Thinking Aloud

"I can still fly, but not half as high as once I wanted to"
"Space Race Is Over" Billy Bragg

I was chatting with a friend today, when a question was asked of me. I've considered it before, but maybe not so directly. We were discussing the difficult decisions that we transpeople have had to make. "If the world had no expectations of you, what would your goal be?"

If I were single and childless, and an orphan(!), I think I might go for the whole ball of wax. Deep down, I'm convinced that I would be more content being a woman. What it comes down to, for me, is liking yourself. Of late, as I have leapt fitfully forward, I find I like the person in the mirror more than I ever have, which is faint praise, but progress. To like myself at all is a major change.

But I'm not single, or childless, or an orphan. There are many people in my world who would be profoundly disturbed even by the little I've accomplished so far. Certainly, my wife is disturbed by my antics, though she's keeping it more to herself now. I dearly love my wife, despite some of the venting I have done here. She's the only partner I've ever had, the only person I ever dated. We've been together since high school. And I won't leave her, unless I get an ultimatum. I'll do my best to shield her as I explore the world of Leslie, but I don't think I could surrender that part of me now, not like I did before.

When we were about 24, we separated. Not ostensibly about the crossdressing, but she was upset by it. I immediately started collecting the artifacts I would need to make crossdressing a much bigger part of my life. I didn't know it till recently, but that episode was the first time that Leslie tried to break loose. I just thought of it as a shameful impulse at the time, and wound up back with my wife, committed to being a man and a husband, and soon a father. But my insides had been crushed. I was sleepwalking through life for twenty years. A lot of memories are not vivid, because I really didn't have emotion attached to them. It's like they happened to someone else, and I got a briefing, or watched a tape of it.

Well, I'm done with that. I can feel now. I look in the mirror at the end of the day, and through the eleven o'clock shadow and the receding hairline, I see Leslie. My heart flutters, the hair on my arms stands up, and I smile. I'm clueless about how far I need to take this to be content. I just know it's further down the road.