Obla-di, obla-dah...

Hello friends.

Long time no see. Life continues to chug on, and so does this crazy train I'm riding.

This morning I had a brief consultation with an electrologist to get her assessment of my prospects for facial hair removal; I’d mentioned to her ahead of time that I was considering starting with laser, then cleaning up the stragglers with electrolysis, and she was super helpful in walking me through how to structure that (in a nutshell: 3 or at the most 4 sessions of laser, 8 weeks apart, then zap the rest until we’re done). I thanked her for her time, and went to work.

So tonight, when we were all home, I shared some of my morning experience with DW, keeping it as matter-of-fact as possible, answering her questions, but otherwise trying not to come across as too excited about it (she’s almost always uncomfortable talking much about anything transition-related, and I try to be sensitive to that). At first I felt like she was okay with what I was telling her; I mean, I’ve always hated shaving, and for years (even before I was out to her) I’ve brought up laser as something I’d be interested in doing, and she knows I’ve been slowly saving money up for this exact thing.

I think I was probably just kidding myself.

After talking for a few minutes, she said something remarkably similar to something I just read in Jenny Boylan’s memoir, She's Not There (which, by the way, is excellent, and which I've thoroughly enjoyed), which her spouse said to her when they were standing more or less where DW and I are now. As best as I can remember it, she told me:

“You’re going to do what you’re going to do, but I can’t help but feel like it’s another part of the person I fell in love with slipping away.”

It made me so, terribly sad. The real tragedy of relationships like ours is that we love each other’s hearts & souls, but everything she loves about my body are the things I most hate, and making my body more comfortable for me makes it less so for her.

When we got married, I was convinced that her love could save me. Fix me. That our perfect unity could make this yearning I've always felt, this profound sense of disconnection with my assigned gender, just melt away forever. (I spent the first 40 years of my life hoping and praying that God would take it from me, too, but He never saw fit. Or He couldn't. Or something. I don't know. But that's a subject for a separate post).

We've shared countless joys and sorrows. Built a happy life together. We're the proud-but-often-frustrated parents of two amazing teenagers.

But the gender thing is still hanging here between us, and I'm afraid it always will be. Our friendship is as strong as ever, but our romance is no more. There's no blame or hard feelings about this (at least I don't think there are), but it's hard not to feel pretty melancholy sometimes.

I have no idea what the future holds. For now, we're keeping the family together, in no small part to give our kids the best possible home life. But I think we're both wondering how long that can last.