What good is sharing a life when the other side holds back? What good is fighting when the war is with yourself? What good is trying to hold your breath, when you are too far out to swim back?Why go on?
When I thought I had no more tears, and walked my last lone mile, I turn a corner… only to start over again.
Why do you hurt me so much? Why can’t I hear anything you say – why do I dislike myself when I am around you? Life should not be this way - we deserve better.
When I get up in the morning, I’m not sure if I am sad, or just frightened. From the moment I wake, till the moment I sleep, I am on trial in your presence – the verdict has been rendered, but the jury never convenes. Held in contempt, day after day, night after night, for the same crimes against you – crimes to you… freedom for me. I once prayed for absolution, now I pray for my sentence… let me go - I don’t want to fight anymore!
I didn’t do this to hurt you… this is about ME! I’m sorry it has changed you, but to either end, it would have, regardless of my choices.
Why can’t you understand that you can’t have him anymore…. because, I simply don’t have any more boy to give…
… and I don’t want to live in your shadow, anymore.
That’s how I feel now when I’m with you… a shadow. No matter what I do, I’m still “him”, to you. And for the most part, to everyone else, I’ll forever be the husband that had a sex change – not Chloe the Wife, Mother, daughter or sister.
You make me “him”, just by being you… and that makes me jealous… because you over shadow my identity, instead of complimenting my own right of womanhood.
When you are with me and my children, I am no longer a mother… I feel invalidated and completely minimized by those that witness us, as nothing more than your burden of shame.
A surgeon’s knife cannot fix the ugly that I feel anymore, because in reality, its guilt that betrays me, not my mirror’s lies; Its being a nameless person in my mothers Christmas cards to her child… its sitting alone in my bedroom on New Years Eve with you also alone in another room, watching the same show. It is for being 3 feet away from me in bed, but a lifetime apart from feeling like home.
Your touch, your kiss, and the smile you make, are torture to me, because I still see through the same eyes as I always have – and in my eyes, you are my wife – that makes me still your husband. You won’t validate me as a woman, or as your wife… you won’t touch me and complete me physically as a woman… you look at me in return with the same eyes of a wife that has lost their husband to the sea; never really knowing what happen, or if he will ever return – hoping he is alive and dead at the same time – closure is what you pray for.
I’ve caught you musing at me in this "glazed over" lost in a daydream look once to many times to be immune to ignoring it.
You love me, and I love you. What is this that we don’t understand that makes us cry because we can not just, be…
…and then, just as the memories of our love fade to black, from behind me you set down the perfect little snack…
Why did I not see this coming? Is this why I go on? Is this why everything I have been through, and everything I endure, and why I keep coming back for more - because you put your love in all the little things you do?Now how the hell can I be mad at you, without being a complete jerk for feeling the way I do? One chocolate heart drink completely trumps ANYTHING I have left to say... That's the power of a woman's mental "feminine ways"...
..and so I surrender to the drink, and reflect back on what I have learned... I take note: No matter how right any one is or choice of words they use, if you go up against a woman with Chocolate, you will lose!
Hi Chloe,
ReplyDeleteI don't currently have a partner, but I have a son, and I have a dear friend who was once the love of my life. She will always be "the one," and she's the one who is most helping me contemplate & work toward transition. When I think of what you and Lori D are going through, I try to imagine a scenario in which I was married to this woman and she wanted to transition from female to male. I so love this woman as a woman, that seeing her become a man, thinking of her as a man, would almost be impossible. As much as I would be able to understand it, I would forever miss the woman she was. I'm always amazed by couples that manage to survive this, and come out on the other side happy. It is certainly sad to say goodbye to what we enjoyed in our male lives, nothing more so that a beloved partner, but would we be any happier remaining men? I don't know, but I tend to think not. My heart goes out to you, Chloe.
Love always,
Dana
This post really resonates with me. I married my best friend when I was 20 and her 17. We didn't have much in common other than a love for crossword puzzles and church. But it was so amazingly wonderful to have someone who desired to be with me. I needed that because I felt so much a lone and she was so beautiful and brilliant.
ReplyDeleteNow over 30 years later we sleep in separate beds with all the passion long sense gone. There's an ache that echoes in the dark emptiness of it all.
I thought she would complete me as a person. The feminine side that I could not express. I envied her beauty and femininity. No not just envy I was jealous and it secretly ate at me because she was everything I could never be.
When she gave birth to our children it was the most beautiful event I've ever been a small part of. Her femininity blossomed and she did something I knew I could never do. Life had come from within her and though I was so joyously happy to be a parent I never felt less like a woman. And amongst all that happiness my jealousy grew as my desires to be female were still there nagging at my brain.
My life as a woman was lived vicariously through my wife. It frustrated me when she wouldn't or couldn't be the woman I wanted to be.
As I fumble along trying to let the woman within me grow I am like a plant that shares the same pot with another whose roots take up most of the space. In some ways it feels safe to be under her mothering branches with our roots entwined but I know neither of us will ever grow as long as we share the same space.
See what happens when you start potting plants? I could really use some chocolate after all this.
hugs,
Teri
Holy Hannah girl! What a post. I know exactly how you feel. I was married once. I stayed, I took the hurt, the abuse, and the chocolate, everyday telling myself that one day, just one day it will all be worth it.
ReplyDeleteI hope your journey ends better than mine. Because in the end, it wasn't worth it, and he's now three years dead.
My late husband so refused to deal with all his own issues, including gender, that it ate at him like a cancer. The stress took his life. He was 41.
Me, I'm going on, working on recovery and building a life free from the pain. I love chocolate Chloe, but I get my own now.
Regardless of gender, marriage and children is about growth and compromise, of growing together, being supportive of each other and the little ones to make the future a better, brighter place. We don't marry a persons hair, or body for that matter (or shouldn't) because both change and age. It's supposed to be a joining of two souls, and folks sometimes forget or miss that. If we fail to accept growth or change in the people we love that is good for them, well, chocolate?
My heart goes out to you. I'll keep praying for you and your whole family.
Sorry, I do not write much. But my ex now accepts me as Charlene and calls me when she needs to come over to talk about her problems. Guess I have become her friend. Unfortunatly she still does everything in her power to keep me from seeing my youngest. At least she accepts me as Charlene her friend and not a trans ex.
ReplyDeleteGuess that is better than nothing.
Charlene Marr
Chloe, I am so sorry I'm reading this post so late. It brought me to tears.
ReplyDeleteI know what I am inside, yet I remain status quo. Sometimes, it takes incredible will power to do so. Reading a post like this one, makes me cry, yet gives me the strength to continue on the path I have chosen. Understand, however, that I absolutely respect, and so understand, your chosen path in life. Although I cannot relate directly, like some of the others, I have so much empathy for what you and your spouse are going through.
I hope everything works out and I do hope that you do not take my comments as anything other than total support and understanding.
What's in that drink? :-)
ReplyDeleteThis is just me but, when I finish the transition, I plan to have a funeral [mock up one] for the man I use to be. Me and my wife have decided that until I have the operation or go full time 100% [which ever we can stand] I am her husband.
ReplyDeleteAfter that we will be girlfriends. But I also know how hard this is for her and that she will need closure [as you mentioned]. SO hence the "funeral".
It will be our way of laying to rest the old me and starting a new with the new me. Like you said in earlier blog. You felt strange and then realized you missed 'Ted'.
Have a funeral for 'Ted'.
Not sure if this helps anyone, I hope it does though.
Stephenie