Last Thursday the CEO of Swedish insurance company Ica Försäkring went to work presenting as Carl Farberger (50). She left work that day as Caroline Farberger.
“I have known for a while that something has not been quite right, but it’s only a year since I came to the full insight into what that was,” says Farberger to the Swedish newspaper Fri Köpenskap.
“It may seem like a tough decision, but this was the only option,” she said.
Farberger says she has only been met with respect and encouragement.
“[My wife] Ylva saw how I suffered without understanding why. In the end she asked, "Could it be that you want to be a girl?”
Caroline says to Dagens Industri: “Everyone who has gone with a stone in their shoe knows that the stone does not disappear by itself. It may move, but it continues to shovel and sometimes hurt every step, every day, year in and year out.”
And: “The moment I saw myself in dress and handsome makeup was pure and euphoric happiness. It was like for the first time that I was looking at who I am, not the one I expected to be. Suddenly I saw someone who was beautiful! ”
So much of my life was spent on autopilot. I spent so much time not growing as a person, not accomplishing anything. I was just coasting. Not even that, just idling. I got my first job on the way to a “career” when I ws twenty-seven. I started dating when I was thirty-five. I got married at thirty-nine and became a parent at forty-one, and again at forty-nine. I could easily be a grandparent to the other kids at my kids’ schools.
I have lived my life in slow motion. Was it because I’m trans? Probably some. It was probably just as much because of my near-inability to initiate social interaction. And my executive disfunction. And my ADHD. But does it matter now? The past is gone.
I don’t feel old, but I am. Fifty-three years old, to be precise. I burned up so much of what little time I have here on Earth doing nothing. Not doing nothing in a good way. No. I didn’t choose a simple life. I didn’t choose solitude. I just let it happen. I drifted.
I am doing better these days. I’ve written a book. I have a pretty good job. I love being a parent. I have taken control of my life, and I’m living as myself, and that alone has made me so much happier.
But sometimes it feels like it’s too late. I didn’t get to be a teenage girl. I didn’t get to be a young woman. At best I get a few years as a middle-aged woman, followed by being an old woman. That’s something, anyway.
At least I won’t have to be an old man. And at least I’m sort of cute these days.
ScienceVet is a Ph.D in Biochemistry and has published in the fields of endocrinology and sexual differentiation. His Ph.D. is in Biomedical Sciences - Biochemistry and Molecular Pharmocology.