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I am seeing something very different in love

  • Posted on July 2, 2013 at 8:55 pm

It’s different because it’s from a different place.

It’s a different place, because this is where I am from when I am not just being here.

Everything has a beginning. Everything has an end. In between all is change.

But that doesn’t mean anything is destroyed, or loses its identity.

I wonder. I wonder what our souls would say to each other today, if they could speak without our voices and ears. I wonder how confused our souls are, how bemused, when all they have, to join with others, is voices and ears.

I have no belief in a god. I feel no need. I did once, and my belief in a god who was loving, if corrective, made me hate myself. I believed I was a good person, liked by almost everyone I came into contact with. I also believed that something in me was wicked, sinful and wrong. I believed that if anyone else knew this about me, I would become unloved, untouchable, even hated.

I have a very different philosophy of life now. I am connected through love and life with all other living things. I belong in a wider, larger place than just this body-life, and it will be to there that I shall be reabsorbed again when this journey ends. I belong and I am safe; and so long as I know my place here and have acceptance, I am happy to stay and be involved. At my deepest, darkest point last year, I came to believe that I was unloved, untouchable, even hated. That meant there was no longer any reason to stay here, and I was very prepared to take a shortcut home.

I wonder what our souls would say to each other today?

I tried desperately for ages, in some kind of belief in thought transference, telepathy, rerouting my heart through spirit friends or guardians, hoping angels may be messengers–to say that love is love and souls are souls and connection is the meaning in life. I failed. I still believe deeply that I am part of something greater, something whole. And yet I feel that love has completely failed me. I have become untouchable.

It seems a long time ago, but I used to live in the belief that I was a man. I did as best as I could to do and be what that meant. I was acceptable empathic: people told me that in my 20s. I had a strong feminine side. People saw that. I was different, but I was one of the ‘nice men’. I was the man who understood the wives who had husbands who didn’t understand them. I was a lover because I believed in love. I was not god’s gift, I have no god. I was nothing special in terms of the big exotic Lover. But I knew how to give, and keep giving, when it came to making another feel special, valuable, wanted, loved. I don’t say outstanding, I don’t say perfect. I just say that inside of me there has always been an ability to connect, be devoted and committed, and express love. Not just desire, not lust, not wanting to possess, just to give and to share, beyond romance, but not excluding it. It doesn’t set me apart, but it does mean I still believe I have a lot to give and to share with another, with a lover, with a partner..

Today I laughed and laughed. Lying face down on tender breasts, having my back massaged, my therapist said how unusual I had always been. No, not for my gender, but because I was so conventional! I did ‘man’ well. I did as I was told, too much as expected, perhaps. I hid the self-hate even better. I was afraid I would not be loved. I was afraid I would become untouchable. And here I was laughing at the absurdity of it all. And realising that the only caring touch I now receive is this, at the hands of my massage therapist.

I understand completely that on the outside I have changed almost beyond recognition. In some ways I hope I have; I too see photographs of myself looking very like a man. I look at those images of myself, with the hatred locked and secret inside, and recall how my family, and my wife, loved me. At a human level they were loving the man; the father, husband, lover. But were they loving me? I can’t answer that anymore, because they don’t now.

I wonder what our souls would say today if they could speak without our voices and ears.

So I really do appreciate that the bits that were loved were in many ways the pretended bits. But the parts of me that loved in return were soul bits. I am not saying anything superior about myself, I just know that for me it was different. These parts of me, were those that lay inside all the time. Inside that ‘man’ was me, self-hated, not understood, but making me the different kind of man. There are men who are like I learned to be, who are not like me at all, who are kind, gentle, loving and don’t watch football with passion, or feel that women are there just for them. I know. But I was different, and if I was liked or loved for those nicer, understanding aspects, it was because I was never really a man at all. I just learned to behave more like one.

If your soul knew mine, it would understand that a woman had in fact loved a woman.

Spiritually, I feel I know myself and my place better than in the days when what I am, was a sinful secret. Those were the days when my eyes were blinkered by beliefs, or rather by dogma or doctrine about how we all ‘should’ be. And those beliefs, even when the religion faded away, stuck fast. Now, I need no religion and no god to love, to be kind, to work for better equality, fairness and to understand the acid of greed. I never was unlovable, untouchable and wicked for being a woman with a male habitation. But I was loved and touchable for hiding it and for hating myself enough to keep it secret.

But I also know that through the experience of wrestling with gender, I can no longer see as most people do. I can no longer wear the spectacles of the gender binary. I can see every day how the majority of men presume priority and superiority, and aren’t even aware of it. I can see male stupidity and emotional immaturity a mile off. I can see women taken in by sexual attraction above personal trustworthiness and real caring. I can see protective bitching. I can see how people judge each other for playing the roles they were taught. I can no longer see why two people who love each other should not find some physical expression of that love, whatever their gender or sexuality. I simply cannot see as most people do any more. I am not alone; this is no special gift as such, but I can never wear the same blinkers again.

I wonder, if our souls could speak to each other, what they would say about love, about bodies, about touching, and whether they would agree with our minds about what can and cannot feel, or be, good.

I can see better than ever that, for all the wonderful feelings of romance and being in love, truly loving another person is actually something quite different. I believe we are more than these bodies, and our feelings about loveableness and touchableness are badly skewed. If another’s body ‘isn’t right’ we turn away from touch. Disfigurement? Disability? Ageing? Impotence? Mental health? There are lots of reasons for disowning previously-loved people who no longer match our reasons for originally loving them. We reject their touch like infection. We fear being tainted by association. We fear losing the opportunity for something better, more like the original.

Don’t we all do it? Don’t we do it when dementia strikes? Don’t we do it when someone is struggling with life? Don’t we do it when we walk on by, past the homeless person we can’t possibly help, who doesn’t want to be helped, just wants to eat? Don’t we do it when someone is attacked, verbally or physically, in case being involved hurts us, in case we have to share in another’s hurts? And don’t we do it with the transsexual partner who finally finds their authenticity? Does expression of love need the same attraction as in the mating game? Can nothing new be learned? Is this really a different kind of love?

I wonder what our souls would say, if one said, ‘oh my goodness; I have the wrong body for this soul’. Would the other say, ‘oh yuk. I can’t commune with you any more, I thought you were a man soul.’

Somehow, because of where I believe I fit in the broader span of existence, I think real love comes from somewhere else than the recognition of bodies. I know as well as anyone that sexual attraction happens through eyes, and pheromones. But frankly unattractive people do love each other, people do endure together through disfigurement, illness, impotence and age. People of all kinds find ways to touch and to express love to each other, and overcome disappointments, changes and challenges.

I don’t know whether it is my spiritual appreciations, or through the struggles and changes I had (and still have), to go through in being transsexual in a world of preconceptions, but I just don’t see the barriers that bodies make between people who want to share love.

***

And this is what I wish I could communicate. I cannot, because to say it would invite the reply that I just don’t accept the impact of my diagnosis.

So here I am. It’s too late, and I know I see differently. My soul does not meet with you, and cannot simply say ‘I love you’ any more. I am not loved enough to be touched; it gives you the wrong kinds of feelings to touch me now. It has become unlovely and wrong. I wonder if we shall meet as souls in some other place, touch once more, and agree finally what love is? I do hope so.

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No illusions. Back to Plan D

  • Posted on March 2, 2013 at 9:09 pm

I have been going to counselling sessions again, and it feels a very safe place. Maybe I would like a bit more probing, but I do understand it is a space in which to work things out. I try to prepare, think what’s been going on, what it means, observe myself, learn. But I also have this sneaky feeling that it makes me rehearse my story again and again, without helping me to really understand the plot.

Imagine I had been shopping and bought something the wrong size. I might be a bit upset when I got home, especially if I couldn’t go back and change it. I’d incurred cost, not been advised, not checked carefully enough, so quite rightly kicking myself. What should I do?

Plan A
might be to see if I could make it fit. Why not? Sometimes a tuck in a waistband is a reasonable thing to do. Not perfect, but comfortable and not looking stupid.

Plan B
might be to count my losses and take it into a charity shop. Never mind; lesson learned, my expense has benefitted someone else at least.

Plan C
might be to tell everyone my regret. And there would be at least two responses. The first would be, yes, that was a bit careless wasn’t it, but no point staying fed up about it forever. You made a mistake. We all do. The second might be, it’s OK, why don’t you come round for a coffee, and tell me all about it. How about every Tuesday for six weeks, and see how you feel?

After a while (plan D) I may feel that it might have been better to bang my head smartly on the wall ten times and promise not to let it happen again. And forgive myself and/or the shop that sold the ill-sized item to me. Even if the shops are shut forever.

So why am I not doing just that? Why am I stuck in Plan C?

I have written over and above anything really necessary, about grief and loss. If you’ve stuck with my blog you’ve done exceptionally well! I have done it because I am not the only one for whom being born transsexual has meant loss of family, love, and more, and feeling completely undeserving of such rejection. And I have done it as a form of therapy, as this page is now. I can’t pull myself up by my own shoelaces, but I can at least make sure I don’t trip over them as I struggle to my feet.

Be careful what you blame

If you buy something and it doesn’t fit, you don’t blame the colour. Maybe the style, as well as the size, but not the texture either. What do we – as trans people – blame for not fitting? Our nature? Or society/culture?

Maybe, like me, you get assured that it is not about blame (‘don’t blame me for being normal and I won’t blame you for being different’). Maybe in the end, there is no ‘blame’ in the world at all. Just the way things are. So if you prefer, let’s talk about the way things are.

And what about cause? Our first thought, and that of others, is that our gender mix-up is the root cause of it all, without which everything would be alright. That’s true; but it is no valid reason for looking at how we suddenly don’t fit other people’s lives and blaming ourselves. And we do, don’t we? Somewhere along the line, maybe many times, we look at our situation and blame ourselves. It’s like an apology to everyone who feels hurt or at risk by our life situation. Please accept us if we promise not to be ourselves, or not to embarrass you. Or change you.

And we just take it. And we must not. It is self-flagellation where there is neither sin nor forgiveness.

The cause of the item of clothing not fitting is twofold. And the reason is not that we bought the ‘wrong thing’. The reason is that the item size is not our size: nothing else! We thought at the point of transaction that we had a match, and we were mistaken. The clothing didn’t make a mistake in being too big, our body didn’t make a mistake in being too small. Wishful thinking may sometimes make us buy too small, and we might decide to lose weight. But too big? When did you last decide to fatten up to fit a rather nice dress? The mismatch is not the dress’s fault and it is not our body’s fault. But combined there is a reason, and of course a huge disappointment. A realisation of expectation unfulfilled.

What have you really lost?

The biggest question for me is about what has been lost by emerging as my true gender. And, make no mistake, when you gain authenticity like this, the gain is incomparable, however tinged with grief and pain. And for my wife and I, the loss is not what we thought it was, and that is where I have to come to terms, and I suspect, so does she (though I will not try to speak for her). I believe that she has lost something that made her feel more complete as herself. That was not me. It was the competent, self-assured, masculine figure that made her the nurturing, complementary, desirable woman. Not just that, but certainly that. So she has lost something she never had: the ‘man’ was nurturing, not so complementary, wanting to be as desirable; and a woman.

I feel that I have lost what I thought was a regard for me as a whole person. What I thought was unconditional commitment for who I am, was nothing of the sort. It made me feel safe, not alone in the world, loved, really cared about for everything and anything. To me, it was so many things other than being required to be a man. So I have lost something I never in fact had either. The love was not unconditional, but sex-dependent. It wasn’t a love for the whole of me at all, but for the required parts to complete another.

Within that illusion we were one of the best partnerships I have ever seen. Kind, caring, no real arguments, stable and loving. But it was, and it really was, an illusion.

And that is why I need to bang my head smartly against the wall ten times and come to my senses, rather than rehearse my story and drag myself down again and again. I have to come to terms with the fact that I have not been rejected for being the amazing and lovely person I know myself to be. That’s the colour and the texture, not the fit. And that no tuck would adjust me to be what I was wanted to be. And there is no point being angry that the ‘purchase’ led to disappointment. My wife did not know any more than I did, that it was my gender that was in trouble. And I did not know that she was in love with a bunch of things that made her complete (the fit), not with me as a whole person (colour and texture). And let’s be honest we have all loved beautiful clothes that would never fit us.

I don’t have regrets as such. I helped bring up a family, all the way, and now they have gone. It was good, and I believe I did well enough at it. But I wish, so deeply now, that I had known. That I had known I could have been released as a woman long, long ago, and that I could have avoided being the flattering dress in the wardrobe that never actually fitted like it should. That was scrunched up on a trouser hanger, wanted but never truly worn.

Harsh truth

This is the harsh truth. I was always a woman, I was always mistaken for a man, I was loved only for being like a man, and that this love had little to do with me being, simply, me. And on top of that, I wholeheartedly gave my love in return for that, when maybe I could have found something far greater.

I can’t do Plan B. I can’t call my 30 plus years of loving marriage a stupid mistake. I can’t un-love that easily. I feel so horribly, deeply, hurt that I was not loved with an extraordinary love, that I have been cruelly subject to the social conditioning that makes the ‘wrong’ sex something that cannot be accommodated through love. But there’s the fit. This is the world that has shaped us all, and that dissuades the extraordinary.

In a previous blog I described the love bond as two hands, each holding the opposite wrist; it takes two to let go. I think I should correct that now. Love is a link with two ends, one for each, and only one has to let go. I’ve been hanging onto a love that is not there. Maybe I too have loved the love, the colour and texture, not the fit.

Plan D. Pick me up if I knock myself out. I have places to go.

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Loss and letting go (1)

  • Posted on December 30, 2012 at 5:44 pm

They aren’t there. The books. There are now only mine, not the ones about attachment and loss. By John Bowlby – who asserted that to deal with these things we had to know and understand our past. How bloody ironic! It’s my discovery that has caused the loss and grief of such a profound attachment.

That sounds bitter. Only sort of; but it is high time I processed this stuff, so I think it will take a few blogs over time to get there. Somehow this week I have been surrounded by people and events and other writings, that are all about why loss and attachment is so difficult, and how it ruins lives that can’t move on.

Last week I watched an old episode of ‘Lewis’ (UK police drama featuring a lot of doing what’s best as much a what’s right). In this one, a father with two young daughters feels his only way out of shame (not his own) is to kill himself and take them with him. Well, jumping out of the top window of the British Museum, wasn’t going to happen really, was it? No. The daughters are saved, he jumps, and is caught by Inspector Lewis’ sidekick, the intellectual Hathaway. He and the man grasp each other’s wrist as the man dangles over the assembled crowd. Hathaway somehow knows the man doesn’t actually want to die. Surely he wouldn’t be hanging on if he did? Stupidly/heroically Hathaway releases his grip to convince the man that he has chosen to hold on and survive. If the man had decided to go, of course, he would have dropped. His choice. Now affirmed in his decision, the man is hauled back to safety.

This is the way we like it to be.

Holding on is instinctive, and letting go is a product of decision. Maybe you have no more strength? Is letting go a sign of weakness, just a giving in? Does holding on hurt? If you are holding onto something hot, sharp, spiky, constrictive, then it would be a relief, and if you fall having lost your fingers, why didn’t you let go sooner? Letting go is a positive act of recognising loss as what it is. So why is that so hard? Maybe you feel that someone is letting you go and they should not: that you are such a benefit to them and they don’t realise it. That’s a hard one, isn’t it? It isn’t our call, truly. Loyalty, commitment, faithfulness are essentials to love and to life itself. But there is a world of difference between the altruistic refusal to leave someone ill or injured or old when they are not wanting to be a burden or even a danger. That is your choice. But just because you love someone who may have loved you even intensely, doesn’t mean you can hang around on their wrist thinking it’s in their best interests. No. It’s about you, isn’t it?

This Christmas I had to conclude that letting go my love is my responsibility. And that means understanding the loss so that I can let go well and with good grace, for my own sake. Am I resisting out of hope that love has not actually gone? That being a man was not really a prerequisite for the eligibility of being kissed? That somehow it may dawn that I really am the same person and all will be forgiven? The loss I resist is the cold hard fact that I am no longer desirable, and whatever I feel, that part is not my call. Yes, right now, there is no-one in my world that actually wants to hold me, comfort me, love me, be intimate with me, and in that way validate and affirm and trust me.

This is what I do not want to know.

And yes, I can believe it all began with my mother, and that from the start, I was a nuisance. A necessary one, a deliberately-generated one, but nonetheless a bit of a burden. I spoilt my mother’s young life as much as I enhanced it. It’s true: as soon as you find love you also find rejection. As a parent, you like the gurgle, but not the poo. That winning smile, but not the tantrum in the wine bottle aisle. The moment they fall sweetly asleep, but not the bawling at 2 am. From the start: will we ever really be able to trust anyone? And can we survive without unconditional love? Even if you find it, you will never really know that is the case. Unconditional love is a hypothesis we spend our lives testing. The science is inconclusive, as they say; more research is needed.

This is the heart of loss: the possibility of replacement. You can never replace a parent or child, so you deal with the loss in an appropriate way. Parents go, a spouse remains, you are protected and loved, it is enough. You can tell yourself that a life was complete, well-lived, fulfilled, and that helps. A young life seems such a waste, and we may rationalise the perfection of their short life. The lost one has gone, and we are safe to gild memories, keep the photos, perfect the shared love, remember and preserve. There is mental replacement in a way unavailable to those with relatives gone missing.

We all had romances when young, and some have had affairs when older, and most of us know what it is to break up at a point that wasn’t just the fading of rose petals. We moved on best when there was another love; another lilypad to jump to. Or at least were happy when we found another after a short cold swim. We sustained our beliefs in ourselves that we were desirable, lovable – and dismissed our loss as ‘it’s their loss’. Even leaving a loving parental home was probably best survived by having a boyfriend or girlfriend, especially if parents were becoming a nuisance who didn’t understand our needs – just like they felt when we were born.

Really dealing with loss, really letting go, means something else. It means when there is no-one to catch you, no replacement or substitute, no affirmation of your desirability or personal value, and you are letting go something you really do still want but that will never be what you want – you are not killing yourself, or even part of yourself.

OK. Shut up Hathaway and stop intellectualising or your wrist will snap. This feels bad, but I am beginning to understand that I really am alone in this world and that I have not lost unconditional love. It was never there. In truth my feet are inches from the grass, and like it or not I have to walk away. It isn’t night, and it isn’t sunset, it’s just grass. There is nowhere greener, but at least I am allowed to walk on it. No-one is holding me, I have to let go. I don’t lose anything by letting go; I lost that some while back.

To be continued …

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A love less ordinary: Laura Newman

  • Posted on November 24, 2012 at 10:58 pm

This weekA Love Less Ordinary; Laura Newman I turned up a scanned article someone helpfully sent me ages ago. It was about Helen Boyd and Betty in the early days. Great! There was Betty doing Helen’s make-up, and then Betty resting her head lovingly on Helen’s shoulder. This was a love less ordinary, surely?

I was desperate, when I began to realise that my big unknown was gender dysphoria, to read, to buy books, to share the coming-to-understand. Desperate to show it wasn’t just me, in the hope that understanding would preserve the love in my partnership. I bought, as so many, My Husband Betty by Helen Boyd. We read it. It’s a great book.

The article has a pull-quote that says if Betty were ever to head for physical transition, their marriage would be over.

A trans friend asked if I had read the second book, She’s not the Man I Married. I wasn’t sure about doing that. It is in some ways the book of doubts. It’s the story of the uncertainty and impending change, it’s about love, identity and sexuality. One chapter is titled ‘Genitals are the least of it’. Phew! Could that be true? But it is about the period during which Betty had yet to commit to surgical reassignment (or correction). And the book ends still with all the fuzziness of not really knowing all that marriage and a trans partner implies, and whether Helen would still be the same Helen if Betty were ‘really’ to be just Betty. It was not a reassuring book to share, honest as it was.

Here was Helen full of doubts but full of love, accepting that her charming man she fell in love with was just an illusion.

My friend then said: ‘You know Betty has transitioned now?’ And if I remember rightly, I later read that Helen’s subsequent sentiment that has kept them together and campaigning, is that she just wanted still to be waking up with the person she has always loved most. But that isn’t in the book.

How many times did I say, usually in tears and fear: ‘You can walk away from this. I can’t!’? Hoping that the answer would be ‘I could never do that!’

There isn’t a third book, and we worked our way through personal stories, case studies of diverse lives, academic research. In fact most of the serious stuff you could get. It is all shot through with love, in the end, being the least of it, and why: that staying with a trans person erodes your own personality, identity, sexual certainty. That love is not – cannot be – enough.

There was nothing to say: ‘Hold on, this can work out. If this person [my trans partner] can go through so much, face such change, so much fear and pain, and retain self-identity, dignity and sense of self, stronger than ever – then maybe I can too.’

The new book: A Love Les Ordinary

Laura Newman’s book A Love Les Ordinary: sharing life, laughter and handbags with my transgender partner heads straight for this corner. It isn’t just the challenge of having – being known to have – a trans partner, it is that you can lose yourself in all the pressures and expectations of life anyway, and it is often the trans partner who shows the greatest honesty, strength and courage to be true to self. What if we were all able to do that? What if the issues aren’t about the trans partner, but about knowing that you are free to live life the way you should be, not just playing roles and meeting expectations? What makes a wonderful relationship? The sex you always thought correct? The ‘orientation’ you feel most fitting or comfortable with? No. It is one in which you know and love yourself with such honesty that you can be all you are with another who can do the same, regardless. Because then there is no compromise, no sell-out, no resentment that the other is preventing you being all you are. It doesn’t mean no give and take, it just means you both know it’s there and have agreed it freely. And it doesn’t mean no change, but that you can accept it together.

Maybe this harks back to something I wrote a long while back about other people not actually changing you, about honesty, and about how loving a person who never really was the ‘opposite’ but now shows it, doesn’t suddenly make you gay or lesbian.

The core of this understanding of love is that you cannot love another unless you love yourself, but that when you do, love matters more than any expectations.

You may have been told that already, through: ‘Love your neighbour as yourself’ (which is only a minimum requirement – you can end up hating yourself and therefore your neighbour!), or through the Buddhist tenet of lovingkindness needing you to love yourself first. But Laura demonstrates how this works out in a good relationship, how it makes a great relationship, and why being fully, honestly yourself is therefore a prerequisite.

There is surprise when I explain to others that, given the choice to have my lover and my family and my home back, with 40 more healthy years of life ahead, in exchange for living as a man – or to be the woman I am on medications that could endanger my life, and alone – that the latter is the only thing I could ever do. I can only love from who I am, loving myself as I am.

Laura’s book is not for trans people. It is mainly for women facing unconventional relationships, and the quandry of loving someone others would not respect you for. What does it do to you, and why does it do anything to you at all? Laura does address sexuality, but again, if you loosen your understanding of gender, perhaps you can just as easily adjust your understanding of what it means to love someone who looks more like you.

This book is not about accepting trans people or any special dispensation, it is about how two people can make a wonderful loving partnership through knowing themselves equally, so that they can give love unconditionally. There are amazing possibilities here, for any love relationship, and Laura’s earlier experience with an insecure transvestite left a significant foundation for starting a very different relationship. Helen Boyd also knew she was dating a cross-dresser from the start. I shall shortly review Emma Canton’s If You Really Loved Me properly too, so all three books of successful survival were neither taken by surprise after a long and happy marriage, nor unrelentingly heterosexual.

A Love Les Ordinary is a really valuable addition to the reading list for partners who have to come to terms with what it means to love someone who is transgendered. It does not go so far as to address the implications of a partner who is transsexual, but even there it is a good start. And it should be thrust into the hands of anyone who says they cannot understand how you could actually love, let alone be intimate with, someone transgendered.

I am still waiting for the book that says how a spouse can unconditionally love a partner who comes to terms with their gender rather late on, without losing their own sense of self. It is probably something to do with the realisation that they have happily loved a person not knowing that so much of what they appreciated came from something they would never have chosen. But I do know of a small number of marriages that have continued on the basis of ‘they are still the same person (not “man”) I married’.

When it is written, I hope still to be around to review it, because it would be such useful reading. Meanwhile, I am just longing for a love less ordinary.

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Happiness

  • Posted on September 30, 2012 at 8:09 am

Last Friday evening I spent a lovely time with Laura Newman, whose new book A Love Less Ordinary will very soon be published with Bramley Press. It was the first time we met, after numerous emails getting the book arranged, designed and processed, and was a wonderful getting-to-know. But perhaps what I shall remember most is that once more, someone who didn’t begin this journey with me, who sees it from the outside, sees someone very positive and very happy, who has turned their life around in what is really a very short time. For me, it has been intense at times, as scary as a narrow bridge over a canyon, without the other side in sight. And it seems like ages. It was very affirming to meet Laura, and I am looking forward to meeting her and Nicci before too long.

Yesterday I went for my monthly back-rescue. Deep tissue massage includes elbows! It isn’t fun exactly, and I probably undid a lot of good by playing the trumpet all afternoon and evening. I can’t remember how many years I’ve been going, but it is a special relationship when you repeatedly allow someone to do that to you – and still feel grateful! It is also the one place where I have taken my changes, to be seen and talked over, and found complete acceptance as I’ve explained myself a little more each time. Of course, as so often, I’m not the only trans person she has known, but I could also have been met with a certain distance and caution, and I wasn’t. The reason I mention yesterday is that somehow we just fell into talking as two women together, and I no longer felt ‘trans’.

It’s been like that recently – falling onto conversation as a woman with another woman, almost as if they haven’t noticed, or if they do it counts for nothing. And I realised, as I joined the orchestra later for the rest of the day, that this was another first, in playing for them as a woman. It’s an ad hoc orchestra, and many people do know me, but not all. By now, when these firsts happen, I don’t really think about it, because it is actually quite difficult to remember how I used to be. It is so far removed, that the nice man on the trumpet is like someone else I vaguely used to remember. I remember concerts I played, because it was me alright, and it was fun, but it’s the me bit, not the presentation of self, that I recall. All sorts of people I don’t know came up to me afterwards to complement my playing, so I know that being the slightly-different-looking woman simply doesn’t get in the way any more.

So in a way this is a point of arrival, like when you are on board and the ship is under way. There is a separation, an excitement, all the big efforts to get here now taken over by a vessel with a purpose and a known destination.

And all this in the same weekend as I prepared finally to leave the person I have loved most for so very long, and still do. So why have I titled this blog ‘Happiness’?

All these touches of knowing self, of being recognised at last being as I should always have been, of a sense of the deepest integrity, of falling completely into place, leave me feeling more happy with myself, in my deepest sense of self, than I have ever been my whole life. It is very hard to express, or find adequate words, because unless you have been there, it’s as if the words don’t exist. It is a happiness so powerful that nothing is strong enough to put me back anywhere else. I face years of frustration getting my body properly adjusted, and every day it feels more and more inappropriate in certain respects. As my breasts begin to develop it feels like the restoration of a missing part of me. Like when a valuable jar has stood for many years and been admired, then finally the original lid turns up and is reunited.

This is just so completely right.

Losing love simply tears me apart, but at the same time I know this happiness. Such an irony; back to the paradoxes in many of my blog posts. But how can I explain?

I wanted to write this for all those trans* people in a similar position, for whom it is so incredibly hard to arrive at self because of the associated loss. For all those people who, unlike Nicci with her Laura and their love less ordinary, must lose love, lose family, and go alone. I want to say that the happiness of finding your self, maybe finding your soul, really does outweigh all else, and that it is yours, if you want it. Nothing in this world is worth hanging onto if it keeps you from this kind of happiness, and you will find the resources to see you through the worst of the loss, the most difficult of times, the feelings of distrust or hatred from a few, and the insecurity of a place you’ve never been before. You will find true friends, you will find acceptance and understanding, and you can hope, with me, that you will find love that is as deep and as shared and as committed as you will ever need.

And in case anyone accuses you of selfishness, look back on my earlier musings: Selfish. Self(ish). Self.

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