Images 35

Chapter 35

I almost feel ashamed that I never really did much about Remembrance Day before in my life. I don’t like I was that self absorbed even with all the stuff going on as Jaime. Today is an eye opener. I cry for things I hear from the old timers come in and I think I hugged Daddy five or six times.

He’s there for this and he talks to a lot of the veteran’s that have come in and sits ad talks with them. He’s been there himself, he’s seen those things that you just can’t unsee…or stop feeling.

Njinda’s mother’s here and talking with them too. I tear up when I hear her saying things like.

“T’ank you sirs if you hadn’t been the kinda men who boys like Johnny ere grew up wit den there might not be da goood like him who wear the blur beret’s and come into places to save us now.”

It’s partly about Daddy but it’s also about them and seeing them getting the respect the really do deserve and the way that they sit a bit different and a little taller even when their eyes are glassy with unshed tears.

It was a day that by the end of it I really kind of felt different for being part of a lot more.

It’s so funny the way we see ourselves sometimes. I never even had though today would have meant so much to me but it did.

A lot of my life’s been like that now. It’s like being Jaime was this cracked lens that I couldn’t help but to see the world through and now that I’m the real me or close to it the images of real life are so much cleared.

It’s a nice thing too.

I know I’m sounding pretty reflective but I get that way when I’m by myself, especially when I’m doing laundry. I like doing this too; just being a regular girl doing regular stuff and it makes me happy as much as it makes me reflective.

My arm is aching though and it’s a challenge still doing some stuff but it’s healing nicely. Or that’s what the physiotherapist has said. I’m glad that there’s been no permanent damage except for another nasty scar to add to my collection.

Tay’s so good about stuff like my scars. I’ve got more than my fair share of them from being Jaime and playing football to the beating my stepfather gave me and the group home wasn’t a picnic either then the car and now this.

I guess it’s a good thing there’s still part of me that feels that being myself, being Jenna is still such a trade off that these scars don’t really matter and that just the chance to be myself makes all the difference.

But Taylor…

He changes everything.

He loves me.

But he makes me feel like I’m beautiful.

Like when we’ve made love and we’ve been asleep after our snuggling up and cuddling I wake feeling him touching me. He’ll just lay there beside me and with one finger just spend all this time drawing imaginary things on my skin.

Or like right now when he wraps me up in a great big hug and he leans in and he smells me…runs his face over my shoulder and back, I can hear the long but soft inhale. It’s something special you know when they do that when they want to hold you and to fill their senses with you.

He nibbles on my outside shoulder, slides his lips and some of that blonde scruff/stubble over my collar bone to get to my neck and to kiss there and suckle and kiss some more and I know he’s giving me a hickie but I don’t care. I want one; I’ll show that off proudly.

“Mmmm, you know I’m going to be giving you one of those back mister.”

“Good, I like it when you suck on my neck.”

“I thought that was something else.”

“Oh that too…you’re the best I’ve ever had do that for me Jen.”

“Good, I do try y’know.”

“Yeah…I really wish I was better at returning the favor though.”

“You do Tay, you do just a lot higher up and it feels amazing.”

“Good, I want you to feel amazing all the time Jenna.”

“I do honey, I get to feel loved, and treasured, to feel like I’m a real person and not some mental delusion or something.”

“Hey, you’re not.” He hugs me tighter for awhile and spoons against me then rocks us back and forth. “One of those days?”

“Sort of just overthinking the differences between me and when I was Jaime.”

He lets go long enough to turn me around and take my chin in my hand and kiss me deeply. Then stare down into my eyes with those gorgeous eyes of his and says.

“I love you. I love that girl I see all the time when I close my eyes and you’re there in the wet dress and the ruined make-up. You were Stunning and Lovely and Amazing even then. And GIRL you’ve changed everything going on with me and you’ve stayed beside me, and you’ve loved me even when it was terrifying. You are the love of my life Jenna, you’re my wife and my best friend…and you are exactly who you were always meant to be.”

He kisses me again and when he breaks it I hug him and bury my face into his chest. No, I’m not crying it just feels good to do that as I’m hugging him, and sliding my hands into his back pockets.

“Thank you…god thank you Tay. I know the neurotic t-girl is so not what any guy really signs up for but it really just helps so much that you tell me stuff like that.”

“I know…It’s why I got you to show me all that stuff, those sites. Jenna I love that about you. I love that you overthink stuff and that yeah you’re never going to be like a GG most of the time just because of who you are but that doesn’t change you being the woman that I love. I think that you being that different, that you think the way that you do is why I love you.”

I tighten my hug on him this time around. “I got really lucky when I walked in here that night.”

“You’re the lucky one?” he stare at me so intensely and his fingertips just slip through me hair as he says. “I’d be dead now if it wasn’t for you.”

“Tay…you don’t…”

“Yeah, I do Jenna. I know it right down to the deepest part of me that if your weren’t here, in my life…making me fall head over heels in love with you and giving me something to really fight for…I wouldn’t be here.”

There is something so heart wrenchingly honest in those eyes and the feeling just pumping out of my heart.

“Taylor…”

“Jen…it’ll never ever matter to me what you were or what you are or how you look…right now or even fifty years from now you’ll always be my everything.”

I just can’t help those great big huge tears that spill out and I jump up into his grip and he holds me as I wrap my arms around his neck and I kiss him.

It was just one of those…

You ever know, absolutely know that something was completely true?

I do.

And he lifts me up and set’s me on the corner of the wash counter and he keeps kissing me and then his hands slip up my shirt and he undoes my bra and I wriggle, move, shimmy out of it. I’m in a scoop necked top and he just sort of pulls that down from my shoulder leaving my breasts exposed to his touch….his mouth…his kisses.

It’s all just so beautiful…

I am falling deeper and deeper in love with Taylor and it just honestly feels to me like nothing I’ve every felt even before now…even on our wedding night…it’s this dead certain feeling of this is right, because Taylor is my soulmate. He’s my for real and my for true.

It’s crazy and I can feel it like it’s absolutely true that we were literally made for each other. As we stare into each other and touch each other and we kiss each other and we make love.

It’s all so bittersweet…

As perfect as everything is, as much as this is just beyond words I can feel that need to really be me and whole so when that truth hits us again I can really be with him the way he deserves…and the way that I want to.

It’s such a…I want to be me to be whole so much it hurts, it makes me cry, it’s hard to breathe through that ache of what I want so much right now, immediately now urgency…but it’s far from happening yet.

But Taylor’s love makes it so much better, and him making me feel so loved and so happy and it’s so powerful I ache wanting to be whole all over again.

I feel like I’m going crazy inside.

……………………………………..It’s a good thing I was doing some of the bedding because we ended up in it all over the floor of the laundry room. I dozed off to deep dreams of being complete and being with Taylor and all those things that’d come with that too and he’s holding me close to him when I wake up and my eyes are crusty and I know I was crying. I almost cry a bit more feeling his hand resting right over my heart. I feel him kiss the back of my neck.

“Hey…”

“Hey back…”

“Any better?”

“Yes, no…god Taylor I just want to really be me, be done and complete and everything.”

“I know, and it’ll happen honey, it will.”

“Not fast enough…it just hurts so much even when I’m happy.”

“I know but its part of the whole trade off.”

“Trade off?”

“Yeah, you said that all of you girls get like this, that even after surgery and transitioning that you get like this well its normal.”

“Going through this isn’t normal.”

“Yes it is.”

“How do you figure?” I roll over to look at him and prop myself up on my good arm.

“It’s a mood that only you girls can have, that only you girl get so I kind of figure it’s like TG-PMS.”

“Taylor!!!”

I start slapping him and kicking him and he rolls me and pins me then starts to tickle me and I’m trying to get away and screaming him name. “Taylor!, No!, No! Taylor! Unfair, I’m calling shenanigans!”

“Hey, made you smile.”

“Yeah, you’re so good at that.”

He kisses me again. “Okay, let’s just take our minds off of all of this.” He grabs one of his ball caps and put’s it on backwards, then one of his blue flannel shirts and smiles at me. “Let’s go upstairs and we’ll order up a mess of Chinese food and we can watch the third season of that shore you like the Gilmore Girls.”

He scoops me up fast with the blankets and everything and tosses me over his shoulder.

“C’mon Lorelei.”

I scream even as I’m laughing and we’re headed upstairs. “Luke!”

Okay, no wonder I’m totally in love with this guy.