Newhart, Dreams and Life with Paula

Are any of you fans of the Bob Newhart shows on television? Both his old where he was working as a psychologist in Chicago and his newer one where he was an innkeeper in Vermont are seen many nights on Nick at Night and will likely live on in syndication for some time. If any of you remember on this last episode of the newer series in Vermont, Bob rolls over in bed and finds his old wife Suzanne Pleshette from the old show next to him and apparently he dreamed the entire seven seasons of the new show and it never really happened. Of course, the episode was absolutely hilarious and was a spoof on the series “Dallas” in which the entire season without Bobby was suppose to have been a dream and never really happened to explain his absence from the show.
Sometimes I feel like those episodes of the old TV shows. I sometimes wonder if I wake up one morning and find myself in my old body and deeply imbedded in my old shell and lying next to my ex-wife in my old bed in my old house we shared for so many years and all that has happened since I left has been a dream. My wonderful life with Paula and my transition, surgeries and hormone changes and all that has happened to me since I left to live life as who I truly am- Melissa was all a wonderful dream and I am still living the lie. Don’t get me wrong and with no insult to my ex-wife who was and remains a sweet loving and intelligent woman who I dearly hope finds some equally special person to fill her life with happiness, but if all that has happened has been a dream, the taste of what my life as Melissa would be like through the dream would only serve to compel me to move forward and end up transitioning and living life as I was meant to live it- as Melissa! Hopefully, the new life would also involve Paula who I enjoy waking up next to each day as we talk or cuddle or hold hands and listen to the sounds of the world awaking outside or the bird singing in the room next door. She is such an important part of my life and my journey and I truly realize how much I am a very big part of hers too.
The question came up the other day between us about where we would be in our lives without each other- if we had never met in May of 2007 on that night in Toledo when we talked for two hours. As you know from my earlier blogs, Paula fell in love with me that night. She carried the torch silently and never let on about it as we became great friends. A year later when I realized that I had fallen in love with her we began our relationship as soul mates, best friends and partners in life and love. Next week we plan to celebrate our one year anniversary together. However, I agree with her in that it was fate that brought us together that night and through our meeting and friendship and evolution into a deep caring love we found each other as soul mates. Paula thinks neither of us would be where we are today in our transitions if it was not for our meeting that warm spring night two years ago and she is probably right. We both might still be living in our old lives pretending to be someone we were not or maybe we would be early on in transition but struggling alone as many in our community do. I feel so fortunate to have met her, to have become friends with her and to found Melissa’s soul mate and partner in life and to have my love around each day and night with me as we move forward together.
We support each other as we have struggled or continue to struggle with divorces and loss of contact with those we love deeply as well as through our transitions involving so many new emotions, feelings and difficult trials including our surgeries. Somehow I know we will both make it being together supporting each other and helping bring the true essence of ourselves to life and continue to grow as Paula and Melissa. I know that our love will grow even deeper as we enrich each other’s spirit and lift each other’s soul-even in our darkest hours. Together we will grow as both ourselves and as soul mates in life and love. I shudder to think where I would be in my journey without her and I know she feels likewise. That is why I know I wake up sometimes in the middle of the night or early morning hours just to make sure she is still there and make sure I have not been dreaming this life. No Bob Newhart or Dallas episodes for me please!

Perceptions

Perception is a difficult thing sometimes and in our community of transgendered people it sometimes can become a quagmire as we come out to people and move through our physical and spiritual transitions. I was in a several conversations recently with a friend of mine and someone who I admire greatly for her courage to come out despite risking her family and career that she has performed so well in public service here in Columbus. We discussed the fact that many in the mainstream community and in particular our families see us as in some sort of pretend world and I know my ex has even addressed me as being in a “subculture” and Paula’s parents think she is not a “real person” being who she is as Paula. The family members think that we are somehow living a falsehood being who we are and have always been on the inside and that the real us was the person we pretended to be for so long. The longer we played the game and pretended the more their perception was that was really who we are and have always been. When we finally come out and tell them who we really are they so disbelieve it and are stuck in the perception we so amply created living the lie.

I played the game so well I sometimes fooled myself. I know others have done the same. The only pretending i ever did was when I tried to fool others and hid the real me from the world. I immersed myself in almost everything from activities to politics which portrayed me as this person they grew to know and perceive as the person I really was when the truth was so far from it. The better one played the game, the worse it was when it was time to come clean as the ones who were closest to you bought into the false perception even more many times than those who knew you only marginally. The period of time following coming out, transitioning and living fulltime in your true gender is a wonderful experience in which your peace is found and the happiness of being and presenting yourself as whom you really and truly are gives you great joy and comfort. However, the loved ones who were close to you and knew you and bought into the false perception better than most are left only with their perceptions of who you are which you created even though that is not who you are as a person. I think sometimes the easiest transitions as far as retaining many of the family members are those where the transgendered person shared more of their true selves with their loved ones and did not let them obtain the deep seeded misperceptions which plague many of us in our transitions and relationships with those that were close to us before we told them the real truth about us. So they believe the other person we tried to be and misled others into believing we were is who we were and that we are only pretending to be someone else now.

We know that is not the case -but the quagmire of misperceptions of our doing which we weaved and built in our previous life in hiding and deceiving does us in and leaves those we fooled so badly (and you know they cannot be happy about being fooled so badly!) asserting we are in a pretend world, a subculture, a cult and not “real persons”. I long for the day when I can connect again with my immediate family and I get the chance to erase the misperceptions I created with them for so many years and let them get to know the real me and hopefully alter their misperceptions which I created in them. I built the misperception living the big lie for so long and so well that I know that it cannot be erased so easily by others. We do it to ourselves and we must live with the consequences of doing so and of playing the game so well for so long and leaving the trail of misperceptions that now lie at our feet as we move through our journey being who we really are as people. No one weaves a more tangled web than that of a transgendered soul….but maybe that is just my perception!

Thanksgiving 2008

Thanksgiving is a delightful holiday and one of my favorites. I respect the concept of giving thanks for all that I have and all that is good in our world and I am one of the many who respect it and do not try to jump to the Christmas season and disregard the importance of the day of gathering of family and friends for feasting and celebration for the joys of life and comforts of family and friends we have made in life! Furthermore, I love hot turkey and gravy and delicious seasoned stuffing and all the delightful fixins such as potatoes and casseroles and of course one of my favorite all time pies- Pumpkin Pie! I usually eat another slice of pie for breakfast the next morning and who doesn’t love Thanksgiving leftovers? I remember so vividly the Thanksgiving days at my grandmother’s as a child filled with so many family members I could never keep them all straight and sometimes the gatherings required three tables. I could smell Grandma’s turkey and stuffing cooking even now!
This year’s Thanksgiving festivities will be vastly different than the last twenty or so for sure. In the past, my wife, daughter and son would travel in on the day before for the holidays and my wife and I would meet friends for drinks and then celebrate Thanksgiving dinner with one of our sets of parents- alternating each year. If we ate dinner at my parents then we would stop in for desert and gathering of the clan for desert at my wife’s mother’s place. My wife’s family is large and I mean very large since she had four siblings and each of them as well as us had two to three children plus some aunts and uncles. Two recent Thanksgivings come to mind for me. The last Thanksgiving I spent with my parents in 2005 shortly before my mother’s death from the dreadful disease which stole her mind and soul! We arrived that day to take my parents out for dinner since my father’s physical health prevented him for doing anything and my mother’s Alzheimer’s had stolen her faculties to prepare the culinary delights she was so famous for and which I try to carry on today. However, when we arrived that day we found them unable to go anywhere and my son and I had to hurry out to the store and find what we could to cook and we all dined together for the last time. My mother died a few months later. In 2006, we returned to dine with my wife’s family but what made this special was the fact that with some help from my son and a few of my brother-in-laws I was able to get my father out if the nursing home and bring him there to dine with my wife’s family. I know he enjoyed that so much and I did too for later that next spring he died and just before Christmas after the Thanksgiving in 2006 year my only brother was killed in an accident. Telling my father at Christmas was one of the toughest things I have ever done in my entire life. I felt like I had reached in and tore out a piece of his heart! In 2007, we again celebrated Thanksgiving with my wife’s family as I had none left but, by late November of 2007, I knew that would likely be the last one I would ever celebrate with my wife, children and her family as I was barely holding on for the sake of my children from emerging fully as Melissa and living the life I was meant to live as a women and fully out transgendered person I truly believe I was suppose to lead. This year’s Thanksgiving is vastly different than the ones from recent past. I am no longer welcome at my mother-in-laws and expectedly so. My wife and I are now entangled in a angry, bitter divorce that seems to get worse by the day and she is embarrassed of me and by me. My daughter, despite her education and training in psychology and cultural liberalism and open-mindedness and maturity has abandoned me to support her mother as if one has to choose sides and my son has not spoken to me since July. Thanksgiving 2008 is the most different Thanksgiving I will ever experience. I have Paula of course and for that I am most grateful and, if she was the only one I had to celebrate this day with along with others in the LGBT community at the Thanksgiving Day celebration at the LGBT community center for those who do not have families to go to I would be also joyful!! For the community is my family! I would also give thankful for and I would be happy for Paula is my life and I am so thankful we found each other and will live our lives together celebrating many wonderful holidays.
However, this year my sister in- law (brother’s wife) and my niece and her fiancé and my nephew and his new wife have invited me as well as Paula who has also lost the ability to dine with her mother and father and children and such at the request of those family members, to come and spend the holiday with them. I will admit I am a bit nervous for this will be the first time any of them has seen me as Melissa-my true essence and spirit and will also be introducing them to my soul mate Paula. I worry about things not going as well since they are all the family I have left now. Part of the problem is that my brother and I were not very close because of our ages (14 years apart) and my time with them has been very limited –yet they were the only ones to reach out and accept me as Melissa and support me and now they have invited me as well as my love Paula to come and be with them for this holiday. If all goes well however, then clearly 2008 will go down on my list as one of my favorite Thanksgivings ever along with the ones I discussed above. Well here’s to hoping it does and that all of you in out there in our community have a wonderful Thanksgiving filled with family and joy even if that family is defined solely by members of our community –for that is a wonderful family to have indeed and one to give thanks for as you gorge yourself on the feast! Happy Thanksgiving to all of you and I wish you all the peace and joy in the world! Hugs, Melissa
Pictured above is me with my good friend Joann for whom I am also thankful!