The Family Girl Blogs (aka "The New Working Girl Blogs") Blog #55: A Reminder On My Calendar To see all of Bobbie's Family Girl Blogs, click on this link: http://bigclosetr.us/topshelf/book/28818/family-girl-blogs

I had a... drama-filled discussion with a BCTS friend about twelve hours ago via Yahoo Messenger. Seems those are the only kinds of discussions we've had lately. Anyway, she has finally given me a date for when she will be taking the first concrete step towards arresting the "steady decline" (her words) in her life.

I have marked down that date, July 1st, 2013, in my iPad's calendar, and I plan to email/YM/text/PM her on that day, and see if she really did what she said she'd do, or if this is just another one of those things that she plans but ends up never doing.

After more than two years of us going back and forth on the same thing - more than two years of hemming and hawing, of unrealized grand designs, of brave but un-executed plans, of empty intentions, of her making plans but end up not doing anything - I guess I am now thinking she really isn't serious about this. Many times she has made plans and put deadlines on them, but ultimately nothing came of them, often with lots of excuses why they weren't. So her making another deadline isn't new, but she's saying this is real this time. Do I believe this time? But as Erin says, everyone should be given the benefit of the doubt....

If this is, in fact, real this time, then this is something of an accomplishment for her. Earthshaking, actually. She, of course, pushed the date eighty-four days away. For me, that's too far away, and so many things can happen before then.

So I don't think anyone can blame me for doubting her, after hearing her make so many plans in the past, and to hear her say that she is serious about it and she's really gonna do what she said she will "this time." Well, after more than two years of hearing her cry wolf... Like I said, can you blame me?

Us TG folk have always had a hard time with life, and not many will ever reach out with a sympathetic helping hand. I have always thought most "normal" folks were a little short-sighted when it came to people like us, and most are stuck in their own little world-views, scared of thinking out of the box. Never did I think a TG person would actually be the same, that even being TG, she would be unable to shake the normal world's conventionalities and restrictions and make things right for herself.

Looking back at my own experiences, despite being TG, I was, deep within me, ashamed - that who I was was a shameful thing. After all, the rest of the world, especially those closest to me, told me so. It was just my own need to change myself to what I thought was the real me, to correct such a fundamental wrongness, that I was willing to do anything, face anything.

My fear is that my friend doesn't have that need, that hunger to change, to be able to overcome her emotional inertia and be willing to take a chance.

At the beginning of things, I have told her that she had so many medical problems, not to mention problems with her family, to even consider transitioning at this point in her life. But she ignored me. She came out, without a plan for the possible repercussions and consequences for coming out.

As expected, her family life became a bigger turmoil and her medical problems have just increased. So, I said that the next logical step must be taken if she does indeed want to push on with transitioning (not hormones or operations, but to do something to make it right between her and her family). But she doesn't - for two years, she has always had a reason not to do anything of consequence. So she has had to endure the disdain, the disrespect of people around her. She has even been physically threatened by her own offspring. I told her it was a mistake to do this without any follow-through.

So she is now in this abyss of her own making, where everything is, using her words, in a "steady decline," that she has "run out of strategies" to cope or to fix things. She said, "I have examined my living conditions, and found them wanting." And the thing is, it's not as if she can't do anything about it - she can. It's just that she doesn't. It's like she goes out of her way to make things harder for herself...

Anyway, she has set a deadline for her first concrete step to stop this vicious cycle, even though she's set it so very far away - eighty-four days away, to be exact. I have a suspicion the reason it's so very far away is that it is just another one of her delaying tactics to escape doing something concrete.

But, like Erin says, benefit of the doubt and all that... If this July 1 deadline is real, it might be a way for her to escape this devil's hamster wheel.

So...

I'll be watching out for July 1. I have marked my calendar.

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