yesterday cleaning the garage i found 2 bins of my old cloths that never got sent to goodwill… it was like Christmas seeing so much of my old cloths… will i ever wear them again, i really think not but just seeing them and touching them did feel so good….. and yes, i’ll be honest, i did try a few on….. yes jules is still very much a part of the woman i am today… yes i transitioned to a woman but there’s a part of “his” entity that will always be with me… and for that i am happy…
it’s funny i am now tess, that’s what all my identification states, but really what is a name and does the physical appearance or gender expression really make the person…. hell all my life it seemed i wore costumes, in part to express who i was or what i wanted to be…. yes my biological or genetic sex is male but my gender is female and i think it’s a combination of these two forces which makes the so called person i am… today i feel such a beautiful female presence within me and having my physical appearance being female and being able to live my life as female is beautiful, it’s very peaceful… yes finally i am living my life as the gender i was assigned at birth…. all my body language as a female seems so natural to me now….
in my past i was never comfortable with my physical presence with being a male, as the assorted costumes of appearances i wore for all those years will testify to that fact… i was searching for that comfort zone but little did i realize that my comfort zone was my “lost angel”…
being of “two spirits” was a term used by many cultures for my situation… yes i can see that… i have been blessed to love from a man’s perspective and now from a female’s, but was that really a man’s perspective…. there was always that female presence in so much that defined my character…. i was gentle and showed my emotions more than a typical male…. and it’s funny but when i was having a consultation for facial surgery the surgeon was honest and said you really don’t have very masculine facial features yet they are not very feminine either…..
during the hard days of my transition i felt i had to cast jules out of my life completely…. i removed every photo of him and anything that really spoke of his masculine past… i hated being referred to by his name and mis-gendering me was a capital offense… excerpt from “i’m tired of crying”
my ears are bleeding
bleeding with pain
every time i hear “his” name….
please for the sake of my sanity
let me hear “her” name
let me hear “her” name….
i’m so sorry
yea i understand it’s hard
but “she” cannot be invisible
for “she” has a spirit
and that spirit has a name…
and like a butterfly that just left the cocoon
standing on a branch
its wings drying
she is unfolding her wings
and now she is waiting to fly….
let “her” fly
let “me” fly
i almost lost my relationship with my son because he felt comfortable still calling me Dad… my transition is hard on him…. today i told him he can call me Dad for as long as he wants for i am proud to be his Dad….
and today our house is filled once again with photos of him and yes there are probably just as many of this beautiful woman i am today…. and now when my wife makes a simple mistake and calls me jules, as she did for 44 beautiful years, she will always apologize, but now i tell her never ever apologize using his name, he is still within me and i love him…..
and finally there are moments in my days now that i’ll sit, maybe in thought or doing some simple task, and in those moments i am neither “she” or “him” but just me, and i love these minutes too
tess julianna 10/17/17
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