After The Losses: After The Guilt Has Passed

If you are now living in a gender other than the one you were assigned at birth, you have most likely lost at least one relationship that was very important to you.  It might be the one you had with a spouse or partner.  Or, perhaps, family members have—or your entire family has—rejected you. 

Maybe longtime friends or professional colleagues have decided that you are less worthy of their esteem than you were when they knew you by your old name, in the gender in which you had been living.

I have experienced losses in all three categories.  My partner split with me when I started my transition.  (When I offered not to live as female for the sake of our relationship, she would not hear of it. “You have to do it,” she said of my impending change.  “I just can’t go there with you.”)  One family member has cut ties with me; others have kept some distance.  And one friend—whose PhD, interestingly, includes a specialty in gender studies—said and did the politically correct things until she lashed out at me over an imagined transgression.   Another friend, I now realize, simply didn’t have the courage to tell me to my face how he really felt.  Over time, he stopped answering my calls and responding to my e-mails. 

And then there was the former boss—the chair of a department in which I taught—who observed my class and wrote a glowing observation and sang my praises to his superiors and colleagues—when I was a guy named Nick.  After about a year of living as Justine, I asked him whether he would write a reference or recommendation for me.  He shook his head and gave an appraisal of me that completely contradicted the report he wrote about me and things he said to others, including the college provost.

I grieved all of those relationships.  I hoped that my former partner would become the friend she said she wanted to be after we split.  I hoped that blood would indeed be thicker than whatever hormones were coursing through my body.  And I hoped that my old friends would get over the shock of the person they knew as a guy named Nick becoming a woman named Justine and realize that I was still all of the things they used to say I was: caring, compassionate, intelligent and sometimes even funny.

My old boss has retired, and I’ve moved on with my work, so I am no longer concerned with his assessment of me.  Although I still recall some of the good times I had with her, I have long resigned myself to the fact that my former partner didn’t mean what she said about remaining friends with me.  I have a similar attitude about the gender studies PhD:  She was a really good friend once (She called me the night, long ago, when I’d traced a line on my left wrist; I didn’t draw the razor blade across it) but that—like the relationship I had with my former partner, is a memory.  And now I realize—if you’ll pardon the expression—that even after my surgery, I have more balls than that male former friend, if I do say so myself.

I have not only accepted that I will most likely never have relationships with them again; I have even lost my desire to re-connect with them.  I have also resigned myself to not being reconciled with the family members I mentioned, especially one in particular.  I even promised my mother that if that family member decides to speak to me again, I will listen and not question or accuse.

That promise still holds.  Lately, though, I’ve noticed that I’m losing not only my hope or wish, but also my desire, to see a renewed relationship.  If that family member calls or approaches me, I won’t refuse.  However, I don’t expect that to happen and don’t feel particularly troubled by it anymore.  I get the feeling that if we ever meet again, it will be at the funeral of one of my parents.  We will probably be the proverbial ships passing in the night; we might say the things relatives say to each other over the death of another relative, but I don’t expect to look to that relative for support any more than I expect to be looked to.

What I’m noticing now is that I’ve lost the sadness I felt over losing that relationship—and that I’m not feeling guilty about it.  Some might regard that as cold or heartless. Perhaps it is. But to me, it seems no more sensible to pine for someone who has rejected me—and who, in our last conversation, said that rejection is about that person’s “stubbornness” (Yes, that is the word that person used) is the reason for not acknowledging me as I am, let alone having any sort of relationship with me—than it is to wish I were 27 years old again.  It just ain’t happenin’, and I’m getting over it.

The Last One?

The past year or so has been pretty strange.  Not bad, just unnerving.  Or I just don’t know what to make of it, or perhaps I’m not accepting something.

Of course I am still sad about John’s death.  Yesterday the mail carrier brought one of those “In Memoriam” cards with his photo and an inscription:  his birthdate, date of death, “Beloved husband of Mildred, father of Stefanie and Lisa, grandfather of Melanie and Steven.” And friend to me, to Joanne, to many other people.

I’m realizing that he’s probably the last male friend I’ve made in my life.  I can call him that because I never thought of him as someone I knew just because he was Mildred’s husband; he is one of the few men with whom I’ve felt comfortable.  In some ways, it seems improbable:  On the surface, we didn’t have that much in common.  But he, like Millie, knew the kinds of things about people and life that you don’t learn in classrooms, in seminars or seminaries, or in any place where people try to explain life in terms of theories or categories.  That, I believe, is the reason why they met me near the end of my life as Nick and became even better friends as I changed my clothes, my name, some of my surroundings, the way I think and, finally, my body.

I’m realizing that he may have been the last male friend I had.  Perhaps it was inevitable that, one day, I wouldn’t have any more male friends, if for no other reason that I never had very many.  Over the past year, I’ve met some men who have been nice, even kind, to me and didn’t seek anything in return.  Some belong to, or at least attend, the church that’s become part of my life.  At least two or three seem like they genuinely want to be friendly with me outside the eglesial walls, perhaps one of them might want to be in a more intimate relationship with me.  But I’m not ready for that, for him, for them.  To tell you the truth, I don’t want to be.  If anything, if I’m going to have such a relationship, I’d be more interested in having it with another woman, but even the prospect of that doesn’t interest, much less excite, me. 

For that matter, I don’t even feel ready to make new friends.  Actually, that’s not quite right:  I’m not ready to call anybody I’ve met within the past year, two years, a friend.  Perhaps it’s a matter of my age:  At this point in my life, I don’t think I can make instantaneous or even quick friendships. Perhaps it’s generational:  I didn’t grow up with the notion that someone I met only on some social medium is a friend.  (What can I say to someone who says he has 789 Facebook friends?)  It’s hard to think of anyone I’ve known less than ten—or, maybe, five—as a friend.

Someone might say I haven’t quite recovered from what Dominick or other men in my life have done to me.  They’re probably right.  Maybe I’m not ready to recover, whatever that means.  Maybe I can’t, or shouldn’t.  And, perhaps, it might keep me from thinking of myself as having made a new friend, especially with a man.

R.I.P John

Today I'm going to detour a bit, for a very personal reason.

In other posts, I've mentioned Millie.  I met her the day I moved to Astoria, in August of 2002.  She saw me as I unloaded boxes, bikes and two cats--Charlie I and Candice--into an apartment in the building next to her house.  She decided that she liked me right then and there, or so it seemed.  And, yes, I liked her immediately.

Well, over the years she's taken care of my cats whenever I've spent time away.  Two years after we became neighbors, I took a trip to France and she cared for Charlie and Candice, probably even better than I did.  Then, about two years after that, she took care of Candice when I went to Turkey.  Charlie had died a couple of months before that and, after I returned from my trip, I adopted a cat she'd rescued--and named Charlie.  A little more than a year after that, Candice died and another one of Millie's rescuees--Max--came into my life.

She's been as good a friend as I've ever had in my life.  So was her husband, John.

Referring to him in the past tense feels even sadder to me than the reason why I did so:  He died the other night, apparently, in his sleep.  Given that a tumor was causing his brain to play cruel tricks on him, that was probably the most merciful way he could have been taken from this world.

Millie has said she was fortunate to have married such a good man.  He could not have had a better companion in his life, especially in his last days.  And his granddaughter has told me he is one of her role models, for his honesty and kindness. I can vouch for both qualities.

The next time I have dinner, spend a day or a holiday, or simply sit with Millie--alone, or with her daughters and grandchildren--I will be happy, as always, to see her. Still, things won't be the same without John.

All I can do now is to thank him one more time.