History

My therapist Christine and my best friend Chad offered some suggestions resulting in a slight alteration of my letter to my Mum (which I’ll post here soon). I’m impatient for the opportunity to share it with her. I realize that she may react…well, any number of ways, but I am confident that it will turn out well in the end.

After working on the letter, it occurred to me that I wasn’t sure how “male” I have come across to my family over the last 20 years. So, I rummaged through the few photos I have of myself since I was a wee one, and found that I was consistently boyish/mannish with one consistent exception – when my mother managed to dress me up for some family holiday occasion. Oh, if you could have been there! The kicking and screaming…literally…(grin).

In any case, I realized that these photos are very encouraging to me. I’m only twenty-nine years old, so I don’t have a great deal of history. Looking at a photo from 2001 (taken on Space Mountain, with coworkers) where I am unidentifiable as female is greatly satisfying. Seeing a picture of myself working on my first bike with my dad, in jeans, a baseball cap and leather work boots, is affirming. It’s as if the too-often-negative past is reaching forward, patting my shoulder and saying “Yes, young one; you’ve always been this way. I know.”

Crazy, eh?

– TTG

A Year Later

Yesterday morning, my TG chick friend (let’s call her She) called me up and said, hey, my best friend is having a BBQ at 4, want to come? On the way there, it occurred to me that I had been to that same BBQ exactly one year earlier – and it was that night that She broke up with me the first time.

Anyhow, I went and had a great time. Conversation was easy; She and I had fun. Nothing felt forced. It felt very natural sitting close, but I was careful not to be too familiar. I was pretty sure we were “ok” when She reached over and started smoking my cigarettes. (grin)

Then…I got drunk. Drunk enough to be pretty unsteady on my feet. I was fine until we started doing rounds of shots at the end…I’d been there 5 hours, had 8 or 9 beers and I don’t know how many shots. I was planning to sleep in my car before I drove home, but the next thing I knew, She was taking me home. To HER house. I was, like, uh…ok?

Again, we never touched, despite sharing a bed. She has a big bed. >.> This morning we woke up early, went to breakfast and talked. She was easier to talk to than usual; we actually had a pleasant conversation. We talked a lot about me starting T. I’ll ask her to dinner and a movie this week, maybe Friday night. We need to just spend some time together without feeling pressured to be intimate.

Last year, our conversation was very short. I was so angry and hurt that I drove to her apartment building, let myself in the gate and knocked on her door. Here’s the entire conversation:

Me: “All you have to say is one word, and I’ll disappear; but make up your mind. I’m sick of being fucked around with.”

Her: “Goodbye.”

Me: “So that’s it, then?”

Her: “What happened to one word?”

Me (sadly): “All right. I wish I could have known you better.”

That was it. I turned, walked away and didn’t look back. Hard to believe that was one year ago today.

Shit; what am I thinking, anyhow? I need a girlfriend like I need a hole in the head. Please, God, let us just be good friends…=P

Leave Me Alone! – pt 2

So, this chick I dated a year ago…and then again, six months ago…we’ve had a tentative friendship since our agreement to just be friends. I still care about her deeply – enough to sacrifice my desire to be with her to make sure she’s well and safe. I need to stay close to her to keep tabs on her; otherwise, how will I know she’s ok? It’s worth it to stay in the shadows, on the sidelines, to know that all is well. Still, we haven’t talked much. I think she was uncomfortable. Maybe I was too.

Recently she began to act more friendly towards me. When I cut my knee riding, she was very concerned. I played it off but I kind of enjoyed it. Truth be told, I had considered calling her to help me patch the thing up. I knew she’d be up for it.

Sure enough, the next week, she “grounded” me and made me promise to report in after my ride. When I did so, reporting that I was unscathed, I was invited to lunch. (??)

We have been more and more in touch recently. I learned that she was going to a conference at her church this weekend. Due to past experiences, I was even more careful to give her space, not contact her – wait for her to want to talk to me. However as the weekend progressed, it seemed like all she wanted to do was arrange time with me.

The bottom line is: she has asked me to go out with her again. She says she knows how much she hurt me in the past, and wants to show that she won’t do so again. I told her she has nothing to prove to me. I don’t know what went on in this conference but I don’t trust it will last. I feel like a gullible moron for agreeing to go along with this. She has hurt me very badly in the past…and yet, I care immensely for her. So many of the things she said to me in the last few days are true. I understand her better than most people could; we’re two sides of the same coin. The bottom line is, I love her. After all we’ve gone through…I love her. I think I always will.

I’m not sure what’s worse: a) I’m willing to sacrifice my friendship with her, again, for the chance of a romantic relationship; or b) I’m being a stupid naive idiot going around begging to be abused.

Which is the greater evil? Does it matter? I’m committing both sins.

Well, bottoms up; I’m in for a penny, in for a pound at this point. No looking back.

But, goddammit…why won’t she just leave me alone!?

Leave Me Alone!

A little over a year ago, I had a brief but intense relationship with a MTF TG woman. I was left with this horrible emptiness after our relationship ended. I couldn’t figure out what I had done wrong, how I had driven her off, etc. She was going overseas to have “the surgery.” I was worried sick while she was gone!! I wrote letters. I wrote music. I wrote poems. I was a lovesick fool.

After a couple months of moping, it finally hit me — I was a lovesick fool. I had gone and fallen in love with her!!! What? How did that happen? When did that happen? I did my best to get her out of my head, out of my life.

Six months later, she and I started hanging out again. I confessed my love at the earliest logical opportunity – figured it was better to get things out in the open. We briefly revived our relationship, then she freaked out on me and cut me off again.

This freaking out and cutting off thing happened twice, and both times it wounded me deeply. All I wanted was to love, care, protect and provide for her; all I offered was sincerity, honesty and gentleness. Yet no matter how careful I was, she eventually felt threatened by her feelings and employed her emotional guillotine, effectively removing my outstretched hand and cauterizing the kind spirit behind it. Yet the second time, I was ready! I knew it was coming, so I didn’t take it personally. Instead, I kept it in perspective as being an issue with her, not me. I resolved to make things right.

I tentatively reached out and asked her – “Would you rather just be friends? Because, I want you in my life, one way or another.” She said that just friends was best. By this point, I wholeheartedly agreed. We’ve kept loosely in touch since then, for the last six months or so. I’ve felt released from the feelings of loss and longing that preoccupied me for six months, and I’ve dated a few people.

I still love her, though.

Here’s the chorus to one of the songs I wrote her.

I’ll love you
Until the end of time
Even while you are not mine
I’ll love you
Every moment more
Than I could ever find words for
And though some days I feel crazy
And you’re still so far away
I will remain here in the shadows
Waiting for the chance to say…
I love you.

How far will you go…?

How far would you go to fit in, if you felt like you never had a chance of doing so besides completely obscuring your real identity and replacing it with something completely false and superficial?

Imagine with me: you’ve been stranded on a tropical island in a LOST-like scenario. You have no hope of anyone ever finding you. Thankfully, there is an indigenous culture willing to embrace you and provide you with food, shelter, companionship, maybe even love – PROVIDED you conform absolutely to their beliefs and customs. Would you do it?

I did.

I was stranded among straight people until I was 16 years old and started attending college. I was so indoctrinated with their bullshit that somewhere deep inside, I believed *I* was at fault for being transgender. I hid it as well as I could – I only let my true self out in my fantasy world. I even felt dirty for doing it, but I needed to in order to stay sane. As life progressed, I became better at hiding it…I always dressed like an extreme tomboy and usually cut my hair short, but I found excuses. Some of them were even effective.

I recently found out that my falling out with my dad’s family was a result of my grandfather joking (in front of the entire family) about my being homosexual. If only it were that simple! I had blocked it out – I mean, seriously, I had NO recollection – but it caused a rift between my father and I that took nearly ten years to overcome. I can only imagine being so mortified that someone had come so close to “figuring me out” that I freaked, and completely cut them off/out. (Besides, it was rude, which was not atypical for those people. More on that later.)

So, I ask again – how far would you go? Would you participate in ritual human sacrifice? Would you eat raw goats’ testicles? Would you go around naked? Would you worship a god you don’t believe in? Would you color your skin if you were afraid they would kill you if they found out you were a different color than them? All for the sake of maintaining that human connection, of feeling safe and included?

I tried…and I failed.

Let’s play pretend!

These first few posts will be a mix of current happenings and back story. My journey makes no sense whatever without some context to couch it in, so hang in there.

When I was three or four years old, I had one friend. She was my across-the-street neighbor, a girl my age who we’ll call “Kim.” We remained friends for many years but became estranged in junior high school. She invited me to her wedding. I didn’t go.

We used to play pretend, like all kids do. Even then I felt…different; I had no interest in playing Mommy or messing with dolls or toy dishes. I always wanted to be outside and I nearly always forced her to play Star Trek with me (sorry, Kim!). I was the amazing, bold, heroic Captain James T. Kirk of the Starship Enterprise…strong, authoritative, admired, respected. It was a wonderful feeling.

That’s the earliest time I recall asking God to turn me into a boy, and asking him quite seriously (and innocently, at the time) if he’d goofed up somehow. My mother had some instinctive sense about what was going on — perhaps my insistence on sitting backwards on the potty had something to do with it? — and she was NOT amused.

I’ve lost the ability to sink into fantasy or roleplay to relieve the tension between outward and inward realities. However, given the shrinking discrepancy between the two, I feel less troubled by this tension all the time. This blog will be about that struggle; now, in the past, and projected difficulties it will create in the future. I hope you stick around.