So now that it's out in the open, it's my turn to decide. Our relationship was, is founded on acceptance. No secrets, no fear, no lies not matter how hard the truth is to say or hear.
So how do I accept this?
How do I accept his desire, need to be a woman? How do I say "OK" to the one thing that will end irrevocably and without question the relationship we have built? How do I bring myself to let him, our life, all of it go without a fight?
And I want to fight. With every cell in my body. With all the strength and courage I can muster I want so bad to say "No! I will NOT let you, us go!" Not like this, not with silence and resignation and quite aquiesence.
But I love him. I am still IN love with him. To fight this would be to say that his feelings don't matter and they have always mattered to me. Above all else.
Above my own.
I have only ever wanted his happiness. It has been my life's mission since we met in London's square to make a happy healthy space for him. A place where the monsters of his childhood could not reach him.
I will not become the monster that keeps him from finding his true self. Even if it means I bury the romantic love I still feel for him. I will surrender myself to the silence I must maintain.
And every day I will hope and pray and struggle and scrape for every ounce of grace I can find.
What else is there to do?
Wednesday, April 29, 2009
Tuesday, April 28, 2009
Revelations
It's been seven months since my husband's big "reveal". Yet it seems longer. Looking back I suppose I should have suspected something was wrong. But as usual I blinded myself to the obvious.
I excel at self destruction.
We hadn't made love in more then a year prior to his confession of transgenderism. He thought I wasn't attracted to him anymore, despite my constant protestation otherwise. I could never convince him that the problem was mine, not his.
And it was my problem.
He was, no, he is beautiful. He of the sea grey eyes and flaxen hair. He of the slight frame and crooked smile. He of the slight southern drawl that betrayed his small town heritiage. He of the classically trained opera voice that left the profession just as he was about to break. Abandoned because he was positive and his lover left him over it. He of the Outband, formed in rage and anger and a desire to recapture his Southern roots. He was everything I have ever wanted in a lover, a friend a husband.
Yet for more than a year I lay beside him every night unable to rouse the passion I held for him. Not from a lack of effort mind you. He would touch me as only he could. I would lay on his chest cradled in his love for me. Eventually, we would kiss, roll over and go to sleep. His yearning to feel me inside him unmet while I mortared another brick in the wall of my self hatred around my heart.
My unhappiness is of my own creation.
I hate so many things about myself. I hate my body. It's folds and buldges that undulate when I laugh, walk, dance.
I loathe my inability to finish anything. I start projects, a gym regimine, a Master's program, a short story, a poem. Ultimately, I abandon them all at the brink of completion. As I approach the end of each of these goals it's as if I am staring into an abyss. The fear of falling in grips me and I back away turning from the finish line.
I'm weary of abandoning victory and success. Yet it seems at times that my dharma is nothing but failure and discord. My spirit seems incapable of holding happiness for more than a fleeting transitory moment.
And that is what quelled my physical desire for my husband.
It wasn't always so.
When we first met, I couldn't keep my lips, hands or body off of him. I wanted, needed to be connected to him, inside of him as if he was the only thing anchoring me to this existance. My teather in a windswept world.
And he obliged, as only he could. He welcomed me with a passion that matched my own. I filled the same need for him. I salved his ache and desire to be loved. I was his safe place, his haven from the demons of his broken childhood. I was faithful like no other lover had been.
We loved each other as we were. There was no desire to change the idiosyncracies that exisited. No need to smooth over the rough edges. We took each other at face value. This was the comfort we sought out and found in each other.
Acceptance.
And I reveled in it. I drank in this unique life experience by the tankard. I was giddy with love and joy and contentment like I had never known.
We joined our brothers and sisters during San Francisco's "winter of love" and pledged ourselves to each other. When the marriage was annulled by the short sighted California Supremes, we filled out our domestic partnership as fast as our fingers would fly.
Then in June came the glorious news that at last, we could marry. And we did. In front of my parents. The two people who had modeled for me what a marriage could be. Married for 40 years, enduring the demons of my father's war ripped psyche. His alcoholism, his drug use. A pair of pillars that had raised three sons to be good and honest and true. They still carried a torch of love and commitment and joy for each other that I continue to see burn in their gaze.
In front of his mother. She who had never flown on a plane. She who hadn't strayed more then 100 miles from Nothern Mississippi, she who had endured the same beatings and monstrosities that my Love had. She who a scant 9 months earlier, had been freed from her earthbound perdition when her jailer nie husband blew his brains out as he sat in a swing under a humid October sky.
Ours was a love that was meant to mend these tears in the fabrics of our collective souls. And I thought it had. I believed that this committment would free me from my self loathing because he loved me for who I was. Not some image that I or he or society had created.
I never for a moment realized that he was more broken then I. That the dam of his great secret was about to burst sweeping me to this lonely sand bar I now find myself marooned on. That my Love, out of nothing more then a desire to be honest, with me, with himself, and with the world would destroy my contentment.
My happily ever after.
I excel at self destruction.
We hadn't made love in more then a year prior to his confession of transgenderism. He thought I wasn't attracted to him anymore, despite my constant protestation otherwise. I could never convince him that the problem was mine, not his.
And it was my problem.
He was, no, he is beautiful. He of the sea grey eyes and flaxen hair. He of the slight frame and crooked smile. He of the slight southern drawl that betrayed his small town heritiage. He of the classically trained opera voice that left the profession just as he was about to break. Abandoned because he was positive and his lover left him over it. He of the Outband, formed in rage and anger and a desire to recapture his Southern roots. He was everything I have ever wanted in a lover, a friend a husband.
Yet for more than a year I lay beside him every night unable to rouse the passion I held for him. Not from a lack of effort mind you. He would touch me as only he could. I would lay on his chest cradled in his love for me. Eventually, we would kiss, roll over and go to sleep. His yearning to feel me inside him unmet while I mortared another brick in the wall of my self hatred around my heart.
My unhappiness is of my own creation.
I hate so many things about myself. I hate my body. It's folds and buldges that undulate when I laugh, walk, dance.
I loathe my inability to finish anything. I start projects, a gym regimine, a Master's program, a short story, a poem. Ultimately, I abandon them all at the brink of completion. As I approach the end of each of these goals it's as if I am staring into an abyss. The fear of falling in grips me and I back away turning from the finish line.
I'm weary of abandoning victory and success. Yet it seems at times that my dharma is nothing but failure and discord. My spirit seems incapable of holding happiness for more than a fleeting transitory moment.
And that is what quelled my physical desire for my husband.
It wasn't always so.
When we first met, I couldn't keep my lips, hands or body off of him. I wanted, needed to be connected to him, inside of him as if he was the only thing anchoring me to this existance. My teather in a windswept world.
And he obliged, as only he could. He welcomed me with a passion that matched my own. I filled the same need for him. I salved his ache and desire to be loved. I was his safe place, his haven from the demons of his broken childhood. I was faithful like no other lover had been.
We loved each other as we were. There was no desire to change the idiosyncracies that exisited. No need to smooth over the rough edges. We took each other at face value. This was the comfort we sought out and found in each other.
Acceptance.
And I reveled in it. I drank in this unique life experience by the tankard. I was giddy with love and joy and contentment like I had never known.
We joined our brothers and sisters during San Francisco's "winter of love" and pledged ourselves to each other. When the marriage was annulled by the short sighted California Supremes, we filled out our domestic partnership as fast as our fingers would fly.
Then in June came the glorious news that at last, we could marry. And we did. In front of my parents. The two people who had modeled for me what a marriage could be. Married for 40 years, enduring the demons of my father's war ripped psyche. His alcoholism, his drug use. A pair of pillars that had raised three sons to be good and honest and true. They still carried a torch of love and commitment and joy for each other that I continue to see burn in their gaze.
In front of his mother. She who had never flown on a plane. She who hadn't strayed more then 100 miles from Nothern Mississippi, she who had endured the same beatings and monstrosities that my Love had. She who a scant 9 months earlier, had been freed from her earthbound perdition when her jailer nie husband blew his brains out as he sat in a swing under a humid October sky.
Ours was a love that was meant to mend these tears in the fabrics of our collective souls. And I thought it had. I believed that this committment would free me from my self loathing because he loved me for who I was. Not some image that I or he or society had created.
I never for a moment realized that he was more broken then I. That the dam of his great secret was about to burst sweeping me to this lonely sand bar I now find myself marooned on. That my Love, out of nothing more then a desire to be honest, with me, with himself, and with the world would destroy my contentment.
My happily ever after.
Monday, April 27, 2009
Thorns
Where do you go?
Where do you go to get rid of the pain of a loss so profound it feels as if your very soul has been ripped from you? How do you empty a bottomless well of anger and rage and resentment so deep the oceans of the world would be but a drop in the vastness of its size? How do you let go of something you've spent the last 6 years nourishing, tending, growing when it rises up and says to you "I don't need you anymore?"
I thought I was through with this. I thought, "I'm over it, I've moved on".
Then I see him and it shatters all over again. I hear his voice on the phone and the stitches I've applied to my broken heart rend like gossamer in a spring zephyr. I am reduced to a quivering mass in a bed I am reluctant to change the sheets of because it means removing the last vestage of him; his scent.
I've loved and lost before. This is not new. This is a path well trod, rutted and landmarked.
Yet this, these feelings of abject terror, of age and loneliness and the absolute certainty that this was not supposed to end like this, this was supposed to be "forever", I promised, he promised, we promised, is.
I could have accepted it if he cheated. I would have been ok with an open relationship. But this? This is the bridge I cannot cross. This is the only place I cannot go.
For he, the man that I thought was the man I would grow old with, the man who I would raise a child with, the man I thought would be there till death do us part has decided.
He wants to be a woman.
I don't know where to go with this. I am not even numb. I am void. It's as if the place I once occupied in this space and time is now vacant. A blank empty space where I once was.
There are voids everywhere.
Hangars where his clothes once were. The medicine cabinet's gaping maw lacks the elixirs and vials that rendered his sickness "undetectable". The cold black hole in my bed that once held his warm, soft, sweet body.
I seem to have one too many things now. Two closets, two sinks, two nightstands where the solitary form of each suffices now. It is the singular nature of my condition that I must become used to now.
I don't know where I will end up on this new unplanned journey. I was settled into my comfortable little life. I was content. Now all of that has changed. I hope you will join me on this part of the journey. I don't know how long this will last, or how interesting it will be. I make no promises.
There is one thing that I do plan on doing first thing tomorrow.
I'm changing the sheets.
Where do you go to get rid of the pain of a loss so profound it feels as if your very soul has been ripped from you? How do you empty a bottomless well of anger and rage and resentment so deep the oceans of the world would be but a drop in the vastness of its size? How do you let go of something you've spent the last 6 years nourishing, tending, growing when it rises up and says to you "I don't need you anymore?"
I thought I was through with this. I thought, "I'm over it, I've moved on".
Then I see him and it shatters all over again. I hear his voice on the phone and the stitches I've applied to my broken heart rend like gossamer in a spring zephyr. I am reduced to a quivering mass in a bed I am reluctant to change the sheets of because it means removing the last vestage of him; his scent.
I've loved and lost before. This is not new. This is a path well trod, rutted and landmarked.
Yet this, these feelings of abject terror, of age and loneliness and the absolute certainty that this was not supposed to end like this, this was supposed to be "forever", I promised, he promised, we promised, is.
I could have accepted it if he cheated. I would have been ok with an open relationship. But this? This is the bridge I cannot cross. This is the only place I cannot go.
For he, the man that I thought was the man I would grow old with, the man who I would raise a child with, the man I thought would be there till death do us part has decided.
He wants to be a woman.
I don't know where to go with this. I am not even numb. I am void. It's as if the place I once occupied in this space and time is now vacant. A blank empty space where I once was.
There are voids everywhere.
Hangars where his clothes once were. The medicine cabinet's gaping maw lacks the elixirs and vials that rendered his sickness "undetectable". The cold black hole in my bed that once held his warm, soft, sweet body.
I seem to have one too many things now. Two closets, two sinks, two nightstands where the solitary form of each suffices now. It is the singular nature of my condition that I must become used to now.
I don't know where I will end up on this new unplanned journey. I was settled into my comfortable little life. I was content. Now all of that has changed. I hope you will join me on this part of the journey. I don't know how long this will last, or how interesting it will be. I make no promises.
There is one thing that I do plan on doing first thing tomorrow.
I'm changing the sheets.
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