"Follow your heart"

JRN 422:

A counter culture story.





Kylee Meade and Nick Royal are a happy couple of 14 months, but 'typical' may not be the right way to describe them.

Kylee Meade of Roseville is a fifth-year senior at Central Michigan University. Kylee was also born "Kyle." Meade is a transgendered woman, in the process of hormonal therapy to change her body to match the gender she feels inside.

"I'm not trying to be a different person," she said, "I'm just trying to be me - Just a girl."

Meade and Royal met through Facebook, having no actual connections. Meade found a mutual friend and said they had met before. Royal accepted it at the time and they began to chat. They started having four- to five-hour phone conversations. Once they moved to the same town, Mount Pleasant, they began officially dating, not having an actual date, but deciding two months later that their anniversary was Aug. 1.

Royal said he identified as gay, attracted to boys only. He tried dating girls and it didn't work.

"Kylee is the exception," he said. "I fell in love with her before I knew, and that's kind of why."

The day before their three month anniversary, Meade came out as transgendered to Royal.

"I said, 'Well, I'm gay and I date boys, so we have to break up,'" he said.

"We had been dating for a couple of months and it was getting serious," Meade said. "I knew I was getting strong feelings for him. So I had to tell him soon. ... And so I told him. We were basically just crying for hours and hours that night."

Royal said they ended on nice terms, but he couldn't get her out of his head the next day. He bought her three roses for their three month anniversary and told her he was unsure what would happen with their relationship, but he wanted to try.

"He basically said, 'I don't want to put my love in a box anymore,'" Meade said.

"I said, 'I don't know how this is gonna go, but I want to try,'" he said. "And since that day, she has been breaking through my mind compartments."

Meade said she was tentative and something would probably eventually happen, but they have since been dating for more than a year and he has been supportive.

"Love is love, it doesn't really matter, but for some reason, society wants that label." Royal said.

He said right now he identifies with Queer, saying it is the only label he feels comfortable with because it is such an umbrella term.

"In my head I'm attracted to more men than women," Royal said, "but I don't see us breaking up, so it doesn't really matter."

He said he really doesn't see Meade's  physical changes as becoming a problem.

"In my head, she's a female," he said. "There's no question about it."

Meade said this summer or next December she is going to have facial reconstructive surgery to reduce her brow bone and jaw and to reshape her nose.

"I don't really have any fat, but the hormones will place the fat in a different area," she said, moving her hands over her thighs and hips.

Meade is a vocal major and the hormones affect her every day. Her voice is always changing. She said she is concerned about the vocal shift.

"I want to keep my singing voice," she said. "It's my life."

But whatever changes Meade is going through, Royal is by her side and plans to stay. He said he wants people to ask questions and not to make assumptions. He said there is really only love and has one piece of advice:

"Just follow your heart."