The Tin Soldier Ballerina
“The Steadfast Tin Soldier” is a literary fairy tale by Hans Christian Andersen about a tin soldier’s love for a paper ballerina. The tale was first published in October 1838 in the first booklet of Fairy Tales Told for Children. It has since been adapted to various media including ballet and animated film.
On his birthday, a boy receives a set of 25 toy soldiers all cast from one old tin spoon and arrays them on a table top. One soldier stands on a single leg because, as he was the last one cast, there was not enough metal to make him whole. Nearby, the soldier spies a pretty paper ballerina with a spangle on her sash. She, too, is standing on one leg, and the soldier falls in love. That night, a goblin among the toys in the form of a jack-in-the-box, who also loves the ballerina, angrily warns the soldier to take his eyes off her, but the soldier ignores him.
The next day, the soldier falls from a windowsill (presumably the work of the goblin) and lands in the street. Two boys find the soldier, place him in a paper boat, and set him sailing in the gutter. The boat and its passenger wash into a storm drain, where a rat demands the soldier pay a toll.
Sailing on, the boat is washed into a canal, where the tin soldier is swallowed by a fish. When this fish is caught and cut open, the tin soldier finds himself once again on the table top before the ballerina. Inexplicably, the boy throws the tin soldier into the fire, which is most likely the work of the jack-in-the-box goblin. A wind blows the ballerina into the fire with him; she is consumed by it. The maid cleans the fireplace in the morning and finds that the soldier has melted into a little tin heart, along with the ballerina’s spangle, which is now burned black as coal.
Shaylin Versace Bradley
Shaylin Versace Bradley
Tara Kartya Amoretti
Tara Kartya Amoretti
My name is Tara Kartya Amoretti, I was born in 1968, I’m 52 years old. I’ve lived in Auckland most of my life. I came over from the UK on a ship, with my mom and my sister, fatherless. So I was brought up around a family of women. My journey has been male to female, but as I was growing up, I didn’t know my true identity. I did not know why I liked doing the things that I would do. Even when I was young, I liked to dress up in my mom’s clothes and her lingerie. When my mum and my sister went out, my sister would always get in trouble for going into her drawers. She didn’t know that I used to do these things as I’d always hide out. I did not want anyone to ask why I am doing this. And I tried to hide these things and I did so for a number of years.
As I got older, the internet came along, and I started searching for answers and they started to come to me. I still couldn’t understand why I was having the feelings that I would have. At school I did not like doing full contact sports. I did not want to do a lot of things that other boys my age would do. And I’ve struggled with it, but I just thought, oh, okay, move on to the next thing. This went on for a number of years. I would dress up as a female under my clothes and nobody knew. I was still frazzled with finding myself: why I was doing this.
I don’t know whether or not this was because I was sexually assaulted when I was younger, when a guy took me and sexually assaulted me. What impact it had on me I’m not sure. I guess I never really felt the same after that. But then I carried on without telling anybody about it.
And here I am today. I’ve struggled with relationships, with my fetish that I had and not knowing what is going on. I just struggled through but I carried on. I was in and out of relationships, not that many, but I had a few. And when I came into one relationship and found myself doing the same thing, I wasn’t too sure what to do. So, I just, I carried on investigating and looking at things, and reading about transgender and the different walks of life and learning about hormones and whatnot. I’ve thought about it without taking any action.
I hid behind alcohol and drugs. I tried to hide from it. I wanted to bury it, but I couldn’t. It just kept coming to the surface. I wanted to wear women’s underwear and undergarments and lingerie. It was affecting my relationships. My partner did not think it was very nice and wasn’t positive, so I got rid of everything woman that I had, and tried to put it behind me. It still kept coming up. It went on for quite a few years, many years, but it still kept growing its head. It wouldn’t go away. I would envy other women, their faces, how they looked and how pretty they were.
I tried to come to terms with things and I couldn’t. I’ve done a couple of courses over two years. And by the end of those two years, I was just about 49 and decided I am going to see the doctor, and tell him how I felt. It wasn’t very successful to start up with but I managed to get it out of him on the second visit, what I wanted to say to him, because he couldn’t understand it the first time. I told him that if we started, I wanted to be a female. So I went through the proper steps. I was on antidepressants at the time so I’d see a psychiatrist, and everything else that you have to do when you decide you’re gonna go on hormones and to be a woman, including psychiatric evaluation on the things you do when you embark on this journey. Eventually I was able to start my hormone treatment, and when I did, I totally embraced who I was and wanted to be. I already thought about my new name that I wanted and has been on my mind for a long time. So, I went through to the end, I went over to Thailand. I had a few trips there. I had my voice done, that was the first step. As soon as I started my hormones, I threw away my whole wardrobe, everything that was male was gone. I started a new wardrobe. Now I’ve got so many clothes, it’s not funny. Beautiful ones.
As time went by, I had to be on hormones for like a year before I could have this surgery to look like a woman. I couldn’t wait. Then my time came and I went to Thailand to have my breasts implants and the sex change operation. It didn’t go right the first time. There were complications and I had to come home and let it heal. I had to go back again and have the operation again. I still have a couple of complications but it’s quite minor, I think. I’m getting there. It’s all there, looking beautiful. I’ve had work done on my face. I’ve had upper eyes, lower eyes, face lift and neck lift. I try to keep myself super fit for the operations. I’ve done a lot of pole dancing, ballet and stretching. To this day, I’m still on my journey to be the person I’ve always wanted to become. Here I am.
Mike Watson
Mike Watson
My story is full on, but it’s a journey which has made me stronger and got me to where I am today.
It began with my move up north to live with my then girlfriend. What I thought was going to be a mutual partnership turned out to be an expectation to become an instant dad overnight which at the age of 30 I wasn’t ready for. I was suddenly paying $500 p/wk in rent, working all day to bring home the paycheck, cooking and cleaning, making dinner – doing the works without any reciprocation. While I don’t mind contributing in a relationship, these expectations were too much for me, especially as I was recovering from stomach cancer at the time. The relationship deteriorated, resulting in me being kicked out overnight, causing me to live in my truck for a week without food or money.
I took a job that paid me 50% less than normal. It was disheartening, but I had to survive. This job also meant working 40hrs a week, but only getting paid enough to cover rent and buy five pies a week to keep me fed. This was during lockdown, so I ended up moving 4 times over this period in a state of alert.
The day before my birthday, after driving from Mangawhai to the Mount to collect some belongings, I crashed my Ute after doing a 9hr day on the building site and 4 hours of driving. Along with the exhaustion, alcohol was a factor. I made a poor choice, but at the time, all I could think of was driving home or paying for a taxi and going hungry for a week. I chose to ensure I was still fed so I had the energy to work and get back on my feet. It was the wrong choice. When I crashed my truck, I died and had an out of body experience. I flew around my truck looking at my body as it hung over the steering wheel for 3 minutes. That’s a moment I’ll never forget.
As a result of the crash, I lost my license, my transport, my tools and my job (around $70K worth) and went hungry for another two weeks. To add to the stress, I had $1000 worth of bills to find a way to cover, with no way of working to help ease the burden.
I knew my life couldn’t continue on this trajectory. I needed to make some positive changes. I made a choice. I decided in addition to focusing on my building business, I also needed to focus on my health, both mentally and physically. I had gone through a lot, including working 18-hour days for the last year without any help of support from anyone, knowing I was very lucky to be alive.
I also needed a more permanent place to live. I don’t know if it was the negativity energy that was hanging around me at that time but I couldn’t seem to find a place to be settled. I kept moving into places that didn’t last and having to move out again. The repetitive cycle of sleeping in my car, going hungry and living paycheck to paycheck continued.
While this was happening, my business was taking off. I had 6 staff and 3 jobs on the go. But running a business while living in your car which was parked outside your gym, is not sustainable. I started expanding my business with the hope to sell cabins to pay for a place to live, food on the table and a new truck. My hard work paid off and I successfully expanded my business, my health improved, and I found a new place to live (I move in next week). I don’t know what the future holds, but I do know that I have lived a lifetime in the last few years. But I have also come out stronger. I have never stopped moving forward, and by refocusing my life, I have become someone that I am proud of today.
