I had a brutal session with my therapist yesterday. When I schedule with her, I can often see ahead what is going to be roiling inside of me. I predicted that the family visit over Christmas would provoke all kinds of things, but in the end, although it did, they seemed trivial compared to what bubbled up.
I am filled with rage. It all stems from my divorce and the situation I find myself in. More than that, I have this sense of impotence in the face of institutional bigotry. I’ve touched on it in various posts and don’t really want to rehash it or say that everything is ‘unfair’. No. I accept it. I accept that coming out has had consequences.
I accept that coming out will continue to have consequences. Potentially earth-shattering consequences. I fear for my future. For my children’s future. I am angry that the legal fees thus far have been enough to cover an Ivy League education. I am angry that my wife has told my college bound children that she won’t pay a dime. Especially after she has seized our business.
My mother would roll over in her grave. Submissive me was a fool to sign over our business to her. And yet, as I said before, I wouldn’t have done it any other way. Couldn’t have done it. Why? Maybe deep down I didn’t love her. Maybe she’s right, that on some level I always hated her. Maybe she saw enough, or possibly even felt guilt that her suppression of my trans-ness, of my kink, was taking a toll. It clearly did.
It didn’t matter to me. My price to myself for living the fairy-tale marriage was that I give her everything. Toxic reasons or not, it was what kept from walking away, what kept me faithfully by her side, what kept me invested in the relationship. So, now that I have nothing, I can hardly blame someone else. I can be angry that she is so vindictive, that she has been dishonest. I can be angry at institutional bias in the court and judicial rulings which have a consequence of making me and my children homeless. It is insane, but it is the reality I find myself in.
Waiting for hope to deliver is not an option. And quite literally that is what I am doing. I am hoping to get an emergency hearing. Hoping to get a sympathetic judge. Hoping that a judge will overturn a decision that denies me access to money that I made. It is a crazy situation, but it is already here.
I don’t want to be a victim. I don’t accept the narrative. I also refuse to be a doormat in life. I am also tired of living for other people, of burying myself. I am throwing out people who are showing signs of toxicity and an inability to respect my boundaries. That means family and a few friends. I don’t want it. I don’t need it.
And I am not hanging around for a court date, borrowing money from family and friends in the hopes that things will be different this time. I accept that I have gotten screwed. I don’t want to wallow in it. Instead, I am going to act.
And that means instead of waiting to be evicted, I am moving out. My children are very upset about it, but I think they understand that having no money means nothing is affordable.
They came home yesterday after spending Christmas with their mother. She lavished gifts and dinners and other experiences on them. These were all paid for by me. I can’t afford to buy them presents myself, or to take them out. It was probably wrong of me to do so, but I told them that whatever she gave to them also came from me. I also expressed that I was unhappy with them for not returning my calls on Christmas. “I texted you,” said one. I noted that the text came a few minutes before midnight.
They apologized, but it wasn’t enough. I sat with it for a while and then asked, “I’m just curious to know what you were thinking…was it a case of out of sight out of mind?”
They told me of my wife’s beautifully decorated new apartment, but didn’t tell me anything in response to my questions—where is it? How big is it? Did they have their own rooms? Instead, I have to ask the court to have her answer those questions. Their words.
“We just assumed we would celebrate Christmas with you when we got home,” said one.
“Christmas was two days ago. It’s kind of like a birthday. It has a specific date for a reason.”
“There has to be some benefit to a divorce,” said another, “and getting two Christmases is one.”
“I don’t think it works like that,” I said.
“What do I do with the Christmas presents I got you?”
“We can exchange gifts at some point. I’m just not feeling it right now.” And I really am not.
I can’t help but feeling hurt. I am doubly happy that my sisters came with their family to be with me. My children have been too shielded from this process. I know they came to be with me so that I wouldn’t be alone over the holidays. That I could be in my home and not be alone. Thank God they did.
In October of 2021 I told my wife that I was suicidal. That I had started working with a posse of therapists because I knew that if I didn’t, I wouldn’t make it. I also turned to a dominatrix who helped me to save my life. Not consciously, because I would have never burdened with that—that was the lifting that the therapists helped me with.
Six months later I told her that I would give my life to her. That I knew she would never do the same, but if I had to choose, I would choose her over the children. That my commitment was all consuming.
Eight months later over dinner between us two I cried and she asked if I was having an affair. I was crying because of what was coming in my trans acceptance of self and an unconscious feeling of the consequences.
The culmination of the various strands of therapeutic work that I felt all of us were enlisted in together was that a year later I was out in pockets when I felt safe, although lying on a beach in bikini bottoms in Fort Lauderdale when an unplanned, and heavily armed, Proud Boys march trooped past, was not part of that safety mix.
Thirteen months later I told my wife that it was time to come out, to be a woman, and that the choice was either that or death. To say that we have a choice is not accurate when the choice is so stark.
My children are angry with me for not working. They are struggling to understand that I have lost work because I am trans. They are struggling to understand that every penny I make is used against me by my wife to punish me in court. I am funding her deliberate misgendering of me. I am also now funding a massive increase in her lifestyle when I cannot even afford to pay the utilities.
My children don’t understand that SRS is a serious surgery that takes a long time to recover from. They too have asked me to wait, and don’t understand that doctors with four-year waiting lists don’t take kindly to rescheduling—you take what you get, when you get it.
And this was the topic of conversation with my therapist. I don’t care what the cost is now. I will transition. I will have my operation. I will do everything I humanly can to step into my womanhood. And I will not try to play the boy game, will not hide, or try to work as a man for even one minute. And yes, while looking for a job is a full-time job, becoming a woman is even more so. I will not live another single minute of my life without taking care of me first.
One of my children said to me, “then you shouldn’t have had children.”
My therapist asked me, “are you going to walk away from your children?” I answered that “in a way it would be easier”.
But I am so damn tired of sacrificing myself for others. That isn’t the kind of woman I wish to be. And I will walk from anyone or anything that tries to stop me.
My family calls me selfish. My wife calls me a narcissist and selfish, only she just wants me to detransition or hold off on my transition so that I can keep paying for everything…which is absurd given that she has seized the means of production.
What am I saying?
I will be me. No matter the cost. And some will love me for it, and others won’t. And I take solace in the words of my therapist: “what people think of you is none of your business.”
And so my resolve is that I will not wait for hoped-for outcomes. I will act, impulsive or no, based on the reality that I experience.
I do not wish to suffer the ignominy of eviction. I am going to leave before that happens.
It feels a bit like the precipice.
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How old are your children? Children can not be shielded forever- they should learn the truth in age appropriate way. I think you should set them down and have that talk about finances, and courts pre-judices.
But you can not take your frustration on your children. They are on your side, but also they still need their mother – no matter how bad she is to you, she is mother to them.
They are not unreasonable when said about celebrating Christmas two times in divorced families. Many of us, divorced parents, do that. When our kids are with other parent on holiday that’s important to us, we celebrate is in different date. I had Thanksgiving on Friday, because they were with their dad on Thanksgiving Thursday.
I understand that you were lonely without them on Christmas. But that’s the reality of split families, not just your life. They were having good time and were present in place and time, they were. They did not forget you, they were distracted and busy. Children -no matter age-can sometimes take parents for granted.
Do not guilt trip them for enjoying their Christmas and time with mother. When you calm down just say you missed them on Christmas and felt a little lonely when they did not answer to your text.
As in regards to post-poning surgery – what would that achieve? This is non-negotiable. But again , if they do not realize how serious surgery is – it is because you didn’t emphasize it enough, probably trying to spare them.
Communicate with your children in a direct way, and they will get it.
Dear Jo. Thank you for such an insightful, coaching, and tolerant message. My post was inappropriate. So were my feelings. We have talked. They are old enough. We talked more over the past days.
It has been heavy at times. I will write about it. We will celebrate on Befania, the 6th of January, when the witch comes and we burn thoughts that we place on scrap paper, representing all the things we wish to let go of.
I’ve spoken with a number of people here in Italy about it and they have all felt that Christmas is Christmas, and Christmas is over. That is also how I grew up in a divorced home–we celebrated based on who we were with. And that in the age before mobile phones. I can remember living in Peru, where it would take two hours or more to set up a phone call to ring my mother.
What I think really happened is that they felt guilty towards their mother for whatever reason, and felt that speaking to me would betray her somehow. I don’t wish to speak ill of her in front of them, but I hate her with an all-consuming passion that blocks out logic and restraint. The bad economic outcomes I face now, and my children face, are a direct result of her actions, and include crippling financial circumstances which are leading to a serious of horrible outcomes for them. I do want them to understand that.
I do also want them to understand what is at stake with my transition, and why I can’t delay, and I think they do now.
I really appreciate your sage counsel, and hope that I am able to act in ways that are not selfish and that are best for them, but I am not sure that I will be big or strong enough to succeed in that.
You have every right to hate her now, looks like she really deserves that at this point.
I think you are doing just fine with your kids. Sometimes we all need to vent a bit:)
As time goes by I find I don’t really hate her. I do hate that she has brought so much economic waste into the family at a time when we need to preserve capital.
She is gradually ceasing to exist. I feel sorry for her. I know what she lost to her. It is much more than I lost. And she has made it easy for me to let go of her because of her behaviour on the way out. When your children tell you unprompted that is so much more fun to be with you than with the other parent, you realise that the other one has lost more than she can imagine. And that’s sad, not something I would have wished for them most of all, but also not for her. She has resorted to trying to ask the court to keep me from sharing her behaviour with the children, accusing me of weaponising her actions against her. My response was that it is her actions that are weaponising things and I won’t be silenced. And anyway, the things she says about me are far worse: eg. that I am mentally unwell…
The child who had parroted her words and said “I had no friends” at a time when we were sitting at the dinner table with one of friends, came to me and apologised yesterday, saying “I take it back. I can’t believe how many friends you have, and also how cool they are.”
“Thank you,” I said. “A lot of them just didn’t want to be around when your mother was around–not that has anything to do with her, maybe more with how I was when I was with her, or that her presence was an obstacle to the kind of friendship they wanted with me.”
Have a beautiful day Jo.
Your kids are amazing. That’s really telling that that kid came to you to apologize and say these kind of nice things. They are empathetic and can see right from wrong. Great job 🙂
thank you. I am so blessed by my children. So blessed. they have never been rude or talked back, they do their chores without being asked more than once, they are unfailingly polite, and they are considerate and kind to others. They get involved in charity work, and are growing into really fine people. I am so proud. And I am also so deeply happy for their support on this journey.