughout the house and I brought them to the kitchen.
I don't know how long I sat at my kitchen table but I had those pills,
I had those pills in my hand many times and I almost took them.
I laid on the floor and cried and cried and cried,
all these different scenarios went through my head about what it was going to be like starting to transition.
And how hard it was going to be and how ugly I was going to be,
I'm going to be bald for the rest of life, I'm going to sound like a boy for the rest of my life.
But I made the decision to start to transition,
I picked myself up off the floor,
I put the pills away.
And I immediately sat down and started writing a letter to all the people
in my life that I care about to tell them that I was going to start transitioning.
I've been living here for about, coming up on nine years, it'll be nine years in August.
It's certainly not the most inviting place to live, but it's not the worst place to live, either.
When I first started going to work as Paula,
I mean there's very few people in my department that I have, like,
interpersonal relationships with, or even talk to at work.
And one guy that I really hit it off with, that I worked with from day one, was Jerry.
And when Jerry came to the rink one day for the first time to see me as Paula,
I was sitting at the desk,
he opened the door,
he didn't make eye contact with me at all.
He grabbed the sheets of paper off of the desk,
turned around and walked out of the office without saying one word to me.
When he came back the next week, I had a sneaking suspicion that the same type of scenario was going to transpire.
I said something like, 'You're not really going to do this?'
like twice, I think I said, maybe. Like, 'No, you're not really going to do this.'
And he was like, 'This is weird, I'm uncomfortable.'
'It's like, I don't even know what to say to you, Paul.'
And I was like, 'You know what?'
'You just crossed the threshold because you're talking to me.'
'Let's start trying to call me Paula.'
'Once you get used to it, Jer, it won't be that hard.'
And he sat down and we had a great conversation.
If you're transgendered and you're still hiding from your reality,
and you're not living your true self,
there's ups and there downs, but there's way more ups.
I never really, truely had a scope of what it meant to be happy, or
to feel what it is, like true love, until I started to transition and live my truth.
I know there's transgendered people that see me going,
see me in my day-to-day life and doing what I do,
and say to themselves, 'Well, I can't do that.'
Because I said it to myself for years.
Well, ya you can. Because if I can do it, anybody can do it.
Working at the city of St. John's with 280-sum men in my union,
if I can do that, then somebody else can do it too.
And I hope me being in front of the camera and in an article and all that,
would help to inspire people to come out and live their truth because it's wonderful.
It's great.