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With the usual scheduling problems, my other friend (a former S.O., who had to go her own way, for similar reasons, 20 years ago, but who has remained a good and loving friend) and I got together at last. I was fighting a migraine but loaded up on medication and quickly asked her to pull over so I could talk to her before we got to a restaurant. Unlike NY Eve, I quickly came to the point. It was accepted with a bit of surprise but totally accepted. We shared some thoughts on our previous relationship. I was interested if any part of Wendy was responsible for our 8 and a half years of loving, friendship and lots of satisfying, fun sex before she realized her hidden issues and embraced her lesbianism. It seems I triggered her "mothering" instincts. Not what I expected to hear and I don't want to deal with the incestuous nature of such a concept, lol. But she had no trouble accepting Wendy and we quickly made a tentative date to go out to a TG-friendly lesbian club together when things settle down for us both and I am ready to go out. ---how I will carry out my first night out dressed as Wendy is still something I'm wrestling over....not IF but HOW.......I'll deal with that issue later. We went to a Sushi Bar and I ended up with green tea and steamed rice and managed to not have to endure the migraine-vomiting that so often accompanies it. Goddess bless Imitrex. Now I had a second old-friend/lover who I could freely be Wendy with. What was odd, was finding the sexual attraction still there, but from the viewpoint of her being the "dominant"/"aggressive" partner, not me. It's not likely to happen but the feelings are there. What is also there, and stronger than ever, is the feelings of friendship and love for her. It seems that coming out has freed others to open up to me.
My ex (I find that appellation difficult to continue to use to refer to her)...my best, girlfriend....my best friend but also my girl-friend...it's a bit complicated as TG issues often are....my best friend and I continued to see each other during the last 2 and a half months....can it be so long? There was a row about three weeks into the new year. It could have been the end of open communication. I came close to shutting down. Somehow, it ended with an uncomfortableness, but with BOTH of us putting out that extra effort to communicate and try for a solution. I was sad, but we didn't fight and walk away. But I sadly decided that there really was no hope of us ever managing to resolve our issues enough to be "together" again as anything but occassionally-meeting friends. I was wrong. I had spoken exactly what I needed to best give her what she needed. She had heard me. Somewhere....somewhere in the mists of our past battles and dysfunctional relationship we both glimpsed our Holy Grail. We both saw something we wanted more than we wanted to continue to be the damaged people we had been all our lives. There came the night where we sat and talked until...........very very late. What came out of us was mutual insightfulness and commitment to reaching The Grail even if we had to totally give up our past selves, damaged since our abusive childhoods. We dropped all defensiveness. We both REALLY listened. We both REALLY heard. I was talking to the same person but a different person. Now I've been working in professional psych work for almost 35 yrs now. Nobody can fake being as healthy and functional as she was. You see, you have to be functioning to understand how to "fake" it. A dysfunctional person can fool you, but they can't fake the correct behavior patterns. I was awed by the person talking to me. She had managed what, short weeks before, I had decided she could never manage. Somehow this reinforced the same in me and we got into a feedback loop of healthy interactions and growth. We accomplished more in one night than we had in 16 years together and 5 apart including being in couple's therapy together with a fine therapist. Somehow we had broken the ring of dysfunctional reinforcement and replaced it with one of joy in being high-functioning people in a healthy relationship. It did not stop with that night. It has continued. There have been potholes, but we have chosen to deal with them productively. Defensiveness shelved. Minds open. Healing instead of hurting. She HATES Him. Suddenly, from the air itself she said something close to:
"I've been thinking I might have to move to Virginia with Wendy."
HUH? "What?"
"I love Wendy."
She told me that Wendy was the person she had fallen in love with when she met me. The nurse, working in adolescent psych/substance abuse caring for "her kids". Someone she had failed to find in our personal relationship. I was lost. All consideration of accepting my past, flawed, coping mechanisms was lost. I had to be Wendy....for me, for her, for us.......but most of all because I loved being who Wendy was and hated being Him, almost as much as she hated Him. But most of all....I like Wendy. I like who I am now. I can see the differences. I'm a better "therapist"....my issues are shelved. I can listen better, hear better, empathize better....and I was good to start with...it's one of the few places in my life I readily accept that I'm good. I can see Wendy staking her claim to parts of my life as far back as nursing school and psychiatric nursing class, but definitely after I graduated. I went to work, I came home, Wendy went back up to the Loft, I became 100% Him. The Bushi Warrior. The Zen Swordsman (a skill that should not be underrated as it gave me the ability to put emotion aside...a skill that allowed Wendy to eventually break out of the Loft). It is somewhat strange that my pursuit of ultimate macho-ness gave me the skills and confidence to accept my feminine-self. Make no mistake. Without the incredible effort on my friend's part, based in months of personal exploration in a hospital bed and fueled by finding Wendy, hidden in the person she had come to dislike being with, without her almost unbelievable growth and shooting past the "hump" in her own head to find her own true self and overcome the damage done to her in her early life (I cannot tell the tale but it took an extraordinary human being to overcome it...truly extraordinary....and I hope to be worthy of that person) without that effort I would have faltered and lost my grip, plunging back, perhaps forever, into the abyss my own life had left me in. Instead, she was there, her hand held out to help me over the edge. That we both gained from this is good. I could have not done it without her being there and tossing her fears aside and walking into the fire, emerging unhurt. Could I do less? My heart is filled with love, admiration, respect for what I know she has done...for her, for me, but in truth these things can only be done if we do them for ourselves, for what we want. Without the skills taught us by our therapist. A man of patience, who had to fight against the hidden truth that was the key to my "getting well"....the fact that I crossdressed, which I knew, but hid it as unimportant and irrelavant to the relationship....the fact that there was Wendy hidden away in my head, the keeper of all the missing parts that were needed for my salvation, which I did not know and would not for over a decade.....despite this, he did his job and, when I was ready to do mine, and she was ready to do hers, we had the tools to get the job done. We will go and tell him. He deserves closure too. Besides, we still have work to do, bandaging the festering wounds in our hearts and healing each other. Only then can we even hope to look at a return to the love we both wanted and could not manage without Wendy's help. That may never happen, but I guarantee we will be great friends forever. How do I know? It's how I make my living and I trust Wendy's instincts on this. SHE was "The pro from Dover" though none of us realized it until now.
This is not really about TG issues. It is about damage that the world does to us and how it makes us afraid to risk, afraid to face our nightmares, afraid to trust ourselves. How many stories have you read or seen where the protagonist had to stop "defending" in order to survive. This is what they mean. The defenses can restrain you, cripple you and even kill you. In my case, my buried "female" parts, Wendy, held the key to my inability to change. Accepting her back, letting her control my life has given me back my true self, my happiness, my friend's love and the knowledge that I will be OK from here on. My car's will still break down twice a month, idiots will take take liberties with my life like stray dogs with a fire hydrant, **** will happen.....I'll try to make the best of it. I have a lot left to do, but I'm out of my tunnel. Dealing with being TG is a bagatelle compared to what I have faced and accomplish the past ten weeks. I have always said that it was my mind, not going out in a dress, that had to be my primary goal. Others disagreed, but Wendy's instincts were, as usual, correct. She's no longer the First Officer....she is now the Captain in my life. Certainly, for me, there was no job a man could do that a T-girl couldn't do better.
Ok, enough heavy, analytical stuff for now. Time for some fun stuff....that's right, shopping...and the good things that happened because of what's in this post and that encouraged what is in this post....next blog post. I apologize for my silence that past few months, but now you can see why I was somewhat preoccupied. Wendy needed to finish being reborn.
