Chelsea Manning Shares Her Transition to Living as a Woman …

Manning later moved overseas to Wales with her mother, whose marriage had crumbled. She began high school and sought friends she could trust. "There were a lot of points where I would start to come out, face stern resistance and mockery from people I thought were my friends, and then reverse course. I was scared," she says. "I don't think I ever said 'I'm gay' or 'I'm trans.' It was more like, 'Is it normal for guys to crossdress a lot?'"

Manning's father, Brian Manning, has sharply different memories, recalling a child who liked to play with Legos and the family computer, not in Casey's room. He remembers a happy household, no bullies at school. He does not believe that Manning could have leaked hundreds of thousands of documents alone without catching the attention of colleagues. Having worked in information technology for 30 years, he says, "I know what you can do and what you can't do."

Manning's mother, Susan Manning, said through a representative at the Private Manning Family Fund that her child has always been idealistic and she believes this is the root of any leaks. She said she supports Manning "one hundred percent" in her desire to live as a woman.

More turmoil followed Manning's return to Oklahoma after high school in 2005. She lived with her father and got an internship as a software programmer and designer, but both the job and the relationship with her dad went south. A period of homelessness followed, during which she largely lived out of her truck in Chicago. She later moved in with an aunt near Washington, D.C., enrolling at Montgomery College. She worked 60 to 70 hours a week at two sales jobs to pay for it, she says, and the juggle became "insane."

Thoughts of living as a woman loomed. "But my schedule was hectic, and therapists cost a lot of money," she says. "And even though I started seeing a psychologist with the specific intent of exploring my trans identity, I panicked and never brought up the subject with her. It was all exhausting me to the point I was turning to soda, cigarettes, and the Internet for an escape."

A future in the military came into focus, urged on by her father. "I was following the coverage of the Iraq war and the ongoing 'surge,'" she says. "I began to wonder if I could help out. Sure enough, I enlisted." Another thought occurred too: Perhaps the macho environment would distract her from thoughts of living as a woman.

AP Patrick Semansky

Basic training in Missouri in 2007 was rough. "I absolutely was caught off guard by the intensity," she says. "There were points when I was humiliated pretty badly. One of the drill sergeants who inventoried my personal belongings made comments about my phone: It was pink. I didn't think much about bringing it with me I just liked it."

One difficult night, she says, is "burned in my memory." It came after a long day of marching with weapons loaded with blank rounds. "We arrived at a range where you low-crawl under razor wire," she says. As she was crawling, she says, her weapon got stuck in semiautomatic-fire mode. She became frustrated and tried to force the switch back. "This was a stupid idea," she says. "It went off." The blast infuriated the tired recruits. The next night, "I was jumped by two of the guys who lived with me," she says. "They turned off the lights and tried to push me into my wall locker so they could lock me inside of it. I fought back." A sergeant came as Manning was ready to strike a blow, she says, and she was sent to a behavioral health clinic for "fits of rage." She says she kept the locker incident to herself, and the guys "respected that and left me alone."

Manning went on to become an Army intelligence analyst in New York and prepared to deploy to Iraq. She entered a happier phase, beginning a relationship with a student at Brandeis University. "I fell in love with him. He was not my first relationship, but he was certainly the most serious one," she says. He was the first person Manning recalls telling about her desire to be a woman.

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Chelsea Manning Shares Her Transition to Living as a Woman ...