At long last, Hayden Locke has found herself
Apr. 15—ALBANY — Hayden Locke was walking on a street in Lawrenceville a while back when a young man in a car rolled down his window and shouted, "What are you?"
That's a question Locke has been trying to figure out for most of her 26 years.
Locke, who was born with male characteristics and genitalia, started to figure out with the onset of puberty that she was not like all the other boys she came in contact with.
"I just never could connect with my maleness, my masculinity," Locke said while dining at an Albany restaurant. "I just didn't fit in. I didn't want to play dinosaurs or sports or war games; I'd rather play dress-up with girls."
Living, as she did, with supportive parents, young Hayden never questioned those things about her that made her different, at least not until her early teens when hormones started raging.
"Then I started suppressing my true feelings," she said. "I started trying to pretend to be someone else. And, as I attended church more often, I became even more confused. I just tried to push it all down and be what I thought others wanted me to be.
"I found myself praying, 'God, please let me be normal.'"
Now Locke, an employee at E-Z Copy in Albany, has found her normalcy. After years of struggling to find her true self, she has started hormone therapy that will give her the more feminine characteristics to which she relates. And while Locke declares that "surgery is off the table right now," she said that she is at peace with her journey as a transgender woman.
"I've heard people say (transgender individuals) are deviants, and that hurts," she said. "I'm sharing with you because I want people to know that we're people, too. We have the same aspirations; we just want to be ourselves."
Born in the north Georgia Springfield community near Athens, Hayden Locke lived what can only be described as a regular childhood. Other than the "peculiarity" of her desire to play dress-up with girls, young Hayden's early life was typical, if not idyllic. She moved with her family to Albany for a period, back to Watkinsville, also in the Athens area, and back again to southwest Georgia as a teenager.
Locke graduated Early County High School in Edison, moved to Albany and spent 2 1/2 years "floundering in the theatre and arts program" at Darton College.
As a "theatre kid," she started to loosen up a bit, sharing intimate details for the first time with friends.
"Even as I started to explore who I was, I was still in heavy denial," she said. "I was one of the leaders of our youth church group, and when our youth pastor would talk about people who I knew were like me as 'corrupted, people who'd lost sight of their walk with Christ,' that became part of what would become a violent internal struggle.
"Sharing with some of my theatre kid friends broke down the outer shell I'd built around myself a little bit."
Locke lives with her grandparents, and she often found herself taking an extra set of clothing to work. She'd change into the clothes she was most comfortable in — mostly skirts and blouses — and then put back on her "normal" clothes before returning home.
But as she evolved into the person she is and gradually pushed away the confusion she felt, Locke decided to take bold steps to become her true self. One of the boldest moves was "coming out" to her grandparents.
"I don't think they fully understand," she said, "but it was so freeing to tell them. I wrote them a letter; I'm much better at writing things than saying them."
Part of Locke's letter to her grandparents — a letter she also shared with other family members — is reprinted here with permission:
I don't know how to start this.
It's difficult to explain all of this when I'm still figuring it all out myself. So please be patient with me. Even as a child I've never felt connected to my "maleness."
It's difficult to pin down when it started to make sense. All I really have are vague memories; thoughts that, at the time, I just assumed were silly childhood fantasies. A game of make believe ... just pretend.
These feelings have to mean something, right? There has to be a reason I don't act like "all the other boys" my age. Why do I get along better with the girls in my classes? Why do I feel attracted to people I've been told I shouldn't? Why, why, why? The questions never stopped, and the more that came the more I shut myself off. Nobody could know. I was raised in the church, if anyone finds out ...
So I hid it all away. Suppressed the thoughts. Prayed to God to make the questions stop, but they never did. The more I hid, the worse it all got. And it stayed hidden, for years. Over a decade forcing back all of the thoughts, all of the questions, and the ideas. Living as the person society deemed me to be but never feeling like myself. ...
There are so many others like me, from all sorts of backgrounds. People who have stories just like mine, others who grew up able to be themselves. All unique in their own way, just doing their best to exist in a world that most days sees them as less than human.
Without my friends ... I wouldn't be alive right now. I've spent so many years in this house, hiding in my room, hearing all the nasty things from the talking heads on TV or what you've said when you think I can't hear you. So many times I wanted to just end it all. And I came close, in June, when I was ready to disappear forever. ... But I reached out, after all the excuses and the lies I made to myself that I was beyond help. And I've started taking steps to live my life how I want to live it. Even when the world is doing everything in its power to vilify my existence, I want to exist. And be happy existing.
The past five months I have felt the happiest in my own skin than I have in the past 10 years. I know you've seen it. Anyone I'm close to can see it. But despite it all I'm still hiding, here, whenever I'm with you. And it's the most difficult hurdle to clear.
I love you, more than I can ever show. And I hope you can still love me. I am still your grandchild. I am still Hayden. She's just different. And she's happier now.
I know all of this sounds scary, and maybe doesn't make sense, but I hope you can see that. I have been strong and brave. I am proud of me. I hope you can be, too.
After years of turmoil, Locke has officially started her male-to-female journey. She says, at last, she likes who she is.
She said legislation that passed in the Georgia General Assembly recently that makes some treatment for trans individuals under age 18 illegal in the state only makes decisions like the ones she's made more difficult for transgender individuals.
"What's sad is, because this is a hot topic right now, politicians are using trans people as political pawns," she said. "They make laws that have no scientific basis to weigh in on this topic; when it dies down, they'll move on to the next thing.
"Transgender kids are exposed to a lot more now at a younger age. They are able to realize these things much younger, and it should be their decision, along with their parents, about what is best for them. Politicians talk about transgender kids 'mutilating their genitals' with no possibility of reversal — but you don't ever hear these same people talk about mutilating male babies' genitals shortly after they're born. It's all politicians seeking power over others."
Hayden Locke admits that she's still dealing with "complicated issues" as she starts her transition. Much of that complication, she says, comes from her ties with the church.
"I say I'm religious," she said. "I definitely feel there's something there. I want to believe in good, and I like the idea of Jesus. I like that He is someone who is acceptive of everyone, but it's sad when the church uses his name in hatred.
"I'm a new person now; the hormone therapy is going to, essentially, take me through a second puberty. But I'm excited, happy with who I am. I'm going to look a little different, but I'll still be Hayden, the person I was born to be. I am becoming myself. I lived all those years in fear, hiding. Now I live with the fear only that I'll never be able to get those years back."
