The incredible joy of coming home

On March 8^th of 2024 I closed up my house, set lights on electric timers, put chains and padlocks on the gates onto the property, changed all the locks, even locked the interior doors.  I was paranoid.  The single greatest fear that I had in making this trip, that my wife would break in to our former family home and help herself, invade my space, look at things she shouldn’t be looking at, was an even greater fear than I had for any aspect of why I was making this trip, to have a sex change.

My kids thought I was nuts.  They were resentful that I wouldn’t let them go on living there while I was away.  They wouldn’t understand that my fear also included fear for my relationship with them.  That she would use their presence as an excuse to come in.

“But we wouldn’t let her in,” they both assured me.  

“I would never put you in that position.  You can’t defy your mother.  And anyway, you know her, it would do no good.”

They wouldn’t believe me and could only think about how inconvenient it was for them.  I explored asking her for a voluntary order blocking her from coming here, but my lawyer told me it would be of no use, nor any value, and she would remain free to violate it if she chose.  It didn’t go anywhere.  I remained in fear, and at least on this one aspect of my life, very much alone.

What I did do was cast spells.  Spells of protection and long-term consequences.

And what happened?  She broke in.  Showed up with a locksmith, a truck, and movers, and helped herself to my stuff, our stuff, the kids stuff.  Cutting through the locks, drilling the deadbolts, and then doing the same once she was inside, breaking into each and every room, including the children’s rooms.  My favourite?  She took all of the furniture in the guest bedroom, where my female guests have stayed. I needn’t make the distinction: there have been no male guests.

And I cannot really understand it, because our divorce is live, we have a separation agreement in place, a judge asked us to respect one another’s space and privacy after I pleaded for this in the wake of her abusive behaviour and language to me.  And thank goodness I found out long after the fact, in the closing days of my absence, when I was regaining my physical autonomy.  Had I been flat on my back in my apartment in California, totally helpless, and found out then, it would have been awful.

I was curiously detached, however, when I found out.  After all, most of it is just stuff.  It has a value.  Her violation is real.  She had access to my personal diaries, to my legal papers, to many other things.  I had been told that there were clothes in the garden under the rain.  Boxes everywhere.  When I got home I did not find this to be true, but one of my children thinks she may have come back and undone some of the damage she did first time out.

In a way it doesn’t matter.  There are consequences.  I cannot say what they will be and can only hope that the justice system will take this into account.  I say hope, because thus far the British justice system has showed unreal bias against me.  Conclusion: bigotry is real.

But more importantly, and sadly for her, her children have judged her behaviour.  “That was next order,” said one.

“Beyond the pale,” said another.

“Why did she take the coffee cups?” asked another.

And in that sense, the cost to her is far greater than any gain she might have had from our personal belongings.  She has shown definitively that she behaves with impunity.  That she is a thief.  Something which up until now had proven more challenging to prove through the judicial process.  It is a gift to me.  It is too soon to tell how it will play out.

In the meantime, she has broken into the house that our children consider their home.  She has taken things from our home that they associate with home.  And she has shown them that my fears were not misplaced.

For this trip away, so many things fell into alignment.  To call it a “trip” was a misnomer.  It was so much more.  It was a rebirth.  A spiritual journey.  I flew on International Women’s Day.  I had my sex change on the first day of Spring.  I was surrounded by love every step of the way: friends new and old, my family, my children.  It was a sacred process.

But when the time came, I was ready to go home.  Coming home itself was a process.  I sent a set of keys to the garden so that a friend could get in and take photos.  My wife had promised that she had left keys in the letterbox.  She had not.  In the end, one of my children had to be the first to go in, as there was a set of keys held by a taxi driver my wife had befriended.  My children ended up filming, photographing, cataloguing and attesting to damage, missing items.  I didn’t want that for them, but they needed to go home.

As for me, my oldest brother, one whom I have never been so close to because of the age gap and life growing up.  He came and helped me pack.  He then helped me get to the airport, and flew with me, helping me with luggage, all the way.  I had booked a wheelchair but in the end I didn’t need it.  I flew to NY and spent a few blissful days seeing friends, seeing my Queen who just happened to arrive the same day as me, so we spent a blissful day together catching up, going to some of her favourite places, and having some girl time at the spa.   It was what we both needed.

I took the woman who challenged me to bring ritual into my sex change process to see my favourite pop star at a small local venue, and then met the parents of said pop star.  It was hilarious.  Said pop star has noted my presence in the most delightful way at her shows.  My little sister muses “are you her road bitch?”  How well she knows me!

I went to visit my parents in another city, and saw said popstar again.  This time I took a woman who has been a friend since childhood, but whom I haven’t seen since college.  I love how we can just slot back in with people that are long gone.

My wife was fond of saying “you don’t have any friends.”  In truth, she didn’t like my friends, and gradually, over the years, they just stopped being in my life—either she didn’t like them or they didn’t like her, and this reminds of what happens in abusive relationships.  One of my children repeated that saw over dinner one night, a dinner which was an unfortunate time to bring up such a topic as a child of the Den Mother sat at one end of the table, and Star Child was also there, and the statement was not only out of place, but situationally wrong.

Sadly, I jumped down their throat.  I noted that said child was parroting their mother, and it was such an absurdly false statement, noting that friends outnumbered family at the table.  Thankfully this has since become the source of much ribbing and amusement…and yes, it seems I have so many friends.  I wonder why.  I think it is because I’m not an asshole.  Never have been.  So friends from a long time ago are still friends today, just like it was yesterday.

One such friend, a woman I had not seen in decades, my very first girlfriend, the woman to whom I “lost my virginity”, flew with her daughter from the West Coast to NY, met me in a taxi on the way to the airport, and we saw each other for the very first time in so long.  She came to accompany me home, to help with my luggage, to help me settle back in.  What an extraordinary act of support.  I still can’t get over the love.

As a goodbye gift she gave me something which readers of this blog will know as dear to my heart.  She gave me hand-blown glass ballerina giraffes.  A collection of them in all different sizes.  Can you believe it?

For those of you who do not know this, but Venice is the centre of witchcraft in Italy.  Now you know.  To receive such a powerful gift, a thoughtful gift from said place, is to know its intense power.  I shall put them out in a safe place.

Well, this beautiful human, and her lovely daughter, came back into my life.  They are both witches, and they helped me to cleanse my home after the violation, to purge bad spirits.  The bed that they would have shared in my guest room was gone, so I gave them mine and moved into one of my children’s beds, whilst they shared.  

But we stayed “home” for less than 24 hours and barrelled off to Florence for a few days.  I love Florence.  If any readers need restaurant tips let me know.  True for pretty much any destination in Italy, but especially Rome, Milan, Venice, and Florence.

We had a lovely time in Florence made only more intense by a mysterious allergic reaction to some unknown thing that one of my children had, so at 2 am that child and I climbed into an ambulance and went to the oldest hospital in Italy where they injected him, put him on a drip, and waited until he was looking and feeling “normal” again.

You can bet I was tired driving home the next day, having not slept more than an hour in a chair in the hospital.  And when we got home, I just dumped my Florence bags, attempted to finish unpacking the plethora of suitcases that had returned with me from the USA, and then packed new bags for a whole series of events in England, which included a dominatrix suitcase, several garment bags of gowns for a graduation ceremony and black-tie event.  Weeks of casual every day wear punctuated by a series of dates.

I have written about some of the insane fun I had along the way, I got quite ill for a spell, something which never happens to me, and had some very challenging social interactions which included my wife and her brother—I fondly think of them as two thugs, and gratefully note that they provide ample proof through their actions.

Common friends joined and provided support.  A grandparent was there in solidarity and to celebrate my graduating child.  And my eldest brother, once again, was there for us, for me.  And once again, he helped me get home, driving with me across Europe in a car that has no reason to be on the road any longer.  And last night, we got home safe.

I was aching for my own bed.  Aching in a way that felt like a fever.  I normally get up at 5:00 am every day.  But today I slept in and stayed in bed until 9:00.  It is raining a deluge of rain today.  It feels Biblical.  It is good to be home.