A Trans Story - Reflections

Reflections

 

So it’s been a busy couple of weeks – My wife and I had to leave her mother’s house, due to irreconcilable differences. It was on a Friday afternoon and I left work early to go pack up our stuff. We then had to find a hotel and an apartment – which we managed to do. Surprisingly we got approved for an apartment the very next day. We did have to stay in a hotel for a week before moving in.

We took possession last Friday and moved on the Saturday – well the first half of our stuff was moved, thanks to the help from two remarkable friends that live in the same complex. But also due to less help than we hoped for the move is happening over two Saturdays.

So as we approach the second Saturday and we are preparing to move the rest of our things out of storage, I find myself in a reflective mood. I am thinking and reflecting on where I have come from, where I am now and where I will be in the future.

It is raining outside today, which quite often puts me in mind of Scotland. They grey clouds, along with the grey curtain of rain falling from them. I find that I actually miss Scotland. On and off throughout the years I have been occasionally nostalgic for my home, but perhaps more so now with all the changes in my life.

If I am completely honest with myself I do miss Scotland, but do I regret leaving – not at all. But there are times when I wonder where my life would have went had I not left. Would I have ever come to accept myself, or was the move and my marriage necessary events in that journey.

Like many other Trans my greatest regret is taking so long to accept myself, but sometimes I am forced to wonder what the reason might have been for that delay and if it were not actually for the best.

If I had accepted myself earlier in life, where would I be now? Would I have met the person who became my wife and center of my life? At that time she was not looking for a woman, or quite probably was not looking for a Trans woman either. She was looking for something unlike the average “Christian, right wing man” and I most certainly fell under that description. So was that the reason for my delay? Or was I waiting for something else?

I often find myself wondering if there are reasons for what happens in our lives. Is there a plan? Does everything happen in its correct, or Gods timing. I have never found a decent answer to any of those questions, as most of them require faith, which is not something I am good at. It’s difficult to take faith on, well, faith.

The more I think about it, the less I understand a faith based life. I have never been able to be that way. I have far too many questions, and doubts about everything. And I just cannot reconcile the idea of a grand plan, with free will – the two are just a complete paradox to me. But I often wonder, perhaps even wish that I could believe in a God, or a reason for my existence and believe in a reason for me being Trans.

Why are a small percentage of the population born this way? Why do we have to struggle to accept ourselves? And why do we have to struggle to have the same rights as other people? Why do folks object to using our preferred pronouns? They are our pronouns, its up to us what we want to be called.

Is there a reason for life, existence, for us?

At times I wonder if there is, or if it’s all just pure random chance. Is there a God? Is she like the Christian God, the Muslim God, the Jewish God, or any number within the pantheon throughout history? Does she even care about this paltry, self-centered race that exists on this planet doing our absolute best to destroy it and ourselves? Did she create everything, or was she just an architect that designed the Multiverse, set things in motion and now leaves it alone to see what might turn up.

Sometimes I lean in the direction of that last thought. That each and every one of us is a random convergence spun out of the soup made up by this capricious being. Everything that happens is pure chance, or whim and there are no reasons for anything.

But that doesn’t bring much comfort does it. I would like to think there is a reason for me. I would like to think that I have some purpose in life. But just what can be the purpose in having someone stuffed into the wrong body?

So back to where I might be if I had stayed in Scotland. Judging from the reactions of some of my family, I am leaning toward thinking that I would not have accepted myself any sooner, if at all. Perhaps without the support of a loving wife, I would never have been able to reconcile my identity. If I had stayed in Scotland I might still be fighting with myself right now, and who knows how long that battle would continue, quite possibly for the rest of my life, or atleast until I was very old and then almost all of my life would have gone by behind me in misery.

I often think where my wife might be now too, if it were not for me. I think what my decisions have done to her. I chose to accept myself, and begin transitioning knowing that it would change the entire dynamic of our relationship. And I also chose for us to move to California last year, hoping to find a place more accepting. And now look what has happened. We couldn’t make it work there, had to come back and spend 7 months staying at the Mouth of Hell, as I have come to call it. Oh I am thankful we had a place to go while we looked for work and all, but staying with someone else is really difficult. I won’t go into all that occurred, but quite a bit of it was no fun at all. So now we are living in an Apartment in Nashville, when I thought we would be living in one in California.

But one thing we did discover is some remarkable friends here in Nashville.

If it were not for me, where would my wife be I wonder? Would her life be better or worse? I often ponder the decisions I have made that have taken me on this journey. I don’t have much in the way of regrets, but I do wish we had not been so precipitous on our move to California – but that’s in the past now and all we can do is move forward with what we have.

But none of this answers my truly vexing questions – is there a reason for what goes on? Is there a plan? Is there divine intervention? Does a God, or Gods even care about us?

So many of us go through life never asking or wondering what might be the reasons we exist, what our impact is on the reality around us, and yet others of us ask these questions every day. I wonder why humans are here, what possible purpose could we have, given how much we screw things up? And what purpose is there in making some of us Trans? What is the reason for any of the LGB or T and what is the reason for straight, cis people quite often hating us.

Some might suggest that my reason could be to educate those straight cis folks, but to accept that, I would need to accept there is a grand plan to all of this. And that is, once again, where I run into trouble. I cannot imagine a grand plan that would involve a small portion of society being subjected some of the most vitriolic hatred for simply trying to be themselves.

I am luckier than many in that I have not had to face much in the way of hatred, just mostly from one member of my family who is less than nothing to me, but I still see it every day. And I see all the attempts to push legislation that limits our rights and that affects me a lot. I am a little bombastic when that happens and speak out saying it just makes me more determined. And I am being bombastic, because my words are empty – there is not really very much I can do, since you cannot convince idiots of the truth and when it comes to Trans issues and the Christian right – anything we say is simply attacking their core values, which gets their defensive hackles up. So what are we supposed to do? We cannot educate these people as they refuse to listen. We can educate the young, but that means we are stuck with this idiotic generation that doesn’t want to accept us and who wants to shout they believe in God when they reject a part of this gods so called creation. If you believe in God and you believe that God created everything then does it not follow that it would be the gravest of sins not to accept all of that creation? And could it not be said that it’s the height of hubris to even imagine you know what is part of this Gods plan? Or that you could understand even the tiniest portion of the Universe, or the divine being that started it?

But this all brings me right back to the beginning – what is my purpose, my reason? Why I am here? And why am I Trans?