When I was born things were a lot different, I’m a late Gen-x person so I sort of grew up in this mix of the latchkey kid parenting non parenting going on and all sorts of things like.

Everyone, everywhere smoking…even in airports and hospitals, payphones and bikes with brakes by moving the pedals back, banana seats and lying on the shelf in your parents or grandparents car on road trips and getting dumped when they hit the breaks and I remember both the aluminium and even the glass amber coloured ash trays in McDonalds.

We had a lot of things both good and a lot of bad things since we all didn’t know better or we just were growing and learning.

Nothing really taught us or showed us what Trans was other than the way it was villainized and made fun of and was on things like Jerry Springer and Maury Povitch.

It wasn’t seen as a viable choice or a thing, you were never meant to be trans or gay or anything other than the norm and we all punished the people that were different.

I hid.

I hid these confusing trapping hurtful alien feelings and I tried shutting them out for most of my life.

I hid.

I hid and ran headlong into being a tough guy and likely picking fights and did a lot of stupid and tried to finally fix the situation.

But it never occurred to me to have a plan to end it.

And like ALL the chronic pain I have ever seen, the pain from being trans and dysphoric and I had hid and convinced myself that everything was fine.

You do get used to pain.

You do.

And somehow, miracles of miracles I met Sarah, and Sarah I met in the ER and she was a registered nurse and I had done something stupid by honest accident and I assumed I was doing a house painting job with a normal person and not someone that would take the ladder out from under me as I was painting the eavestrough for a senior couple that couldn’t fix the big stuff outside so we were volunteered.

Well gravity worked and I sort of woke on my back seeing stars that would not go away and one of the guys with more sense drove me to the Hospital where I had an actual concussion and they weren’t sure if I hit my head on something hard on the way down like the edge of the roof given my bump.

Sarah liked that I actually liked doing even some little things to do things for others.

I was almost out of my twenties and was actually slowly climbing into being a credible copy of the person they wanted.

And it was Shelly’s little way sometimes of reaching out like I was haunting myself. Shelly or the name I always wanted got to exist by me being nice to others and doing charity.

Sarah liked that I did charity and agreed that the guy was a doofus even if them helping was free.

I was only in there one night but she made such a huge impression, then we just kept running into each other and only sometimes about injuries.

I’m a contractor and I work with other contractors and companies and they hire…well it doesn’t take a psychic to know a kid that looks stoned and that coffee will never ever help him will hurt himself and others with tools.

And even though I am sure to have a good anti-bleeding home assembled first aid kit we still have to take them by law to get looked at.

So we became friends and that led to coffee deliveries and me actually keeping track of her shifts so I can bring her coffee or doughnuts or something to snack on if she was working nights.

We were friends for months before we started dating when we were at the movies and she introduced me to her friends as John, her boyfriend and apparently friends have heard of me.

I did manage to work my ass off and get enough money set aside for a nice wedding and and I bought her a ring and it was exactly what I would have wanted and Shelly wanted her to have it and she loved both and she wore both unless she was working and she was really careful with stuff like that.

And she wasn’t just smart but she liked to plan things and be organised a lot and it really reflected the way she was at work. She had a way or a place that she did and liked things for her reasons and usually good one’s and she was funny and laid back too.

We married and we moved around to a few states as she looked for a long term job posting she liked enough to make a career out of and I tried to be as much emotional support as I could but I was able to be flexible as long as I was flexible in my work.

And face it other than giving Sarah the best life I could everything else was details like working in piggeries fixing gates or fences and in the muck and the crap and the pigs themselves and I ended up wearing chainsaw pants to that job because pigs will take a nip out of you if feral enough and they especially thing you’re not looking.

One got my pantleg so many times he almost became bacon.

Then we found a nice place finally in Seattle and no not it the city but it was commutable for her work and we bought a decent piece of land and it was amazing and lovely and in the woods like really nice green Pacific NorthWest Forest and I had enough in savings that I cleared us a really nice lot and I built our house in that clearing and I’m not going to lie most of our place was me reaching out to friends and getting lumber and wood and anything I could use including some wrecked prefab components that the place was just going to leave there instead of using them.

And for the sake of time and me working mostly alone I made the house from several prefab kits that were missing stuff and used my own skills to make it all fit and work.

I made our house and starting out it was nice but pretty basic and I refined things over the years like putting on bark boards that I got for free from a mill to have that log cabin look at it and all I did was strip and stain and finish them and use them like siding.

I had a great tax year one year and that had me give us a new metal roof and I even added solar and batteries and had a generator and emergency stuff in the basement and we could do well in case of floods, storms and fire.

And fire being a worry I made a fire break and it was just a line around our clearing and house lot that had a wide pile of sand and gravel with really big and heavy stones on top of it… just an area that will give us maybe time because well it’s the PNW and well wildfires.

I did the stone the same time I ordered all the other stone and sand and did our driveway in good gravel and shale.

The house is built on a concrete slab and then the basement walls are mason blocks concreted together and wired and all that stuff but I made the slab, the basement on top of that then the house sills and then I used all the trash from cleaning up our clearing to push dirt and soil all around the basement and I made a little hill we were “on” and we had a nice big back deck and an above ground pool and I had a garage for the vehicles and a shop garage for me making stuff and the rest was lawn and gardens we planted and things and for a decade getting settled in our house and finally getting all the finishes and touches.

Sarah had a room for her study and hobbies and we had a couple of spare bedrooms and she started to claim one and we hadn’t had kids yet and I was really careful about protection and her having it.

Honestly sex for me was a very meh and awkward issue for me given all my own feelings and the bad trans stuff out there that just was people making porn money off of us.

If Sarah wasn’t who she was and that I loved her and wanted her to be happy well… I’m just likely stop bothering.

She worked on that space for three months and she waited until our proposal anniversary before she led me upstairs and she took me to the room and I unlocked it and I looked around and it’s a bedroom?

It’s an adult woman’s bedroom and there’s all of these wonderful things in there and I look at her.

Are we taking someone in?

“Yeah, there’s another person sort of John.”

“Oh…I… well I can be out tonight.”

“If you want but I figured that I’ll ask Shelly first.”

My blood ran cold and I was dropped right off literally my greatest fear came to life and I was going to take off but she closed the bedroom door and leaned against it.

“Lemme tell you about Shelly.”

“Sarah….I…”

“No, no, this is really important that I finally say it and that you actually hear this.”

I swallowed and she was staring at me and she looked scared and desperately earnest.

“Baby I…” I took a breath and steeled myself and she is leaving me…and the fucking irony is that she has my real name.

“Baby…please…Shelly…”

What?

“Shelly, you are absolutely everything to me, you’re smart and funny and you’re actually one of the most caring people out there even if you hate getting caught doing something good or decent.”

“I love that you look at our marriage and you put me first all the time and all those moves and all that time being John. And don’t get me wrong I adore John but he’s not you and I…I see YOU… I have for a while now and I can’t unsee her.”

She breathed and wiped her hands off on her scrubs.

“Look I know, I know this is scary and I know that you’ve run from this all your life and that you’re really late in coming into this and yourself, but I’m here….this all is here… for you, for you to be you even if it’s here.’

She pulled my family ring off of a neck chain and I looked at her hand and it wasn’t on there.

“Shelly, you gave me this because that’s what guys do when there’s no girls to inherit something like this and that’s wrong because this is yours……”

She took a deep breath. “If you’ll have it.”

And then she dropped to her knees.

“Shelly Wilder, will you marry me again as my wife? To have and to hold, to laugh and to cry with, to sit and watch the world pass us by as we get older and grayer, do you, will you promise to love me as your real self now, please…you’ve waited long enough and I love you with everything I got baby.”

“Will you please, please, marry me.”

I didn’t bawl but I had a full on shock filled nervous break and I nodded yes over and over as I was a complete mess that couldn’t make a sentence but I got a shaky sobbing desperate word out.

“Yes.”