Trepidation

This is going to be LONG... pack a lunch.

I have been afraid a few times in my life. I guess I don't mean afraid, a wasp getting a little too close to my ear makes me afraid. I mean I've felt terror a few times.

Once, during my stay in Atlanta, I experienced my first tornado. It was touching down and causing mayhem all over the area I was living in. Of course I was living in a trailer so I expected the tornado to come looking for me. I've been afraid while driving in a car before, almost getting in accidents.. getting in accidents, but that was the first time I felt terror. The weather had changed to something I wasn't familiar with it was dark, cloudy, and the air felt "heavy" I don't know how else to describe it. I was was honestly terrified of impending death.

There are some who think that the fear of death is the ultimate manifestation of humanity's fear of being alone. I tend to agree with those people. The other time I felt terror was when I told my partner I am transgender for the first time. I've mentioned this before but today I want to tell you about the days before and after as well.

At first my relationship with my partner was nothing short of perfect. Not just the very beginning either, I mean like a year and a half in and we still couldn't believe how lucky we were to have found each other. Well I've said it before, the best relationship of my life. We would joke how the dreaded two year mark was coming up and we're just going to blow right through it.

However it was that two year mark coming up soon that started to get me to seriously look at telling her about me. I felt bad enough for not telling her already. To go on in a relationship keeping a secret that, I believed anyway, could very easily end  it all really did make me feel awful. So I had a decision to make.

I started thinking very hard about if or how or anything my mind could conjure about telling her. I thought of every scenario imaginable. I would wonder if I should tell her everything, or just try to get some solace for my femininity. For example, I thought maybe I could just tell her I like panties, or tell her I want to see what it feels like to shave my body and have it close to hers. Anything and everything but the entire truth. All of those options seemed less painful for me then the truth.

But the two year mark was looming over me and I had to make a decision. I honestly felt if I was going to end the relationship I should do it by then, going on much longer would be more then unfair, it would be flat out cruel. That was the only thing driving me to tell her. I had three options with four outcomes.

Not tell her and lie to her and myself all my life. I knew at this point that this wasn't an option. I couldn't lie to myself anymore. It took my partner going on vacation with the kiddo for a week for that to happen. I spent the time while she was gone dressing up, and it was a sober, conscious decision. I made a TG account on a dating site before hand so I could get on and chat with people. I started wearing all feminine clothes the day my partner left and only didn't if I had to go out, which I had gotten vacation as well for a few days, not all of that week, but they were the days at the end. I did talk to some others, even spent a little time "fooling around" online as a TG. Through the week I felt too good to really be concerned with why I was doing what I was doing, until vacation was almost over. The last night I spent dressed, I was very sad. I didn't get online, I just sat in my room, as feminine looking as I could manage at the time and just thought. It did take me a while to understand, it took me until the next day in fact. I woke up and started taking everything off thinking to myself  "This is the last time I'll do this... or I tell her."

I didn't cry, no crying is what I'm doing while typing this. I died a little. That was when I realized I couldn't lie to myself anymore.

Leave her. This was an option for a while, I'm very sorry to say. It is what I have done with every relationship that ended by my decision. I loved every single one of them, but I hated myself too much to stay with them. Some of them know now, I wonder if they understand..

Anyway I digress. Leaving my partner felt just as awful as lying to myself. I just could't do it again. I was starting to feel the weight of my life long dilemma and I knew if I left her, I wouldn't be alive right now. Not just because of that either, but not this woman, no. She deserved so much more then my walking away. I almost felt obligated to tell her in light of leaving her. Eventually my emotions panned out to feeling that leaving her and killing myself were the same decision, literally and figuratively.  Not that killing myself wasn't an option, it just wasn't what I was trying to decide right now

The final options was to tell her. While the other options felt awful, this one terrified me. I had no idea what her reaction was going to be., she may be fine with it, or maybe not. I never once thought she'd leave me in some fit of ignorance, she is just not that person. I couldn't help but feel understanding if it was something she just couldn't deal with. While I had no real idea what I was about to start, I knew it wasn't easy, and she did too. That along with the idea that I lied to her all this time, that she was going to have to lose someone she has become very attached to because that someone is really only a shadow of the person she thought she knew.  I made every excuse not to tell her and tried to think of a million ways to tell her without telling her.

What was also happening was our relationship was starting to get rough. It was completely my fault and I knew it was happening, but I didn't know how to answer her questions of "what has happened?" The things I were thinking about, being transgender, my relationship, my future... or lack there of, left me uninterested in sex, or really much of anything. Relationship stress like that tends to increase exponentially I find, and I think I got a little lucky with my timing. I had known I was going to tell her for about a week when she tried to initiate sex one morning and I was obviously not interested, again. This time she confronted me, she didn't "demand" I tell her what was wrong but I could feel the urgency she had.

I thought "This is it." There was no better time, like any time is good, and I instantly was terrified. I couldn't talk, I started to cry, I thought I was just about to end everything with this perfect woman, it's hard enough to push people away while you still love them, I didn't want to know what it felt like to get left behind because I told someone I love who I really was. That was what sank my heart when it came down too it. To be left alone for sharing this about myself. I fully expected it, but I was utterly not prepared for it if it happened. Frankly I seen suicide in my not to distant future if it went that way.

That is what it came down to. Every thing I thought, every option I came up with, every path I followed led to my death. I had one option, only one in a world full of options, that left me still alive, and that was telling someone, anyone, everyone.... myself.

I honestly don't know how I managed to say those words. She approached me when it became obvious I wasn't about to have a "talk" but I was about to tell her something huge. She held me and I just bawled for a while. When I could finally talk, though barely, I looked at her and said it,

"I am transgender."

I don't remember exactly the words she said, mainly because everything then felt like a dream, but I think it was something like "Is that all?" That made me feel good and bad at the same time. She was more then ok with what I told her but she just made my life long secret feel unimportant. It wasn't intentional and I think she noticed, she said she thought I had been abused or something. In her mind that was worse, in my mind I thought "I wish that was it."

We talked after that, for a while. She asked a lot of the usual questions, and I answered as best I could. I wasn't terrified anymore, I felt like I just came from the gym. The rest of that day was a disaster that had nothing to do with me. What a day, broken deep freeze, et. al. sort of day. It did give us a forced downtime after the talk we had and I think it took her mind of it, it was never off mine.

My partner came home not long after I told her saying she had just stopped into planned parenthood. She had the names of the three professionals I'm seeing now and had already been talking to one who I had to call to get referred, an appointment, etc.

I was actually dumbfounded. For one, I knew my partner was feeling more then just fine about this, but she jumped right on top of it, she made more of my starting efforts then I did. That was great, mind you, because I was in a haze, I was a few days before it sunk in what I had done. The other reason was that it just seemed surreal. I had thought about self prescribing hormones several times, even tried getting illegal ones once. I had tried several options to feminize myself. I even had a meeting set up with a man in toronto who was going to give me a place to live, pay for everything and help me transition in exchange for more or less being a maid and, well, sexual favours.

I actually just remembered that while typing this... oh my.

I didn't have the courage to do that.. or I had the good sense not to, which ever it was. There I was though staring at a number and three names to get this started, AND my partner is the one who just made that happen. It was something I was positive was never going to happen, even at that point. I'm pretty good at going through the motions of encounters but I have no idea what I said then or how I acted, or how it was received because I was stunned. I called the number and talked to my social worker for the first time. He set up a referral to my therapist, and I made an appointment with my GP.

I told my parents a week later and I was about to get into that here too but I've gone long enough.