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Over the course of the past seven months my elderly Dalmatian passed away while I held her; I've lost my job, used up my credit, and had to put my house up for sale; had my wife of thirteen years request a divorce, get her own place and move out; developed skin cancer (albeit a relatively mild form); and just this past week, had our beloved miniature schnauzer, our only pet, escape and get run over and killed by a speeding van.
In the same time period, I've come out to two of my oldest and dearest friends and my three children (boys ages 17 and 12, and a daughter age 8), and have gotten nothing but love and support from all of them; I've started my transition in earnest, starting full HRT and edging over the line from presenting publicly as androgynous-male to androgynous- and sometimes not-so-androgynous-female; started using my female name, and planning to change it legally as part of the divorce filing; and just this morning got my doctor to promise to write me a letter so I can get the gender marker changed on my driver's license along with the name. This afternoon I had the skin cancer removed, and it shouldn't even leave much of a scar because I noticed it and saw a dermatologist while it was still small. And my soon-to-be-ex-father-in-law was so choked up about our schnauzer that he's buying the kids a puppy so they don't have to be without a pet to love while they're going through all this.
It's all been coming at me so fast I barely have time to figure out how to feel about any of it. I guess you don't get the good without the bad. Or maybe you don't get the bad without the good. My twelve-year-old said to me the other day that it feels like the universe has been dumping all kinds of awful crap on us this past year, and he's hoping that means it's compensating in advance for a lot of really, really good stuff coming later. Kind of like getting the heartburn before you eat the feast, was how he put it. I hope he's right.
Comments
It sure ain't Hollywood....
Life's like that - sorry to hear about all the troubles you've suffered recently, but happy to hear about the positives. Since you can't change the negative, let it wash over you and away. If you need to dwell on anything, dwell on the positives, since that's what life's all about anyway.
... now I just have to learn how to follow my own advice!
YW
Happiness and success are neither necessarily contemporaneous nor connected.
~ Gordon Sumner, quote from a radio interview I heard around 1990
He conquers who endures. ~ Persius
Even at the worst, look for the good
RAMI
You have a lot to deal with, most of it bad, but the most important thing that you wrote is:
In the same time period, I've come out to two of my oldest and dearest friends and my three children (boys ages 17 and 12, and a daughter age 8), and have gotten nothing but love and support from all of them.
If you have that level of support, especially from your kids, then you have something to look forward to. In order to try and make that continue, you need to strive to make your divorce as amicable as possible. While she may not be able to live with you any more, the important thing is for her not to turn your kids against you.
From what you said, her dad seems to have his head about him. Perhaps you can seek his help in preventing any future hostility from your ex that will cause a rift between you and the children.
RAMI
RAMI
Karma!
When the cynic in me shuts up for a little while, I like to believe in Karma. Crap you endure will be repaid in good news later :-)
-Christelle
"Fun-loving geek-chick looking for someone who doesn't give a damn about her past"
-Christelle
"Fun-loving geek-chick who's addicted to sunlight!"
Just gotta say it :)
Karma is payback in the next life... Dharma is payback in this life. Most folks use Karma in place of when they mean both, though, so everyone knew what you meant -- I'm just pointing it out without trying to make it seem like I think you should change it (because you shouldn't, since everyone knew what you meant).
Karma, dharma, schmarma
Call it whatever you like--I'm not picky, I'll take any of it I can get. :)
If this post came off sounding complainy or whiny, I didn't mean it that way. I had just seen my doctor for the first time since Halloween and was kind of surprised by her reaction to all the things that had happened to me since then. I'd just been dealing with stuff as it came and never really sat back to take stock until then. I'm generally optimistic, or at least, take a positive, present-focused and forward-looking approach to life. I look back occasionally to keep perspective, and look ahead so I know where I'm going, but I don't dwell in the past or the future for the most part.
If I sounded down, it's probably because I wrote this while I was still kind of stoned from the Clonazepam I took before having the skin cancer removed. It was tiny and the surgery was completely painless--even the needle stick for the local anaesthetic didn't hurt--and the concept doesn't bother me at all, but I have an inexplicable tendency to faint dead away when people start taking bits off of me or out of me. I'd rather spend the day feeling stoned than deal with the aftereffects of fainting.
I do realize how incredibly lucky I am to have such a supportive family--not just my kids, but my parents, sister, and niece are all 100% behind me. Even my soon-to-be-ex-wife understands and accepts, even if she is understandably devastated by losing what she thought she'd had. The split is amicable, we're working together closely to co-parent the kids and are avoiding courts and lawyers as far as possible, and we still consider ourselves one family, if no longer to be married. My conservative Texian mother-in-law was just here this past week and while not exactly warm, she never showed any overt disapproval or animosity toward me, and was even a bit more than merely civil and polite. Compared to what others have talked about dealing with, I feel like I've won the family lottery.
One of these days I'll have more than ten minutes in a row to sit down and write some observations about my transition so far. (Summary: Wow. What the heck was I so afraid of?)
Thank you for the update
Hi, Justme,
I've thought of you often over the past year, wondering how things were turning out, so it was a real pleasure to find your note and hear that on balance, things are going well. I must be experiencing your transformation vicariously, I am so buoyed up. So often I wish I'd had the courage and self-knowledge at any point in the past to take the plunge you have.
Good luck here on out. You are fortunate in your family -- especially in having a wife who can roll with the punch and come up still fond of you.
Hugs, Daphne
Daphne