It is amazing how love can be blind. It is equally amazing how learning the truth about someone can open our eyes. My divorce is ugly, though I am sure there are many uglier ones.
It was meant to be over by now. It isn’t. We still haven’t even negotiated over who gets what. As far as I know, were not even separated. And we have already spent the equivalent of 3 years of net income and counting. So much for retirement. So much for paying for our children to get set up in life, to finish their schooling.
I am sanguine about this having recently been “transitioned out”, such a lovely term, for reasons which I can only interpret as being anti-trans. Given that this was the second very close relationship in my work world that has slammed the door on me, I am torn. Should I continue to try to work in a profession which I am shit-hot at, and is very lucrative, or should I go and do something which might never make much but is going to be closer to my current path?
I know what I want the answer to be. I also know that the part of me that wishes to continue in the field that I am being shunted from is also in part driven by reasons of vengeance…the “I’ll show them,” mindset. I bought a book the other day by “successful” transgender men and women, with their stories about how they have succeeded in spite of discrimination. I look forward to reading it. It should make good bedside reading for my convalescence.
I really don’t know what to expect from surgery, though I am beginning to get scared, about little things, big things, and spending a lot of time wondering what it will be like to have a vulva.
More and more women are being so kind to me, holding me, touching me, embracing me, cuddling me. I feel very protected and very held…and it is allowing me to feel small and vulnerable. This is a feeling which is rooted or linked to my deep need to be still a baby. This feeling used to be the core of my sexuality, but that has gradually disappeared. I still find a frisson from it, but it is more about comfort.
My ex-Domme and I dabbled in this world for me on a few occasions, but once was enough. It has always been something which felt more comfortable as a private expression of my raw self. But on my shopping list for surgery from my doctor is diapers. And it is quite different when you actually have to wear them than when it is part of a feeling of crawling into “little space”. My trans sisters say the need is gone by the time you leave the hospital, or that there are better solutions, but part of me thinks that this is about not wanting to wear diapers. I don’t really want to either in this context.
My surgeon has warned me about getting aroused, and has strictly forbidden it for several months, ideally 6. That’s going to be tough for someone who has a very kinky mind, whose friend circle increasingly focusses on people who have sex or play on the edges of sex for a living. This could be hilarious, but I sure don’t want it to be—getting engorged “down there” might lead to the popping of stitches and revision surgery. I will have to be on my most chaste and not even think about whipping men or getting a good whipping from a gorgeous woman. Fat chance.
My children share with me things my wife says and does. I don’t know if she knows this, but when you say to your children, “don’t tell this to your father,” what the f@£$%?! Of course they do. What kind of message does it send to children that you are willing to lie for financial gain, that you keep secrets, that you don’t want to disclose things which should be disclosed?
Those are rhetorical questions. My children know the difference between right and wrong. I used to think she did too, but I guess in war, all is on the table. I guess. But that’s not the code I live by. And that’s why gradually, I fear she is losing the children.
Maybe I shouldn’t care. After all, I can’t stand her…and I know me well enough to know that that won’t ever change now. Once you’re gone, you’re gone. I do try to hang on as long as possible. And I have tried being all kinds of things from nasty to nice, and none of them work, but at least nasty feels better. Just kidding, but it does. At least sometimes. And that is sad for me, because who wants to be toxic?
But I do care. My children need a mother. They need to see in her a person that they can look up to, can rely on. When your children fly to the country that you pretend to live in for your birthday and you say, “I have other plans,” and then leave them to come home to their father, you have to wonder. And then to post pictures of yourself alone on Instagram with the message, “out with my new friends…”. What was the matter with the old ones?
Why did she leave the family home? Why did she not want to be where I get to be? Instead she’s living in a house small enough to fit into our living room and trying to tell everyone that we all always lived there as a family. Apart from the fact that she will get caught lying sooner or later, what do you think that does to the children’s feelings of respect? I want my kids to have a relationship with their mother which is unburdened by the legacy of deceit. Divorce is bad enough.
But she’s only thinking of destroying me, but in the process is hurting herself and hurting our children. “She wants to bury you,” is what they tell me. “She thinks you are afraid of her.” When they speak to her about the impact of this divorce on the family finances and how that is jeopardising their future prospects she is dismissive. Apart from the ‘how could she not care’, which is a good question, more importantly, how could she not care about the children more than her desire for vengeance.
And therein lies the damage she is doing to her relationship with the kids. And no matter what I feel about her, that is tragic. My therapist thinks I need to try and stop trying to prevent it. But I can’t because of my children.
But in this moment, nothing matters more than what is going on in my body. There has been a huge mental shift, and one that makes me so impatient for surgery even though there are just 16 days to go. What is it? I stopped thinking about becoming female a month or so go. It was an imperceptible change. No longer something that I look forward to. It just became who I am. I don’t think about it anymore.
This might seem small to you, to anyone. But I think other trans people will understand. Gender dysphoria is about not feeling that your gender and your sex are the same…it is so severe for almost all of us, that many of us simply don’t make it. And here I am, still with my boy bits in place, even though they are no longer majestic and proud as they once were, and instead have become almost dainty, but still here, and I can almost completely ignore them. My body and my mind are on the same page for the first time in my life.
Three things on top of oestrogen are doing that: my legal name change, my now legal sex as female, and the imminence of the corrective surgery that will finally fix this within the bounds of what is humanly currently possible.
And I will live my life as if I am just starting again, that second puberty is not just what is happening in my body but is also the marker for my new life. I am being reborn, and what I do and what I become is for me to write large in neon. My sad wife can have half of whatever our shrinking pie yields when it finally gets carved up. I don’t give a damn about any of it other than it be fair. But when your children tell you that you need to fight her, and to not give up, you realise that she’s already lost them.
I wonder if she has any idea of the damage she has done to herself? She’s fond of telling the children that I am “unwell”. That has become a source of hilarity amongst us. I hope she finds a boyfriend soon. That’ll help I’m sure. I certainly find it uplifting to have girlfriends.
Do you know how pet owners come to resemble their dogs? It’s true. The same is true of people and the emotional state they carry. When you are filled with rage and anger and hate, you begin to look that way. Your features are tight and grim, and no amount of filler or botox can correct it. A year or so ago, I thought my wife looked great. She doesn’t anymore—I saw her the other day as she walked by my car as I sat inside. She looks old. And worked on.
As for me, I fly to my destiny on International Women’s Day and I get my new vagina on Father’s Day. What a beautiful gift. And when that happens, I will be surrounded by people I love, really love, and who love me, and who care for me. My children will be there the whole time, and so will a parade of the most beautiful women I know. Lovers, friends, sisters, ex-lovers who are still close.
And do you know what? For someone who has always struggled to receive, this is just what the doctor ordered. For the first time in my life, I will have no choice but to lie back and bask in the warm love of people I cherish and find that they cherish me. The wound that is created in my body to align sex with gender, is also what it takes to heal the core wound that came with my birth and early struggles to establish a bond with my mother. They symmetry of life is so beautiful. God surely does have a wicked sense of humour.
My main therapist asked me to become the mother I needed for the little boy that I still am. I believe that has happened. She has also asked me to become the Dominatrix I need for the slave that I am, and that the slave I am, should strive to please her. It is working. Is this what being alchemised means?
I went to my Reiki Master recently, the Master who taught me, and made me a Reiki Master. We did a session. After, she said, “I could feel the energy change in the building before you got here. Wow. And when we did this session, the light was blinding, just so much light. There are no blockages in you. The energy is flowing like an ocean. You are soaking light energy from the universe. You are ready for surgery. You are ready for life.”
That put quite the spring in my step. After I saw her, I did two things I’ve had on my list for a long time. First, I went to the Chelsea Physic Garden, one of the oldest apothecaries of its kind in the world. For a passionate gardener and herbalist, this was paradise. My second step was the Vagina Museum, where I bought “fuck the patriarchy” earrings and a coffee mug covered with small vulvas…Their wall of 10,000 vulvas didn’t survive the move to the new location, but it was great to be there, and learning about some aspects of my future plumbing, and reading about how many issues women still face, and how so much about “dirty” and “unclean” still attach to menstruation, one of the most beautiful and godly processes in nature…and one that I will miss out on—some say sadly, others say, thank goodness. I loved being in the museum and getting to just soak it up.