I’ve been thinking of writing something for a few weeks now, but I’m not sure what it is I want or need to write nor how I might articulate with words, the feelings and emotions I need or hope to release by writing.
As I sit here, my fiancee is in bed in the next room, we’ve traveled up the coast for a weekend away with some friends of ours to a little coastal town where his (retired) parents are currently staying. We’ve spent the day relaxing with our friends and his parents and their friends, had afternoon drinks, a BBQ lunch and other than that, done very little other than relaxed, which is pretty rare for us and very much needed.
Yes, I called him my fiancee, we’re engaged now as of a few months ago.
This particular town has a great many memories for me, it’s become quite a popular holiday area, but that is only in the last ten or so years, before that it was more of a small fishing village.
I spent nearly every school and christmas holidays here every year until I turned about 15-16. My great grandparents where some of the first settlers of the town back in the late 60’s, to this day their names can be found on many historic buildings and landmarks all over the town , but where once everybody would have know them, the place has grown and changed now and I suspect very few current residents would know who they where if asked.
I spent nearly every school and christmas holidays here every year until I turned about 15-16. My great grandparents where some of the first settlers of the town back in the late 60’s, to this day their names can be found on many historic buildings and landmarks all over the town , but where once everybody would have know them, the place has grown and changed now and I suspect very few current residents would know who they where if asked.
There never used to be a McDonalds here, no Kentucky fried Chicken, there where no big supermarket chains, only small independent grocery stores. high rise apartment complexes line the main road that runs along the water front now, there’s traffic lights in the main street.
My great grandparents house still stands in the same place but it’s been nearly two years since I last had the chance to drive through here and since I last saw the house it has been brought by the tourist park next door and completely remodelled.
It’s an odd feeling.
When I come here it feels so much like home, so familiar.
But I am not the person it used to think it new me to be, and this is not the place I used to know.
And that’s sad for me.
I see the young girls wandering around in their summer clothes, going to the beach, enjoying the sun, some chase the boys and some with boys chasing them, hardly much of a care in their world (at least it seems)
I missed out on that.
I love this place so much and I want to go back to (and remember) my childhood, but all I can really feel (when I try) is melancholy. The safety and comfort of familiarity but at the same time, fear, anxiety and the feeling of being “cheated”.
I like to think that my great grandmother might be proud of the woman I am and have become, she was a strong woman herself, but I can’t be sure. I don’t know what my “Pa” would think, he died when I was very young, maybe 4 or 5, sadly I don’t remember very much of him but I would hope he might be proud too. they where from a very different time though, so who would know? I know my grandparents, (their children) didn’t support me and weren’t very accepting of me, but I like to think they might have been different.
This is life though, some things we will never know, and you can live in the past but it gets you nowhere really, all you can do is make your decisions, live by them and move forward.
And that brings me back to my fiancee, our friends and his parents.
These people have known me now for a few years, they don’t question me, they speak openly on all manner of things including “transgender” people, homosexual people and so on.
My life is relatively “normal” for a woman, and in some ways that can create some personal difficulties.
As much as I’d like to pretend everything was just a “bad dream”, it wasn’t.
It happened.
It was traumatic.
In many ways it still IS traumatic.
But who would understand that?
How can one deal with a traumatic experience, and deal with continuing hurt and heartache, if one’s only real option (if they seek/desire to maintain their current life, as I do) is keep those things and experiences bottled up?
Shared life experiences, promote “companionship” and empathy, these are things humans seek in order to evaluate our own wellbeing. These things help us be “ok”, they help us “heal”.
But I can’t find anyone.
Now, it stands to reason that I cannot find anyone in my “real” life, I don’t go around telling people about my situation or my history, so it stands to reason that anyone with the same situation and a similar history, probably isn’t out there telling people about theirs either. People can’t or don’t “pick” me so how or why would I be able to “pick” them?
At least in theory!
I’m actually pretty confident that I would “pick” someone if I did happen to run into them, but not because of appearance.
I truthfully just don’t think I’ve ever come across anyone.
So the next place a person might consider is the internet.
This…..
….is the kind of person I find on the internet. This is the kind of person “trans” people (apparently) look up too.
Who else do I find?
No-one really. I haven’t run across any blogs recently that speak of a life and outlook like mine and believe me I have looked
There’s plenty out there from guys in their mid-to-late 30’s, early 40’s, 50’s and 60’s, with wives and sometimes children, who claim to be “transitioning” but I’m sure most of whom will never loose the appendage they where “blessed” with at birth.
But their life is not mine now is it?, and it’s not likely to ever be mine either is it?
There’s even getting to be quite a few from parents of young children, who are all balled up tight and afraid for their child’s future because they read all about those guy’s in their mid-to-late 30’s early 40’s, 50’s and 60’s
These parents never connect the dots that these guys are NOT the same as their children, because they never stumble across people like me and blogs like mine.
They don’t see a future like my life, as any kind of a possibility for their child.
It is these parent’s fears that rub off on and create the same fears in their children.
And then all things become a self-fulfilling prophecy.
It doesn’t have to be that way.
They could calm down and realise the big difference which is that their children haven’t gone off and married women and fathered children. they haven’t ever been “men”.
Mean while me,
I would like someone I can talk to about becoming a foster or adoptive mother (from a situation like my own).
Someone I can talk to about marriage and kids when the person they are married too is a genuinely heterosexual male, who would truly love to be a biological father, but is (seemingly) prepared to forgo that dream to be with you, knowing full well that you cannot have your own, that you cannot give him HIS own, and knowing the reason why.
That paragraph itself has enough in it to make almost any genetic female insecure, let-a-lone a transsexual girl, with all of our other insecurities piled on top.
