Thank you Sara! That makes sense to me! I don't want to lose my wife and son and be a woman alone. I treasure my experience as Suzanne but I want to make sure I don't lose sight of what I have in my loving family.
Suzanne
Thank you Sara! That makes sense to me! I don't want to lose my wife and son and be a woman alone. I treasure my experience as Suzanne but I want to make sure I don't lose sight of what I have in my loving family.
Suzanne
Sounds like me about 5 years before I transitioned...
I wish you the best and I think you are making the right choice for yourself right now. You are right that you have nothing to be ashamed of.
It's not just about love though.
I love my kids at least as much as you.. I love my Ex-wife just as much
... I couldn't love or cherish anyone more...but the intensity of the problem became a living hell... what I wanted and who I loved disappeared in a soul crushing tidal wave that I never ever anticipated...
and I begged for years of therapy for it to end...it never did..
Your future will be decided by the intensity of your nature, not by your deep love of your family.
I see my kids every day, my ex spends a ton of time with me and our family is as close as ever...my oldest daughter is in college and wrote a successful entrance essay about her dad.
You are framing transition as loss when its not the case every time, you are framing it as an unloving act when it is not.
I realize I am in the CD side, so fire away, but I am just keeping it real..this is serious stuff!!!
Kaitlyn, thank you for posting your thoughts.
I've made something crystal clear, both in this thread and elsewhere. There is no unsaid implication that just because I choose to do X, Y or Z in the name of love for my family that anyone else who takes a different path loves theirs any less.
There is no way to quantify love. It means different things to different people. You may love your family much more than I love mine. I might love mine more than you love yours. At the end of the day it doesn't matter for a multitude of reasons and if it did, because it cannot be measured renders the entire point moot.
And the same holds true for an individuals degree of being trans. It's not necessarily a scale of inevitability which will run it's course if one is truly a transsexual woman. The intensity of my nature may very well be greater than yours. Yours might be greater than mine. Like love, there's no way to tell. The path one chooses is not a sole arbiter as an attempt to measure the unmeasurable because everyone copes differently. Everyone has variables to contend with that affect the decision making process. Simply put, every trans woman has a different breaking point and reaching that point is not mandatory.
Regardless of the widespread loss that is experienced by many who transition, I frame my own transition as a loss because it is something I know to be true. I WOULD LOSE MY WIFE, simple as that. She has made this crystal clear so for me, transition = guaranteed loss. The kids are a different story as she has also made it clear that she would do all she could to ensure that the kids still love me were I to go down a path of transition. That gives me some comfort but not enough to toss aside what I have with my wife.
One thing that has become clear over the last several days since writing the above post is that my entire focus has changed. I will no longer focus on coping and instead, I will go back to living. Life is not something to survive, it's a gift to embrace. I will no longer dwell on what it means to be on the path that I am on and how I can possibly maintain it in the face of what is in my heart. I choose a life free of those shackles. What I didn't anticipate is that the mundane nature of the last few days have been among my happiest days over the course of the last ten years or so. I have embraced the little joys in my everyday routine through an entirely new perspective. Who knew that a change in attitude could have such a profound positive effect???
Last edited by Sara Jessica; 06-21-2013 at 08:34 AM.
Like a corpse deep in the earth I'm so alone, restless thoughts torment my soul, as fears they lay confirmed, but my life has always been this way - Virginia Astley, "Some Small Hope" (1986)
Sunlight falls, my wings open wide. There's a beauty here I cannot deny - David Sylvian, "Orpheus" (1987)
Originally Posted by Sara Jessica
This is so good to read!!!
I can't possibly compare my situation to yours since gender issues don't come into it for me, but I've been stuck during the last 5-6 years wanting something resolved that simply is not resolving. It caused a deep depression, and for several years I did not know how to enjoy the here and now, simply because I was regretting what wasn't.
Your words ring true for everyone, Sara. This is why they are so brilliant! You are making a choice and realizing it is in YOUR power to make the choice, so now you are prepared to put your best foot forward. You're taking control of your life again. This is what I must do too. Thank you for typing this.
Reine
Yayyyyy! She gets it! Good for you, girl. Life is for living, not thinking about how to live.
*cough* *cough*
As it has always been. Maybe one day people will realize that even when you are choosing to let your spouse have what some would call the "upper hand" in your appearance and activities - not necessarily authority, but input - that that is a valid choice for all of us - no matter where on the spectrum we sit.
Sara, you know how much we care for you here. We hurt with you in the bad moments, and rejoice with you in the magical ones as well.
Kathi
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