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.
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