Since I've spoken about them before, I guess this is a little bit of an update.
I've gotten in contact with many of my high school friends and actually found that a lot of them still make it a point to hang out every sunday. So, I've been joining them every sunday for the last month or so.
It has been... no big deal. It's totally crazy honestly. Not to pick on my friends but boy, are they ever traditional. I'm not sure if their political views are also conservative, I would think not for most of them, but they are typical middle class people. Now, I know these are assumptions, myself being the best example, but there isn't a single LGBT among them, those in relationships are all male-female. Their sexual experience seems... minimal, again not to make assumption, but the handful of sexual innuendo that has come about like it does with a group of friends their, shall we say 'conservative' approach to it is a little obvious.
So, all of that in mind, they have let me back into their lives like I was gone a week, rather then sixteen years, and nothing has changed, rather then the fact I'm transgender. Were we meet every sunday is in another city and I have yet to worry about rides because of them (I don't drive). I've been offered help in the form of rides to places, and someone to talk to. They all treat me like they always have, and new comers to the "gang", like partners and what not, are all following their lead, every one of them being a good friend in the making, it's absolutely surreal.
None of them realize how foreign this all is too me. Hand in hand with that is my not realizing I have been missing it. These people are all but the polar opposites of the sort of people I've been around, and there is simply no comparison to the points in my life that I was completely alone. I feel like a caged, mistreated animal being let out by a saviour instead of the cruel master I've always had. I'm slowly stepping into their world cautiously watching every move we all make.
If myself and either single one of them gets back to that super comfortable that teen friends have, and I fill them in on this part of my past, I'm sure I'll shock them, positive even. I've lived in the part of society that these people and most like them have only heard of on tv.
That actually has little to do with what I'm here to talk about today, but it may help to know so you can understand where I'm coming from about the rest.
The sunday before christmas we got together again, this time though more of our old friends were in town visiting family for christmas, and visiting the rest of us was part of their plan. It ended up feeling like we just took a slice of our teenage past and inserted it into our lives now, all of us talking and carrying on. The playful insults this group has ALWAYS done, two people arguing over something not serious, a slightly larger group all doing the same thing together, talking and having fun. I have no idea how I managed to get out of there that night with my emotions still intact.
I didn't, however, keep them intact the next morning. I started to get emotional when I got home but it was late and I went to sleep. When I woke up it was the first thing on my mind. I guess I should be careful what I wish for because I felt it, I felt loss for my past for the first time. I was a little weepy at first, but the more I thought about it the more I cried until I was sobbing into my pillow. I don't even know what I was feeling, loss, regret, cheated, deprived, all of those, and more that I can't describe. I remember the person I used to be for them, and I'm not that now. There are so may reasons, transitioning, my history, my lifestyle, time passed. I felt like I usually do, like the outside person watching the room full of people interact, but this time I felt like being on the outside wasn't were I belonged, I should have been my old self there chatting and talking about my life with everyone.
It's a feeling I can't reconcile, this feeling of lost time, of feeling cheated. Feeling loss for myself was something I never had, but now it's still with me. Every now and then I'm reminded of who I was, and it makes me a little sad. It's a complicated feeling though, for me. I bounce back and forth between wondering what could have been if I wasn't transgender and wondering what could have been if I came out earlier. Two parallel worlds, neither of them real, but it's all I can think about when I feel this way.
I want to be inside my friends heads. During all my past I always assumed no one ever talked about me when I wasn't around. I simply didn't think of myself as important enough for people to give any thought too. Now though, maybe this is arrogant, I would imagine I've been a fairly hot topic among them all, hell among everyone who I know, I would guess. But what do they all think? What do they see when they look at me, or when they watch me do or act overtly feminine? How often, if at all do they think something like "fuck she's so different." and how many times does that bother them, if at all? What connections are they making with our past, have any of them thought back and thought how much this explains? I'd even take the bad thoughts just to know the truth.
I've been asked the usual list of questions, when did I know, when did I come out, how do I feel about surgeries the typical questions. None of them have gotten personal, I mean specific to me personal and if there was a group of people who should feel free to do that it's them. That being said however, I've had little time with any of them one on one.
I think I just realized something. I have nothing else to talk about other then being transgender. I want them to start conversations about something they are probably scared to talk about. People talk about their lives, work, children, hobbies, they all have all of those. Transitioning is all that is in my life. Sure I've worked, I have hobbies in the past but even then, not transitioning was what my life was. I worry about becoming one of those people who have a "problem" and that's all they talk about, but this isn't just a problem, it's a solution. It's happiness and sadness, it's exciting and terrifying, it's mundane and interesting. It's a full new set of "life" that people don't even know exists. This isn't just a bad back, or getting laid off, this is me. This is my entire life, who I am inside and out. Later in my new life, when I'm done transitioning and I'm a "woman" (whatever that means exactly) I'll still have the knowledge of me going through this transition, to be born male and now fully female, and I know I'll draw strength from it.
For some reason, and I know this is fairly different then other TG's, I want to scream it from a mountain top, or I guess Signal Hill for you Newfies. I'm not afraid of being transgender any more, in fact I'm very intensely ready to embrace every ounce of it, and I want others to know that. It seems to be the only counter to all of the regret and how cheated I feel about my past.
Ok, words are just flowing out of my fingers today, so I'm going to stop here before I end up writing all day. Back tomorrow.
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