True Friends

They say true friends are sometimes hard to hard. True friends stay with you no matter what and support you and try to understand and help you when you need it and pull you up when you are down and share in your joys. As I have mentioned previously in some earlier blogs, I never let the shell develop many friends although I had many acquaintances. I know so may people in my area I have worked and lived for so long but the only few male friends I developed were about three people I regularly worked with for nearly twenty years and some friends left over from college days when I played the “frat boy” and we see each other a few times a year. This week this group of people will find out about Melissa as I move through the process of coming out to all and ultimately living my life as Melissa as I have always to do. There are many exciting days ahead of me as I begin that life and move to another city and look for work and live life as Melissa and move forward on my surgeries and such. These people need to know and they will in the next few days and I am fine with that as it is the next logical step in this process following coming clean to wife, children, in-laws, nephews and nieces and cousins and the other plethora of extended family members.

I suspect most if not all of these people will reject me as Melissa and my transition and relocation to live my life as I always saw it would be lived. These guys are mostly kind of macho thinking, conservative guys who like more traditional “male oriented” activities. One is a gay friend who, although part of the LGBT community, is so absorbed on his own issues and has been for twenty years- still not even fully coming out to his friends except me, although everyone has known for twenty-five years. One of the local friends is a bright, independent thinking generally open minded person and I may stand a chance with him but I doubt more than 1-2 of this narrow- minded bunch will accept and support my need to live my life as who I truly am- Melissa. I have never really worried much about whether they do as I have developed many friends in the community and I will remain such with them despite my transition. I will never forget how I started in this community, the love and support they gave me as I moved through this journey. I have always counted on them and knew that every single male friend I lost someday I would have four to five of my community of friends to replace them. I feel that they have lost a friend by their own choosing. Of course my sisters understand and support more because they are in some manner transgendered themselves and most, if not all, never really knew the shell.

I have a few friends from the “other” side of the aisle. This week at a conference I was attending I came out to Cathy and Mary. These people helped me get my start in my industry and with my business and have always been fun loving, easy going, open minded, liberal thinking people and we have worked together on several projects over the years. We have always gotten along very well. I decided before I came to the conference that I was going to tell them. I saw them the other night at our opening reception and Cathy spoke first and she said she sensed something was troubling me and thought there had been on our last collaboration in February of this year. She looked at me and first said “what is the deal with the earrings” and I asked her if she like them! She said you are getting divorced aren’t you and I answered affirmatively. She first speculated it was because I had an affair with some young thing and then that my wife had done the same. I answered negatively. Then she leans over and says “You haven’t gone over to the other side have you?” I roared with laughter. No- I said I am not gay. She says the suspense is killing her and she has to know so I lean over during the reception and tell her “It’s because I am transgendered.” She was shocked at first and said I played the cover up game well.

After getting a round of drinks I talked with some more but did not get to finish the story until later when I told Mary as well. I started at the beginning and told them everything including my future plans. They were genuinely happy for me and said they accepted, understood and would continue to support me as a friend. Cathy told me that those who won’t “really weren’t your real friend anyway”. Mary told me that life is too short and one has to live it as they see fit and be happy (now where have I heard that one before –LOL) Both of them hugged me and asked some more questions and hugged me several times throughout our evening together. They offered some advice on career movement as well in our professional field. They were as cool as two friends could be and I was so happy I told both of them. True friends are indeed rare and Cathy and Mary qualify as such………of course I should have figured it would be the woman friends who would do so. So now they have a new shopping partner as we discussed all sorts of fashion and accessories as the evening went on with much laughter and some hugs shared among friends!

Nothing will ever be the same again!

Where did Dad go? Here today….gone tomorrow. Nothing will ever be the same anymore in the house where I raised my family. We were this nice two income couple with two cars that grew into four as our kids matured from floor sweeping, toy spreading, ever growing little darlings into the young, car owning adults they are today. I remember the days of pushing my daughter’s Girl Scout cookies on my co-workers so she could get her prizes and cheering her on as she played soccer and driving her to her first date with a boy. I recall the hours spent on the ball fields coaching and umpiring and cheering as I watched my son play the game of baseball he loved and played so exceptionally well for 13 years. The crafty lefty who loved sports and the times we spent on trips together to football, basketball and baseball games as “father and son”. I remember the wonderful family vacations to places out west, the Florida beaches, England and Scotland and regions such as New England and the Pacific Northwest. America’s family of four…mom, dad and two kids- one girl and one boy all rolled up in Americana and living the American Dream. Today, I shattered those images and crushed that dream in a dose of hard cold reality called coming out fully as a transgendered person to my children and telling them of our impending divorce over this matter accompanied with words of comfort from my wife such as “you just destroyed their lives as they have known it”. I have cried so much my eyes actually physically hurt and the pain I feel so deeply is the greatest pain I have ever known. My wife did comfort me and she saw the deep sadness that I was causing more pain and I was in more pain.

After today, nothing will ever be the same-EVER! I know I have changed their world and I pray I have not pushed them somewhere where I may never find them again. I pray that they will not do something foolish or God forbid do something to themselves over all this mess. I hope they cling to and support their mother and pull together as a family as others in the extended family rally around them as well. I can be the one they all hate….. ..the one who ruined it all ……the freak who imploded “his” family ( it will be a long time before anyone in the family ever addresses me as ‘her” and for a few on the tiers beyond my wife and daughter, it may very well be a cold day in hell before that ever happens. My daughter said she knew and actually knew for about 4-5 years. She had found pics of me as Melissa although they were taken a long time ago. My son recoiled badly and was angry and after talking with his mother for two hours locked himself in his room all day until he left for his summer work. I really could care less about the in-laws and nephews or nieces. I am not saying I don’t hope someday that they may understand and accept or at least try but the immediate family is one I must find a way to reconnect with as quickly as I can as a parent to my children and hopefully a friend to my soon to be ex-wife. They will need time to heal, think, digest, understand and maybe reach out. They will need space, they will need love and they will need information- information on what it is to be transgendered and what is to become of the person they knew until today as their father and the husband of their mother.

My daughter had suspected something for some time, primarily because she is a curious, snoopy type and she just received her degree in psychology and completed course work in gender psychology where she studied transgendered people. She saw the long manicured nails, the lack of body hair, the changes in my face, the earrings….she is a bright girl and always did well in school. She could add it up and maybe she did many times in her head- but still no one actually said it so it must not be true. My son suspected so much less but mostly because he closed his eyes so tight when around me so he would not see but what he wanted to see …the “man” who is his father. Twenty four years after saying “I do” and fathering and raising two beautiful children I undid all that in on swift move and the utterance of a few simple words….You mother and I are divorcing and I am transgendered. I tried to explain it as best I could to them but emotions made it hard and they looked at me like I had just told them I was some strange alien from another planet. I hope someday they will understand and move forward to reconnect with me as Melissa and see me for whom I truly am and always have been even when they saw me as their father! They are older and maybe this is truly possible but not without time and space and finding answers and understanding. I have no idea how anyone handles all this when the children are younger I really don’t. I can only hope for peace and understanding and wait for the day when I can once reconnect with my family as Melissa and as a parent of my children as they move forward in their lives. For now, “Dad” is gone and nothing will ever truly be the same again-ever!