All In This Together

   I have been a little stuck on how I wanted to really get into the story. I am funny that, I like to start in the middle or the end and the kind of back track until I get the whole picture. I think I'll just skip around. I re read my first post and realized there was a mistake, I said at the end that I was not going to show Jen first but that's not true. I did send her a copy of the blog a  couple of days before it was published. She read it and we talked about it. The whole point of the blog was not to tell her story for her, but to tell her story in the context of how I have been going through it, and how it feels for everyone else. So yes, it is still about her,, but it is my story. I still have asked for her input and if she disagrees with me on something we are discussing it, because I don't want to tell something that is untrue or hurtful. That was never my intention. 

   I watched Becoming Chaz on Monday I wanted to see another viewpoint on the coming out story, and frankly there is not that much out there on gender transition. It is still the thing we sweep under the rug and don't talk about very much. I have always thought Chastity and now Chaz was incredibly smart and brave for being such a prominent voice for LGBTQ issues. Being famous was not something he asked for and dealing with that has it's own set of problems. That said, I think it was an incomplete picture. When it started we were at the point that Chaz was already getting surgery and we were there, there was no talk about the beginning of the journey. I have to believe this is for a couple of different reasons, that part of the journey is so long for some people, it can last for decades. I also think that part of the journey is the hardest for the person going through it, once you see this as who you are and you decide to live that, you are really past much of the emotion and inner turmoil, now you just have to deal with the outside world and their reaction to your decision. I'm not saying that is easier but it is a different kind of emotional and tumultuous. The other reason I think this is so common is that this deciding point is where the majority of us are let in on the secret. As hard as it is to get to this point, most people going through it don't take everyone they know along for the whole ride. This was also true with Jennifer's transition. A few people were in on the process, I was one of them, but most people kind of found out when Jen showed up to a planned event with a dress and a wig on. For some people they got messages ahead of time or phone calls but in general, the first news of the transition most people had was when it was already in place. For our friends it was almost this non event. There was Jen with her really dramatic entrance and announcement and most of our friends just said, "cool". I know she was hoping for more surprise and even a little bit of conversation about it but it was just not that way. 

   For my family and my in laws, they all got a phone call before a scheduled event that Jen would be present for. There was some discussing and some surprise in this part of the reveal. As I mentioned my Grandmother was 80 years old at the time, and she has remained very close to Thomas in the years since we separated, and that has not changed since she has become Jennifer. I just didn't think my Grandmother would like to have it sprung on her in a public place. I knew she would have questions and need some time to wrap her head around it. She says she doesn't understand it but she loves Thomas/Jennifer and that isn't going to change. Of course she used to refer to him my husband and my best friend as her boys, she doesn't call them that as a group anymore, but that is a small change. My in laws were pretty open about the whole thing. I was a little surprised, most of them are very religious, and border on being pretty Fundy. I had been bringing Thomas along for events and holidays for years, he has remained a part of my family since we separated so it was never an issue having him along, I was worried that the gender change might hurt that. Everyone seemed to just accept it and the only person who really had any questions about it was my Husband's mother. I went through and explained about transgender-ism, because she really had no frame of reference for what Jennifer was going through at all. It was just something she had never seen or thought about before. It was a really positive conversation and in the end I can honestly say that I know of only 1 person who has had an issue with Jen's transition and that is Jen's own mother, so that is a story for a different day. 

   My thoughts on the transition at this point are this; As much as it is a transformation for the person transitioning it is also a transformation for everyone else, and we don't have the long period of reflection to adjust to the idea. We are saying goodbye to someone we care about. They are not that other person anymore, they may look a little familiar, and have all of those person's memories but they are not the same person. Jennifer and Thomas are not the same person. This is something she and I disagree on. Jennifer is more confident that Thomas ever was, she is comfortable in her skin, and because of this she is much more outspoken than Thomas would have ever been. She is more assertive, more sarcastic, and sometimes more abrasive than Thomas was. I know on the inside nothing has changed but the outward personality has changed just as much as the appearance has. Granted, you are losing someone, but yo also get an immediate replacement who still remembers all of your private jokes, and the things you did together. As I'm writing this I am thinking of a character from Star Trek, it is like having a symbiont around, a personal Dax. Over time those personalities do blend and soften each other but there is a period of transition and for us, Jen had a counselor to talk to through this period, but the rest of us did not. 

   I did go along with Jen to one of her counseling sessions, this is a much bigger story so I won't get to into it now. but that was something that bothered me about the process. I was supposed to focus on making it all about Jen and forget about my own feelings in the matter and I didn't think that was right. When someone transitions, they take all of their friends and family and co workers with them, and it should be about everybody. I'm not saying we should have a say in the transition or that there is room here for bigotry or prejudice, because there is not. It should be about supporting everyone and remembering that we all have feelings about this and we are all in this together. 

To Make A Long Story Short...

   So this isn't going to by any means be the whole story, This goes back more than 10 years if I were to start at the very beginning. I met Thomas in 2001, I think, I'm old so my memory is already slipping. It was January and I was starting my first semester back at college. I was already rounding the bend on my twenties and had a 5 year old daughter. I barely remember having Thomas in a class that first semester. I thought I could just pile on the classes and skate through, I was wrong so I dropped a few until I had a more manageable load, he was in one of the classes I just stopped attending partway through. He remembers me because he thought I was loud and irritating, and when he saw me walking down the street a few months later with my daughter he says he ducked around a corner to avoid running in to me.

   Fast forward and it has been 14 years since that first encounter and boy do we have some history between us now. We had a disastrous 3 year marriage, which basically imploded on our 3rd anniversary, I didn't realize it at the time because I forgot it was our anniversary that year. We spent 5 and a half years together in a relationship and we have spent the last seven and a half together as family. We were separated about 2 years when he told me he was cross dressing in secret, a few things now made sense, and it has been just over 2 years now since he told me that he was a woman and no longer had any doubts or confusion about it. He was now she, and she was still someone I cared about, still family.

   My kids now had an Aunt Jen instead of an Uncle Thomas. I no longer had to answer awkward questions from my family about why the marriage didn't work out, but it opened up a whole bunch of new questions. Explaining transgender-ism to my 80 year old Grandmother, and my super conservative Mother In Law were definitely interesting conversations. If my Grandfather had lived to hear about this I imagine his response would have been somewhat like it was when he found out I was unmarried and pregnant for the first time, he said pregnant we could deal with, the only thing we couldn't figure out was dead, that is the only thing that is final.

I want to talk about what it means to be transgender and what it means to accept and continue to love someone who is transgender because it is a conversation we need to have. It is not the dark ages anymore and if a woman can buy herself a pair of breasts bigger than basketballs, we should be able to not only use modern medicine to fix some of the problems that put people in the grave way too young, but we should also be able to talk about it as a society and accept it. I haven't told Jen yet, that I am writing this blog not just about her but about our lives as they relate to each other, but I am sure she wouldn't mind. She always says she hates when people talk about her, then in secret after they've gone she wants to know what everyone said. She secretly loves to be the center of attention.

   So Jen, here is to you, I hope you like it, and if you don't, well what can I say, I talk about my life and you have been a big part of it.