"Superposition" or The Way A Lot Can Change In a Year
Tonight my life changes forever
When I wrote to you this time last year, I was in LA, freshly mushroomed out, and trying to make sense of the wild paradise it was. I was lost in a sea of misunderstandings and new medical words and worlds. I was on shaky ground —literally and figuratively — in my relationships at the time. I was losing my sense of self, and losing all I cared about in rapid succession. I was struggling to understand who I was and through all of it, I had to take care of a toddler of an elderly trans woman. The people pleasing was coming back and I didn’t like it. We all know how that story ended, and we all know I’m still alive, so it wasn’t ALL that bad.
Earlier this year I took some self-reflection time and started trying to find what was wrong with me and what fell apart in those relationships last year. I was bending over backwards to please both of my partners. I was fighting for love that felt more like a sales pitch than a lasting partnership. I was destroying my sense of self for a relationship that felt miserable and not at all rewarding or fulfilling.
As a trans woman, relationships are infinitely harder to get, let alone maintain, let alone find true love in one. I never thought love was truly for me, and that’s been a wound about 45 years long. I barely got love from my own father, and my mom was complicit in his harms because she didn’t actively fight him. I had thought that I was going to be in love with only my black cat for the rest of my life.
Oh how wrong I was…
April 26th, I was vaguebooking about how dating sucks, and it’s such a minefield as a trans woman. And I was like “I bet at this point, I’ll marry the first person who shows me a millimeter of human fucking decency!”
Then the Universe said “Bet!”
Becca reached out to me, as had been friends since a game night in February where we met. She wanted to know if I was okay, and we started talking about it. She was interesting, kind, patient, and witty. I was laughing with her, talking about things I wanted in life, and we kept talking for hours on end. So much so that I asked her if I could come over the first Saturday in May. We hung out, and that first date was magical. I drove home afterward sad that I had to leave, and so happy with her. I was falling fast in love. But I wasn’t scared, I was elated!
I had spent 40 years in what feels like a fully different life, closed off in a box of my own making from people pleasing and hiding who I truly was, and also not healing myself. In the five years since then I had healed so many pains, so much grief finally flowed through the logjam of my conscience, and only this year I finally cut the emotional tether to my former marriage. I let go of all the pain I was caused, as far as going forward in life anyways. The grief — from the loss of my aunts, my grandma, my marriage — never truly goes away, but it does get easier to deal with once you start feeling it.
On that day, I felt like a girl in a romance movie. Everything was in Technicolor, wistful gay romantic music was playing in the distance somewhere or it was echolalia in my brain, I didn’t want to stop holding her hand. I had no clue what I had placed there at the time, but I felt something I had never felt before in my life. I got to know her on a deep level and for the first time I understood Uhaul lesbians.
To finally feel something tug on my heart strings like this, to feel love, even as a moment of glorious passion with another woman at that point…well I’ve never felt more alive! The peace that came over me sitting on her bed in the first ten minutes in her house, the comfort I felt as my nervous system sank into repose. It lead me to want her more. I started making out with her.
I didn’t want to leave her. But I wanted to go to Queer Karaoke, and I had plans for that Sunday. I went home, and I felt sad all the way. Much like the way I did when I left Fairfield after that first magical weekend here. I drove straight to Noble House for karaoke, and I sang Guilty as Sin? with the pronouns changed to she/her, and I was called out for being in love a bit by the hostess. I was on cloud 9! What started that day has become a three month long whirlwind of adventures together, getting to know each other, and every day she chooses me as I do her. I don’t feel lacking with her love. I feel truly blissed to have it every single day.
There’s a lot that happened in the three months since that first date, and it’s all lead me to be the happiest I’ve ever felt. Tonight, at Queer Karaoke, I will sing the songs of our journey, and propose to the love of my life. I’m ready to start the next chapter with her, and I can’t wait to see what she says!