Wishing my new life to begin and then realising it already has

Coming out as a trans woman has meant to me that I am going to get to live an entirely new life.  That is really beautiful for me, and something which I really look forward to.  Only I needn’t look forward, its already here.

When I first came out, I came out quite slowly.  In the sense that I wanted to tell people that were close to me in person, or at least myself.  I didn’t want the gossip mill to run.  And I also loved doing it.  Especially since every call, every meeting was positive.  Amazingly that was true even of my wife.  My kids were beyond fabulous.

But I also didn’t come out all the way at work.  I kind of let things happen, but as my hair grew, and then I had my ears pierced, whatever might have been vaguely in the background was suddenly impossible to ignore.  Changing my WhatsApp professional profile picture has accelerated things.  The only platform I am not fully out on yet is LinkedIn, where I changed my pronouns only.  So, if you pay attention you know, but otherwise you don’t.

This will change soon enough too, but I am waiting for legal document changes to come through.  Once those are in place, there is really nowhere to hide.  And anyway, I don’t want to hide.

So why this feeling of “looking forward to” my new life?  I have placed a lot of this being stuck or being held back at the foot of the divorce process I am going through.  And that is a huge obstacle at this time.  But allowing it to remain an obstacle, allowing it to get in my way is to accept that I am a victim.  And that is a narrative I don’t accept.

I don’t know if I will ever forgive my wife for what she is putting us through.  I can’t stand it when my therapists tell me that I should.  I am really angry and I see no reason to ever forgive her for what she has done cannot be undone.  I can understand her, and I do, but I needn’t ever accept it.

She has decided that she hates me and is out to bury me.  She is doing a pretty great job of it too.  Her competence at it, and her ability to channel female rage are two of the reasons that I fell in love with her in the first place.  It’s a pity I can’t get off on it…but humiliation kink was never something I went for.

What I can say is that her anger has transformed her features.  She was gorgeous, and now she isn’t.  People who know her have said this to me, and I don’t think they are saying it to be nice to me now, but rather that they no longer feel they have to be nice to her in front of me, so the truth is coming out.  You know how dogs and their owners come to resemble one another?  That is from emotional harmonisation.  

But I think it is true that what you feel inside also begins to define what you look like.  And her features are being transformed.  I am sorry for her, but it seems so unnecessary.

I would never ask my children to take sides.  And I want them to love her.  They need her.  Every child needs their mother.  But my children can see that she has lied for financial gain, that she has lied in court, that she has taken their words to her, told in private, and put them into court papers.  And so, when they tell me that I have to fight her, and that I should do so even despite the colossal financial waste that is the result of this process, I feel sad for her, sad for them, but also so deeply and utterly touched.  I cry about it when I think of it.

When I took the step to finally transition, accepting what lay ahead, I did so from a point of financial security.  Although I was not working at the time, the accumulated wealth of a successful career and the belief that our business would sustain us, was comfort enough.  And indeed, were trust still operative between us, and were we still together, despite not working, but for other reasons, our financial future would have been rosier now than ever before.  Put simply, we could have afforded to retire.

This is no longer the case.  Given the spend on legal fees has taken away our ability to pay for our children to attend university, things are bad.  Even worse, however, is the decision-making that has been forced which is having devastating tax consequences.  It is mainly sad for my children.

For some reason, I seem to be far less material as I transition than I used to be.  I wonder if making money was a way for me to not care about being a man.  But I have a new kind of fatalism, a new trust in the universe, and have this deep sense that the adversity that is being thrown at me are simply lessons that I need to learn in life.

Our souls manifest in our bodies and in circumstances that they chose for us to learn and grow and develop.  I do believe this.  I do believe that Godliness is finding enlightenment, and that means confronting our demons, living with presence, and feeling the energy around us.

The most valuable thing I am learning and have learned on this journey is to connect with people without agenda.  To like, to love, to converse, to help, to be with someone simply because they are a pleasure to be with, for whatever reason, and to not do so because we want something.  In society we are taught to do the opposite, to network, to mine our relationships.  I’ve been there.  But I catch myself on the impulse; I don’t need it anymore.

And the number of friends who through my openness have become more open to me has been so sustaining.  A woman I know and have known for 30 years has begun to reveal herself to me as a dominatrix.  She has begun to guide me and to introduce me to people in a world that blurs the lines between female domination and wellness that really resonates with me and is my dharma [I like this word ‘dharma’.  It is new to me.  I apologize if you don’t like it or if it feels like cultural appropriation.  But I use it because it is specific].

I get this metaphor in my head of wearing a long coat or dress and the tail of it is snagged on something, and that it is holding me back.  But when I examine things, I realise that it is me that is holding me back, not circumstance.  My wife no longer has that power.  Court no longer has that power.  It will run its course and be over when it is over.  Possibly, and at this rate, I will be left with very little, perhaps nothing.  To go from comfortably bourgeois and ready to retire to knowing that I will have to work my ass off and have to do it now facing discrimination produces mixed feelings.

I do just want to explore wellness and do fun things and start a wellness business.  But I can no longer afford this.  And that means that my life plan has to change.

The discrimination I am facing is real.  It is very powerful.  I try to put a brave face on it.  And I don’t like it.  But as a trans woman I accept it.  Not accept it in the sense of it being acceptable or right, but rather that this was a sacrifice that I willingly made to become a woman, and that it is different yet no different from the headwinds any woman or any minority faces.  I earn my stripes.

And what else?  It makes me want to fight.  It has crushed my suicidal ideation, or my tendency towards self-harm or self-destruction.  No, it is putting fire into me.  It is making me politically motivated.  It is making me increasingly outspoken, increasingly and more visibly out.

There is nothing stopping me from completely changing my life.  That is a bit scary, but I’ve done it before.  2024 will be a year of surgery.  I will spend most of it away from my home; I might even move.  My divorce should happen, though at this rate I cannot afford legal representation, so that could get interesting.  It is really perverse that my wife now has more money than she ever had when we were married, including a stipend from my savings when I cannot even access them, and am about to be evicted.

These are valuable life lessons.  It is forcing me to simplify, streamline.  Something Ex-Mistress impressed upon me, but which I did not succeed in doing.  It is happening now on its own.  I have no choice.

But you know what?  With all of this awful backdrop, I have never felt better in my life.  I have never had more faith in the future, never been happier.  My relationship with my friends, my family, and my children is so much more fulfilling than ever before.  And my life is also so much more interesting, to me, than ever before.  I am not bored at all by me anymore.  

Yesterday I was out with family for a meal in a wonderful country restaurant in a forest in Italy.  A tiny place.  Roaring fire, one room, very convivial.  There was a table of 12 young women, early twenties.  They were filled with joy and relishing each other’s company.  One of my siblings asked as they were leaving how they all knew each other.  “We’ve been friends since elementary school,” one of them said.  One of them had smiled at me during lunch.  

After we had paid our own bill I was walking by the 12 of them as they talked outside of the restaurant.  The one who had smiled at me during lunch asked if I would take a picture of all of them.  “Of course,” I said and did.  As I handed the camera, she said, “we are all your sisters.”

Its small moments like that which make all of this worth it.  Thank you ladies, and Happy Christmas!