CAPTAIN'S BLOG
Lately, I've been getting a lot of the same piece of 'advice':
"It's time to let go". What does that even mean? Let go of what? Of being intentionally hurt by someone I trusted more than anyone else? Yeah sure - I'll just let go of that. I've read stories of how people feel in situations like this, and my situation has a lot more in common with assault and other crimes of violation than it does with a simple breakup. And you know, I've broken up with people and been broken up with before. My first girlfriend Katy broke my heart when she broke up with me. I was 18, happily in love, had just lost my mother to divorce, and her parents had moved up north. We were both emotionally fucked. At the time, I had no idea what was going on. Neither did she - school did not prepare us for this kind of situation. The pressure that great loss puts on people in significant at times. I had a dead-end job at that time, with pretty much no foot traffic and I as the only employee, so I sat and stewed in my anxiety for weeks. I remember after week three being like "Damn - this is really, really long lasting. This sucks. I think we could have figured things out.". And we talked a few times, and she eventually told me that we were not getting back together. The sadness and anxiety persisted, but now, there was a resolution. She eventually was able to explain that "She doesn't feel anything for anyone anymore" - depression writ large, although neither of us thought to label it as such at the time (probably for the better because I may have been tempted to stay with her till she got better - although maybe that would have spared me the temptation to do the same with Aria). But we both said goodbye, and we were both sad. I didn't hold any ill will - but I was damn sad. But soon enough, I did move on, after all there's nothing like meeting someone else. Given the unpleasant nature of my relationship with Sirena, it should come as no surprise to most that I was very relieved when I broke up with Sirena. She was unkind, a cheater, and a liar - sounds familiar - so leaving her was like breaking free from someone's tiny net. But she was always like that - Sirena was selfish and untrustworthy from the start. She was angry, greedy, selfish, and used my feelings for her against me quite often. I knew that I couldn't spend the rest of my life with someone so angry - but, I thought, maybe she'll mature, and calm down a little bit once we mature some. And whether she did or not, her behaviour didn't change, and she kept pushing me into harder and harder situations, until I finally broke. Great sex will only get you so far, you know. Hmm.. that sounds familiar - except for that last part, unfortunately. Then I met CJ. When we broke up, I was, surprise: very sad again. I saw that one coming though, so I was a little prepared. I was also a real mess around that time. My gender issues were really catching up to me, and it showed everywhere, but I still didn't understand the difference between wanting to be with someone, and wanting to be someone. I also didn't really understand why she was with me in the first place - but I learned a lot from her in that short time we were together. CJ inspired me in part to be the woman I am today. Smart, sexy, cool, funny - letting go of her was also very hard for me. In a way, I guess I never did. I admit, it is one of the main reasons I left Florida. I was definitely looking for excuses to move to Canada, and getting away from CJ so I wouldn't make an ass of myself was a pretty good one. I couldn't stand to see the places we'd been together and to remember how weird it was to be with someone who actually cared about me and liked me, even if it was only a little bit. She wasn't mean to me, or to anyone else, for that matter. Mostly, she just wanted herself and everyone else to have a good time, it seemed. I have a great deal of fond memories for CJ. At least on my end, we shared something great, something special, that taught me a lot about myself and about what I valued in life and in my partners. And the kind of partner I wanted to be. Maybe I left Florida so that I wouldn't have to let go. I don't know - I don't want to forget about the good times we had or tarnish them with falsely-negative memories (the 'I-Hate-You' approach to getting over someone). But I also knew that I had some serious shit to work out and I couldn't do it in Florida, and hey, I should probably go to college. That's where people work out their personality and sexual issues, right? Well, I had a lot of personal issues to work on, and would spend a lot of time looking in the wrong places, it turned out. It would take me about 8 years and one very unhappy Mina and another very unhappy Jacqui, and some time with a lady of the evening or two, but eventually, I figured it out. And when I did, over time I found that I felt like I had something to offer other people. I had value - I could picture some way of moving towards becoming the woman it turns out I'd always wanted to be. Whatever that strange combination is of all the amazing women I've come to know in my life - plus a bit of Bill Murray. But I still didn't really know who I was. And when I looked deep, what kept me back the most was feeling lonely. Leaving all my friends behind in Florida was hard - and losing touch with them was even harder. I took it pretty hard at the time, but I know now that's just what happens when people move apart. And I do, in fact, still contact some of them - I've seen them marry their High School sweethearts and have gone on to live a life I'll never experience, and good for them. Someone needs to teach kids and have babies and buy houses and all that sort of thing. I'm sure they've all had their tough times. Life isn't easy for anyone. And the distortions that a difficult childhood creates on the adult produced by those experiences sometimes don't leave such a clear fingerprint that a doctor can diagnose it. Not everyone made it through high school. Some by their own choice - hopefully. It's that weird hope that only those who've considered that choice know. We all miss you, but I understand. Ahem. Anyways. What does all this have to do with letting go? Well let me finish my thought first. Finding my identity as a woman was a challenge for me at first. I obviously suffered from the usual transwoman hangups - I just didn't look feminine enough most of the time. But I soldiered on, even through a phase where I didn't know what I was doing with makeup, but did it anyways, to poor effect. The voice, and all the rest - it felt weird. How the hell was I supposed to... behave? To act? I had been acting like a guy my whole life... so I just let go, and I was who I was. It was very freeing - but I think some of my friends would say it was a little too freeing. Estrogen is a hellofadrug. But my life wasn't filled with intense anxiety like it was before - so overall, it was pretty good. Extreme emotions of sadness came and went as everyone's first "Sorry, I'm straight" rejection goes. But I had some baseline identity now. I was me - just me. But I was still so lonely. No one really knew what I was going through - how secretly shitty a transwoman's childhood and transition can be. I made a couple friends, and they stopped talking to me. I didn't wear my loneliness very well. I could see that it was messing me up a bit. I needed friends, to live closer to them, in the hopes of meeting someone through them. That worked as well as it did previously (which is to say it did not work), so I turned to OK Cupid and things turned around somewhat. Flirting online and chatting was fun - people saying I was pretty was fun. But I don't (just) want sex and flirting, I also want to make deep connections with people. I try and do that with all the people I know - to understand them, to help them, to help them to enjoy the moment. Friendly connections, personal connections, intimate connections, sexual connections. This is the only life we've got. We need to make the most of it in the moment. A lot of us are trying to build a better future that we never arrive at - the anxiety of future prediction. Still others, I've recently discovered, ignore the present and its consequences in order to avoid the anxiety of choice. Still others might point out that I spend my time enduring the anxiety of the past. And yeah, I do spend a lot of time there these days. And I often reflect on the past that I might learn from it. And over time, as my vision gets sharper, I do learn a lot. And I really do think that when I'm old and grey I'm going to be spending a lot of time looking back on my life and remembering the good times. I want to be able to say that I've lived a life with no regrets. And I already couldn't - I do regret much in my life - but now I have a regret that is staked into me by someone else's hands. When I met Aria, everything changed. I've always taken on aspects of my partners, and Aria and I had many good times. She would get a little angry, but it would easy to calm her down. She would tear into people on Facebook, but no one seemed to mind, because she wasn't usually that cruel - usually just bitchy - I'm guessing. My friends certainly didn't put up with my attempt at mirroring the behaviour. And in the end my new friends didn't put up with it, either. Not that I was doing it on purpose - it was somewhere to channel the energy and frustration of my life, and that was cathartic for me, at the expense of whoever was in my sights, often someone who didn't deserve the harshness of what they were about to receive. My apologies were forthcoming - and so were Aria's - at first. My apologies continued, and hers stopped. That was the beginning of the end. I can forgive a great swathe of behaviour when an apology can be expected to come after it. And as her fiancee, I definitely did expect her to treat me with an additional level of respect and courtesy. As we said to each other many times, she wasn't just some girlfriend to me - she was someone I cared about deeply. So when she went from apologizing when her outbursts hurt or scared me, to not apologizing, things changed. When she outright acknowledged that she won't apologize because she feels her actions were justified - ah yes, the all-reliable feeling of justification - I didn't even know what to do anymore. I was supposed to be special to her. And she was special to me. Aria didn't become a shitty person overnight - as they say, the frogs won't jump out of the pond if you boil the water slowly. It happened slowly, until she started to force me into situations where my girlfriend couldn't come to my parties, and she sent us nasty messages again, without apologizing later after she had cooled down. I regret loving and trusting so honestly a person who was so, so shitty to me when I still trying to help both of us. We could have done it together. Sirena was a shitty person, but I don't regret being with her or my time with her. She was a shitty person the whole time we were together though. She had a difficult childhood, and I understood that, as I was there for most of it. We went to the same schools and lived near each other. We grew up together. I don't think she did what she did to hurt me. It did, but it wasn't on purpose. I can attest to the addictive and personality-distorting nature of being unattractive and then suddenly becoming attractive. It's powerful. She did do one funny thing after we broke up - ask me about Castaway sometime - which I think was intended to hurt me, but I never knew a non-shitty Sirena, so it was much easier to laugh off. So as Aaron might say, who the fuck cares about High School? Well, for one thing, quite a few people came up to me after breaking up with Sirena and being like "Finally, she was a real bitch, now we can hang out again!". I remember being surprised, but over time realized yeah: she was a bitch. Some people just don't treat other people a certain way. Because it's like... wrong. And some people don't hang out with those people because they suck. Crazy. My thesis is this: I have never before regretted something because of something someone else did directly to me, totally beyond my control. At this point, I regret ever meeting Aria. If I really could turn back time and undo that one, some very important people would vanish out of my life and memory - and at least 2 people whose friendship I valued a great deal. So the cost is at least nonzero. But this is a unique kind of pain for me. It's got all the toppings: feeling misunderstood, unheard, condemned, and like an idiot. The people I trusted to care and help stood by and did virtually nothing. The people I trusted to help me understand the situation and what was happening told me nothing. The person I trusted more than anyone else in the whole world betrayed, and intentionally hurt me. It was when she used my feelings for her against me - just like Sirena had - the spell broke. But not all of it. I still thought our love was special - it would endure. She was strong enough to do this in a way that would leave the future open, instead of crushing it under the heel of the boots my mother bought her for her birthday. Poetics aside, this is why it is taking me so long to get over this. After a lifetime of loneliness and being misunderstood, I finally found someone who understood me. And things were great at first - the first 6 months contain many things I look forward to remembering in the future without the associated pain. But then, everything changed when The Mirtazapine Nation attacked... and she was lost forever. (In case anyone was wondering, this entry is a paltry 2,500 words! Thanks for reading!)
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AuthorChristina Hitchens is a trans female writer living in BC, Canada. She loves computers, animals, and a good argument. Archives
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