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Chapter 14

Everyone left after the movies were done with and it still took an hour of nice tears and hugs and getting thanked for such a wonderful night and exchanges of phone numbers and dishing out left overs.

Billy’s girls name is Dallas as it turns out and she’s another person this turned out to be a first for. “I wanted to thank you guys for inviting me and Billy over here. I’ve never had a meal or a night like this before.”

“Me neither it’s a first for me too.”

“Uhm, thanks for the left overs too. Home made foods a real nice change.”

“Hey anytime, we’re doing this again next Sunday if you want to come.”

“I…I...uhm, don’t know if I can, it’s not like Billy and I see each other steady like.”

“Dallas, I asked you to come. Billy’s great but he’s still Tay’s friend first, I’m inviting you whether you two are seeing each other or not.”

“Really?”

“Really. Friends okay?” I extend my hand to hers. She takes it and I pull her into a hug.

“Friends.” She agrees.

“I’ll see you later, have a good night.”

We head upstairs with Taylor saying that they got the prep work and stuff all done while we were upstairs watching our movies. I slip into our living room and put my Aunt Katie’s picture up on the wall on one of our shelves the kiss her goodnight my fingers to my lips then to the side of her face. “G’night Katie.”

I head off to start a shower and get ready for bed. Tay slips in with me and kisses the back of my neck. “Wash your back?”

“Mmmn. Please.”

I’m not so sore anymore so as so often happens our gentle washing becomes gentle touches and kisses and then we make love in the shower. I’m not as freaked out or upset about my bits as I was. I do get hit with that little anguishy wave of not feeling right and being insecure when we change positions from back to front. It’s easier in bed, it’s less exposed…But Tay lifts me into his arms and I wrap my legs around him as we make love, my back against the shower wall and I’m holding onto the various things we’ve got in there for grip and leverage.

Still it’s right there, literally between us and there’s a reaction that often happens from getting so stimulated. I hate it, I’m ashamed of it when it happens and I can’t help it but start to cry a little…

Right there it kills the mood which makes me feel even worse. I never got there, he didn’t get there and that hits me because this is me failing him. This is me just a fake and not a real girl for him to love and…I’m crying and bawling about it saying I’m sorry and kind of crumble like the girl I really am into the full on ugly cry.

Taylor takes me to bed and gets me dressed into my extra long Jessica rabbit t-shirt and naughty red nylon and lacy panties and takes me to bed holding me and kissing me so incredibly gently, touching me and telling me how beautiful I am. All the way until I fall asleep looking into those mountain top blue grey eyes of his.

Morning comes way too early for me and I can smell Taylor downstairs cooking. I’m late for work and I’m not sure I care. I feel like garbage, queasy and sad. I go and take my meds and sit to pee and just tucking to go triggers it…I start to cry. I feel fake and incomplete and not right. It feels like I’m never going to be myself or happy, like perfectly happy. I’m never going to be a real girl, I feel the water in the shower running down my body off it and it’s wrong. I feel wrong.

I’m so fucking tired of feeling wrong.

It hurts. If you’re not going through this there is no way you can understand it. Gender identity is something so fundamental to everyone. It’s like being able to see or hear. Being transgendered and not actually being the person you’re supposed to be is torture. Blind people or Deaf people can have really hard times with some things in life but unless they’re a trans too they are still themselves. There are times like today I feel like I’ll never be whole. I end up crying on the floor of the shower.

I feel it today, I feel ugly. I look in the mirror and I see Jaime. I see him looking at me with reddened eyes and a face that’s not really a mans but…there’s parts of it that are just a bit too angular to be female…or human…My nose, what give has a broken nose.

My shoulders are too big. I played fucking football. I stopped yes when I was fifteen and started this useless…I…football…I was already starting to grow up then and I see every thing there in the mirror…I feel like I’m the thing. My arms are too long, my feet are too big. My breasts are too small and look pathetic on my body. A year and a half of being on my own and dead broke thinned me, If it came to eating or my hormones…the pills won every time. I look like a sickly she-male heroin addict.

I take another dose of my meds and another and some sleeping pills. I crawl back into bed with just my panties on and cry until the pills take me away.

I’m not sure when I woke up or what time it was but My head’s in Grams’s lap, stroking my hair. I feel sick, my breasts hurt and…she’s there with a waste basket as I throw up. I’m not sure how long that lasts either. I look up at her crying and she looks at me smiling and is making those gentle shushing sounds. I break. “Oh…Grammmms! Why?, What’d I do? Why can’t I be real?” I roll over on my side and bury my face into her stomach and bawl my eyes out until I’m shaking like I’m spasming, hyperventilating almost.

It was bad, it was one of those moments if you know what it’s like to be transgendered that we get. That insurmountable insecurity that comes on you like a storm. I’ll admit I think for some of us hormones are an issue with this. They don’t cause the feelings but they really make them more intense. I’m in transition and I can’t imagine the hell of those that can’t. There’s a real reason there is so much, so many cases of anxiety and chronic depression in our community. With what I was going to do before…I’m pretty sure Grams might have saved my life. Taking a triple dose of hormones in one day isn’t smart. It won’t kill you, but I’m feeling like crap and really sick all day and extra weepy.

My grams takes care of me as I spend the day in the bathroom or in bed crying with her comforting me. Taylor comes up here after the lunch rush is over. Grams steps out of the bedroom and I can hear them talking but not what they’re saying. Taylor comes in with his hair held back in a bandanna and cooking stains on what was a white t-shirt this morning. He smiles at me with this mixture of worry in there and crawls into the bed with me. His arms reach out and roll me over to face him. “Hey beautiful.”

“No…I’m not…” I whine, I hate myself right now.

“Yeah, you are. Jen you’re the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.”

“I am not…”

“God Jenna, You are, you are so beautiful and amazing and smart, you care about people so much when you shouldn’t, not with all those things that you’ve been through.”

“Bbbut, I’m no..”

“You have a nice butt.”

“Taaaay.” More whining, I’m so pathetic. He’s going to get sick of me…he should be sick of me, disgusted. He pulls me in by my shoulders and plants a kiss on me. Not one of those soft movie kisses but this I’m going to make you stop, shut you up kisses that the girl never expects coming…Oh… my eyes widen and he’s got his tongue in my mouth swirling around and then pulls it back and then sucks my tongue into his mouth even as he’s passionately kissing me.

It’s a kiss like none that I’ve ever had before, it and Tay sucks the air out of me. Then he kisses me again and this time it’s sweeter, softer and his touch loving and like magik it seems to trickle strength into me like with each touch each caress is like that arc between our sparks and I can feel this energy of Taylor’s sinking into me and my skin. I can feel it inside me, cleansing my soul.

God I can feel it, him washing away my fear, my pain, my anguish those kisses on my eyelids with this sensation that….That my soul, my heart can only compare it to what it must feel like to be baptized…no, What John must have felt…you know, the real baptism…Tay’s kiss is this light to my soul and my beacon out of the darkness today.

We break the kiss and Taylor slides out of the bed and he heads out the door only pausing to smile at me as I’m lying there, naked from the top up, on my side with clean clear tears running down my face. “Jenna I love you, and I know that it’s the real thing. Do you know why? It’s because of you…you’re the reason I’m still here. You’re the reason my heart is even beating.” With that he slips away to go downstairs to go back to work.

I sit there feeling the words resonating in my heart. I’m…I’m wasting time with this. I have to be better than this, I have to get passed these feelings. I call Dr. Wilson. “Hello? This is Jenna Powers, I need to set an emergency session…Yes I’ll hold…” I’m out of the bed holding the phone pacing back and back and forth. Then there’s a voice on the other line. “Jenna?”

“Yes, it’s me.”

“I’d like to make an appointment as soon as possible.”

“Did something happen?”

“Yes…I…keep hitting a wall, in my head, about me and everything’s just…(I’m on the verge of tears again.)

“Jenna, Jenna calm down. How soon can you get to my office?”

“I can come over now.”

“Good, here’s my address.”

I take down the address and I go and shower and get cleaned up just a bit and dressed before going downstairs. I wait a few moments before there’s a slow down…supper rush already? I go over to Taylor and kiss him. “I have to go out, I have an emergency appointment with Dr. Wilson…I need to do something Tay, I can’t take the way I’m yo-yoing up and down all the time.”

“Who’s going to take you?”

“I’ll take a cab.”

“You sure, I can go…”

“No baby, it’s the middle of the supper rush and everything I don’t know how long I’ll be.”

He takes out his wallet and a stack of bills. “Taylor I…”

“I want you to take this, you might need things after your appointment okay?” His eyes his face is saying please.

“Alright okay I’ll take it, but it comes out of my pay.”

“No it doesn’t, You’re my fiancée remember?”

I sigh. “Okay.”

“You’re taking the truck.”

“I don’t have my license.”

“Your Grams does.”

“Grams? Uhm can she even drive the truck?”

“Please honey, I can certainly drive Taylor’s truck now get your coat and your purse.” Grams said as she took the keys from him and spun the keys around her finger.

I grab my things and we set out through the after work, after supper traffic. Grams drives pretty well. Then again I don’t know anything about any of the stuff that she’s done in her life.

The appointment is at her house out in these older money suburbs. You know the places that have the three to four stories and fancy roof styles and the turrets with the window seats and where there’s statues at the ends of the driveways and hedges everywhere.

Dr. Wilson’s is really big and done in this white siding and that whole Riverstone finish in a ranch house meets plantation house design. It’s on the edge of the neighborhood with lots of trees and a lot of fenced off property and two large barns with lots of trees. I’m kind of rubbernecking as we pull into the lane and drive up to the house. I see a girl waiting on the steps drinking a bottle of coke. I get out and so does Grams and we walk up to the steps where the girl is. “Uhm Hello? I’m looking for Dr. Wilson.”

“Y’huh, Mom asked me to wait for you. She said to come on out back. I’m Terri by the way.”

“I’m Jenna and this is my Grams.”

“My name is Stephanie dear it’s nice to meet you.” Grams tosses in. I did know her name it’s just you don’t generally call parents or grandparents by their first names.

The house is nice, very nice and It’s everything I expect it to be and yet resoundingly not. There’s a disorder to things here and there. Toys in places where they were just left, magazines too. Laundry piles in the laundry room both look clean and not done yet and different stuff playing all over the house. I hear two different TV shows and several different genres of music playing. The house is beautiful but lived in. Not an austere museum of a house like I grew up in but this house was busy, there was life in it. Terri leads us right through the house to this huge back patio that is made of more flat stones and a wall like those stone and mortar fences. There’s a whole bunch of kids at picnic tables on the back lawn by a swimming pool and an older woman in her 40’s is cooking behind this really huge stainless steel grill. She’s in jeans and a muscle shirt/tank top and is cooking she’s tall and has strong shoulders and has actually really well defined muscles in her arms. She’s beautiful but she nearly makes two of me. Is she?…I think so…

She looks at me from the grill. “Hi Jenna, Have you eaten yet? Today?”

I’m still unsure of myself but Grams speaks up. “No she hasn’t, and she needs to.”

“You must be her Grandmother, Linda told me about you. Please come over and make yourselves at home My name's Marley by the way.”

We both come over and Dr. Wilson passes me an apron. “Give me a hand will you? It always helps to be able to do something as you talk.”

I help her cook supper for all her kids and her foster kids and even step-kids. I don’t mean to sound cruel but it’s a little like being at the pound. All her kids are messed up. I mean they’ve all had rough lives. One has lots of burn scars, another has just scars. There’s two of them in wheelchairs…one is an double amputee with both legs taken off just above the knees…she…he’s a boy but he’s in a nice dress and looks pretty, and happy too laughing with the other kids and I see some sign language going on here and there too. Many of them are younger to my age. I feel older than that though.

“Most of our kids are special Jenna, I guess you can say I’ve got my own OCD issues and there are some of my kids here have been through the system so much and been through too much I don’t trust people to love them as much as I do. I know it’s not really totally professional but I learned a long time ago to just let love be what it is.”

I talk with her starting about how I’ve been feeling lately. We go from that to Jaimes and just how disconnected he/I was. Apparently I’m not alone there. According to Marley people like me who have gender dysphoria either shut down like I did and disconnect from who we are or present as classic TG needs. Even my or rather Jaimes being a man whore is explained as we can’t feel or recognize what we’re feeling as our true gender so we can get sexually obsessed with being with the gender we identify with as much as possible to be as close to them as we can.

There’s an emotional dam there that I’ve built up and this dam or it’s walls have been built even harder from the abuse I’ve suffered all my life from the way Jaimes was raised in a strict and sterile background and no real love and affection to where I’m at now. My new life, my new love and being on my hormones that are freeing up my emotions even more are all putting pressure on my walls inside so when I spring a leak it’s under such a high emotional pressure it’s destructive like a high powered stream of water can be.

It takes a few hours to get to this and we went from the BBQ to eating some very good steaks with asparagus and grilled veggies on the grill to being in the horse barns cleaning out her stables and rubbing down and grooming her horses. She’s a big advocate of horses and other animals being therapeutic for kids with problems and trauma…We’re not alone as we talk about my stuff and what’s going on with me. I see one of the kids, the one with the burns petting a younger horse. I hear her whisper…”I love you too, you’re not scared of me are you…” It makes me cry a bit. The crying helps me open up to Marley as we work. I’ve never been around horses that much but there’s something soothing about the work and being physical that I’ve missed and brushing down the horses is just amazing. We finished loading new hay bales from storage to where they’ll be used up in the next couple of days and I’m rubbing my sore arms and my still healing shoulder.

“Feels good right?”

“Huh?”

“Working, doing something physical.”

“Uhm…”

“Yeah, you’re thinking that this is too much like the old you. Too guy like to haul and lift and lug and stuff.’

“I…I guess.”

“It’s a normal reaction from many trans people Jenna. It’s over compensation for feeling that they aren’t the gender they need to be.”

“It is?”

“Yes and it’s bullshit really.”

“Bullshit? Is that a new technical term Doc?”

“Nope an old one. I’m just someone who found that she’s had a knack for helping people deal with stuff and felt good about it. I went to school for it so I know what I’m talking about or how to recognize things when they come up Jenna. I’m good at it, but you can talk to anyone about the stuff in your life. It doesn’t just have to be me.”

“Isn’t that threatening you’re job?”

“Hardly, I’m of the opinion if I can help somebody so I don’t have to see them again then that’s a good thing.”

“Can I ask you something personal?”

“Sure, If you’re trusting me then it only works if I do the same.”

“Are you a trans too?”

“No, I’m all girl?”

“Uhm , really?”

“Yep, a full on GG. I’m also the only girl out of four boys and I’ve a twin brother and come from a family of very big people.”

“Oh…”

“Yeah, I know I get that reaction from a lot of my trans-patients and the label of butch dyke from the public.”

“Are you gay?, er I mean lesbian?”

“Kind of.”

“Kind of?”

“Follow me.”

We went over to another part of the barn where they have one of those exercise rings for the horses. I see this lovely woman in her thirties I’d guess with long silky brown hair you only really see on Hindi ladies or native americans getting the trans-girl that was in the wheelchair into this modified saddle with straps to hold her in and then start getting her to ride around the ring and go through curves and figure eights and to ride without her hands and trust the harness and guide the horse by shifting her weight and stuff…It’s amazing to watch but not as amazing as seeing then go over a small jump with the horse. It’s a real basic one even I can see that much but the look on the girls face was I rode!, I jumped! I’m free! She rode to the woman after that and reached acrossed the horse to the other woman and bawled out of sheer happiness. I think I just seen a real life miracle.

Marley is crying and wiping away happy tears. “That’s my foster daughter Phoenix and that amazing person with her is Em. Em, is kind of short for Emerson but she lives as a woman even if she’s a male. Emerson is my heart and my husband. When he came out to me about who he really was that he needed to live as the person she really was it changed my entire life. Em and I have been together ever since I started my doctorate. It changed me, it wasn’t easy but Em had always seen me and not what I looked like. She loved me warts and all and I never thought when I took the chance to love Em rather than force them to live as Emerson that I’d love someone so much.”

“I see you there like Em, Jenna. You’re just learning to be yourself all over again but you don’t have to start totally over. Jaimes despite his life had really great things about him as a person and trying to separate him from you wont work. Jaimes isn’t the flower right here beside me but he is you’re roots honey. It’s just you’ve been only touching the negative things in his existence until now. You have to stop doing that. It’s hurting you.”

We watch Em work with Phoenix amazed for another half an hour just watching and seeing Marley so in love with Em her beautiful woman husband who is shining as she teaches this young trans-girl double amputee fly around the ring and jumping over and over again like she’s flying her arms open wide and tears streaming in the wind of riding and being free…I can’t help but here the words of one of my favorite songs in my head watching Phoenix flying.

“Well I just heard the news today.”
“It seems my life is going to change.”
“I closed my eyes and begin to pray.”
“Then tears of joy streamed down my face…”

“With arms wide open.”
“Under the sunlight.”
“Welcome to this place.”
“I’ll show you everything.”
“With arms wipe open.”
“With arms wide open.”

…..The song is still playing through my head as are all the thoughts of just some of the stuff we talked about and the stuff I learned and had seen tonight. Grams stops us at the pharmacy so I can get my prescription that Marley had written for me it’s a mild anti-depressant and I shop for a few things I need well more like want and we head home. It’s about ten o’clock when we get in and I slip in and see Taylor playing Wisk with Dad and Gramps at one of the booths. I go over and hug the three of them, Gramps beams as he hugged me then crinkles up his nose. “Ya smell like horse.” dad takes his turn hugging me tightly. “Hey baby girl. You doing better?”

“Yeah daddy I am.” I love being able to just be able to say that. “I’ve got a long way to go but it was good, I think…I think I just might be okay.” I hug him tightly back. “I love you daddy.”

“I love you too baby girl.” Taylor pulls me gently out of dad’s embrace into his own arms.

“I missed you.”

“I’m sorry, I just had a bad day today. It’s gotten a lot better now though.” I nuzzle with him and bite, nibble just ever so lightly on his lower right jaw, his lower lip before kissing him. He kisses me back, and nuzzles me back and his fingers run up to my hair and run through my too short hair playing with my scalp but I’m liking it all the same. “Thank you honey…thank you so much Tay..”

“For what?”

“For this afternoon, for the things you said to me, for loving me so much it gave me the strength to go on, to have the courage to get some help.”

“Jen, I love you. I’d do anything for you.”

“You’re already doing it baby, you love me.”

“You make it really easy to love you Jenna.”

“Will you do one more thing for me love?” I kiss him sweetly as I ask him.

“Anything, I love you, anything…”

“Stay; Live, fight, grow old with me.”

“Yes…Because I’ve got something and someone really worth fighting for.”

“Taylor?” I kiss him again with more passion.

“Yes?”

“Take me upstairs, take me home, take me to our bed…”

He sweeps me into his arms like I weight nothing and carries me upstairs. Leaving the others to lock up.