February 21, 2000, I finally escaped the grip of psychiatric addiction and dependence to over 14 pills a day. This was with the help of new doctor realizing how horribly I had been misdiagnosed. The withdrawal was absolutely horrible and I could have never done it without the help of the twelve step recovery rooms. No, I was not abusing my prescriptions. I was patient compliant and my psychiatrist had become my drug dealer, to escape the pain of not being assigned the right gender at birth. The end result was still ADDICTION and DEPENDENCE. Doesn’t matter if it was “legal” and condoned. Compound all of this with my rare metabolic condition and mitochondrial dysfunction, and I am lucky to have survived.
Here is the God-incidence: My hearing to change my name is February 21, 2018. The universe works miracles when it is trying to show us we are on the right path and have doubts.
I had to go to therapy starting at three and four years old to be taught to be a girl. By four years old I was what they call “selectively mute”. No, I had autism spectrum disorder and had to go to speech therapy to learn to talk. After they took my own gender identity away from me I did shut down too. I was violated. Back then they diagnosed all this “perceptional handicap” with “reversal problems” and “speech delays”. I now call it “conversion therapy”. I would later be locked up, in psychiatric hospitals, as an adolescent for the same things. Their solution was to drug me. Psychotropic drugs, testosterone blockers, and more female hormones became their fix, and it damaged my brain permanently and even destroyed many of my gifts in music and art.
“Transgender” and “Transexual” was not even a thing to rescue me back then. My sexual orientation being a “gay male” appearing female no doubt also took away my credibility of being a boy. Homophobia is great, and to be a gay androgynous boy like this made no sense to authorities.
By four years old my brother had been born. The Marquez family tree celebrated and shouted from the rooftops that they finally had a second boy to carry on the family name and it was not me. I was devastated and jealous. It was my cousin Chico and my brother Joe.
It wilted me further. I became more and more of a nobody. That amazing typical penis became a symbol of power to me, and knowing that I did not have what it took, they had to be right, right?
WRONG: My October 2014, and at 46 years old I emancipated myself and my true gender.
At the age of 50, I finally get to escape the damage of being assigned the wrong gender, and psychiatry permanently. I will no longer legally be Antoinette.
I will legally become Anunnaki Ray Marquez. My name is very symbolic and healing to me. You can read here to see why I named myself Anunnaki Ray: Why I named myself Anunnaki Ray.
I find the serendipity of the date Feb, 21, alarming and a beautiful sign from my higher power I am no doubt very, very loved. I finally get to reclaim my sir name, Marquez, and own the reason to why I was born intersex and an Ashkenazi Castilian Spanish person.
With my birth certificate finally being corrected to intersex, and my new corrected name, I am feeling more human now.
Never give up hope if you are struggling. If you have personally been an active love and support to me during this time I thank you. I thank any of you who follow my story and teach this world to stop assigning our gender. Self-Determination is a human right. We are human, and we are real.
Here is the intersex factsheet: United Nations’ Intersex Fact Sheet.
~.V.~
Mx. Anunnaki Ray Marquez 