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.

More About Bruce Jenner

According to the Corey's comment on my post yesterday, and Diana's post on her blog, we didn't have to wait for the future:  There has, apparently, been more consternation over Bruce Jenner's Republican Party affiliation than over anything else revealed in the interview with Diane Sawyer.

I am definitely with Diana on this issue.  Like her, I simply cannot understand how any LGBT person supports the "Grand Old Party".  

Once, when I was  at the LGBT Community Center of New York for some even or another, the Log Cabin Republicans were having a "meet and greet". I bumped into a few of them and they tried to recruit me--why, I don't know.  I must say, they were all pleasant, polite and well-spoken.  But they also looked like GQ covers come to life, with the credit card limits to match. So, as nice as they were to me, I simply couldn't relate to them, personally or politically.


I take part of that statement back.  I could tell that they were trying to mask, forget or simply live through some sort of pain or loss.  The difference between them and me--aside from the fact that they were gay men and I'm not--is that they had (or, at least seemed to have) more means to deal with whatever they lost, gave up or had taken from them as a result of their living openly as gay men.  You can't (or, at least, shouldn't) hate someone for that.  Instead, we can only respect and, to the degree that we can, support each other in our pain and loss.  

I have lost more than some, but not as much as some others.  The point is, as Diana says, we all go into the unknown when we "come out" or transition and, as Mara Keisling wrote in a CNN money article, every one of us loses something, and some lose everything.

Yes, Bruce Jenner has money and fame.  But she has, like the rest of us, lost a lot of time and experiences in living as someone other than her true self.  She says she didn't transition sooner because she didn't want to disappoint people who saw her as a role model of manhood.  Trying not to disappoint--which almost inevitably is a losing battle--is in itself a loss.  So is the joy she probably didn't experience from her accomplishments.  

So, while I don't support her politics, I support her journey.  That is all any of us can do for each other.

Reflections At The Beginning of The Year

Most new years have begun with a day that seemed eerily quiet to me. This New Year's Day has been no exception. The weather was neither unusually cold nor mild for this time of year, and it did not begin to rain until well into the evening. And, when I ventured out this afternoon, there were few people on the streets. And those I saw were uncommonly serene; I exchanged wishes for a happy new year with several of them, all of whom are strangers.

I guess everyone else was sleeping off a hangover, watching football, cooking or eating.

Later in the afternoon, I became one of the latter category, going once again to--you guessed it!--Millie's house. Her younger daughter, who will turn one of those round-number ages (I won't say which one!) in a couple of months, seemed happier than I've seen her in a while. And her other daughter, who came with her two kids, also was in an uncommonly good mood. And John, Millie's husband was exhibiting his usual (and sometimes wonderfully charming) combination of thoughtfulness to his guests and cluelessness about some of our conversations. It's not that he's stupid--far from it. It's just that there are some things he really knows nothing about. In that sense, I guess he's no different from the rest of us.

Also present was Catherine, whom I like very much. She and Millie are childhood friends who, somehow or another, have managed to live no more than a neighborhood or two apart from each other through more than half a century.

Sometimes I find myself envying that: Even before I began my gender transition, I had to uproot myself a couple of times. I have not been in contact with anyone I knew during elementary or junior high school for thirty years or so; I am in tenuous, sporadic contact with a few people I knew in high school and in college via Facebook and other online means. However, I have a hard time of keeping such relationships up. Or, more precisely, I am a bit reluctant to commit to them, as I know that each of us has changed during the decades we haven't seen each other.

I know it's very difficult to relate to someone who, in essence, is a different person from the one you knew when you and that person weren't present for each others' changes. I learned that when I tried to resume a friendship with Elizabeth after we hadn't seen each other for a decade or more: Even if Nick hadn't become Justine, it might not have been possible to be friends. On the other hand, Bruce and I have been in nearly constant contact for close to thirty years; we have seen each other go through crises and triumphs. I can only imagine what Millie and Catherine have experienced in all of the time they've known each other!

Yet, as we shared chips and salsa, antipasti, baked ziti with sausage, salad, roast pork, rice with peas and corn, I realized that I, too, have a friendship with a history with Millie, with John--with their family, in fact, and Catherine. I've known them for about seven and a half years: not as long as they've known each other, but, in essence for my entire life as I now know it. All of them, except for Catherine, met me during the last days I was living at least part of my life as a male. None of them ever mention that, even though I never asked them not to.

Plus, in my very earliest days of living full-time, I watched Millie's grandkids--who were then nine and six years old--when she had to go somewhere, and John and their daughters were at work. Now the grandkids are fifteen and twelve years old.

Now I'll admit that I have a self-indulgent, self-reflexive reason for talking about them and the friendships that have developed between us: In thinking about what I've experienced, I realize how far I've come, if I do say so myself. When I say "how far I've come," I am talking about what I've left behind me--whether by choice or other means--as well as what I've gained or simply come into.

Of course I have left various relationships; others have fallen by the wayside. That, I suppose happens in everyone's lives. In addition, I have abandoned--whether by choice or otherwise--various material possessions and a place I had, not only in a larger world, but in the lives of various people who were in my life.

What have I gained? Relationships, possessions and a place in the world and in certain people's lives. Naturally, the ones I've gained are, for the most part, very different from the ones I've left behind. And the people who've remained with me have changed in various ways, while remaining true to themselves.

And what have I come into? The pleasures gleaned from what I've gained, and a sense of my self that I never could have anticipated, much less pursued or seized, prior to my transition.

I must admit, what I've gained and come into have some ironic--and some purely and simply funny--consequences at times. (Yes, Ed McGon, God does have a wicked sense of humor!) To wit: Catherine, Millie and Stephanie, her elder daughter, were talking about something and somehow the subject of menopause came up. (The grandkids were, at that moment, in the living room and too engrossed in their video games to hear us.) They were talking about how a woman knows it's coming on (hot flashes, etc.) and I said, "Well, first, you miss your period."

Not one of them blinked. And one of them--Millie, I think--said, "Yeah, and after that you start having the other symptoms."

And the conversation continued as if nobody had said anything unusual or out of line. I wasn't trying to impress anyone or "fit in;" I merely stated, with confidence, a fact and was part of a women's conversation. John, who sat at the other end of the table from me, gave me a brief but knowing smile.

If that, and the rest of the time I spent with him and everyone else is a harbinger of what this year will be like, things ought to be good, or at least interesting--ironically, by becoming routine. At least I know I'm starting this year in the life in which I belong.