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"In this tempestuous, havoc-ridden world of ours, all real communication comes from the heart."

- Etty Hillesum

September 04, 2006

Something light, then something heavy.

I was sleeping peacefully when one of the dogs came into the bedroom and asked to go outside. He asks by putting his paws up on Blue�s side of the bed and � waiting.

Blue can somehow sleep through this.

I cannot.

I whispered, �No!� and rolled over to go back to sleep.

Then I had a vision of the dog peeing in the living room, and me being the one who has to clean it up.

So I got out of bed and took the dog outside.

I opened the door and turned on the light and he SHOT OUT of the door and started barking and growling fiercely at something. Some poor little woodland creature from our Wild Kingdom backyard had been up on the deck, unaware that the dog was on high alert. I bet that poor little critter has never moved so fast in its life! Whatever it was (and I didn�t see it � it happened waaaay too fast for my 4am human eyes) managed to get off the deck and back behind the fence before the dog could get at it.

�AAAAH!� I screamed at the dog. �NO! NO! Go do your thing!�

At which point the dog, realizing his defeat in the chase of the woodland creature, went and peed and came back to the door to come back inside.

He�s now snoozing peacefully next to me on the couch. And here I am, wide awake.

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So this is something that has been on my mind for quite some time, now. I haven�t talked about it here because I haven�t been totally sure of what to say.

It all boils down to this:

I am having time and pronoun problems. In fact, I don�t even know how to write the next paragraph properly.

One of my best girlfriends is transitioning her gender. In other words, she is changing herself into a he. For those of you who still don�t understand what I�m saying, I�ll put it into layman�s terms: she�s undergoing a sex-change.

She (he) has already started identifying as male. She (he) signs her (his) emails with her (his) new male name. Some of the medical parts of the process have started (hormone therapy), other parts of the medical process have not (surgery).

So, technically, she�s still a she. But personally, she�s identifying as a he.

Maybe you�re wondering, if she (he) is the one going through all of the hard work, then why am *I* the one having pronoun problems?

Partly because this person has always been a she to me. We were the only girlfriends who were at both of each others� weddings. And by that I mean � she came to both of my weddings, and I attended both of hers. In fact, we were bridesmaids in each others� second weddings.

I�m having a hard time making my brain understand the change that she (he) is going through. Everything about her has always been so womanly to me. I�ve always joked that she�s my twin � we generally have liked the same kind of man, we deal with problems in similar ways, we have the same sense of humor, we have always been able to cut through the bullshit and just be good, good friends on a really deep level. Not all of those things I just listed are necessarily feminine traits, but they�ve all been a part of what I�ve seen as things that define her in my eyes. And I�ve always thought she was a sexy, empowered, beautiful woman. At one point, she and her soon to be ex-husband were in the process of adopting kids � I even served as a reference for them and filled out a bunch of �they�re great people!� paperwork. I thought she was THE motherly type � that she would be a great mother for any kids lucky enough to have her.

So you can see why my brain is having some problems making the switch, right?

OK. So let me start referring to her as �he.�

He lives a few states away, and I haven�t seen him in a few years. He was supposed to visit a few weeks ago, but was having some personal issues and canceled the trip. (Well, dammit, this isn�t working. Because *he* wasn�t supposed to visit � *she* was � I mean, as far as I knew when we booked her trip, she was a she. I knew that she had been dating someone who was in the gender-transitioning process, and I knew that she was not all that happy with her life and sexuality, but I didn�t know that she wanted to be a man. Or felt like she was a man. Or whatever the proper way to put it is.)

OK, the pronoun problems are still kind of there.

Maybe when the process is further along, I won�t have as much of a problem making the switch in my brain. The �she� stuff will fall further and further behind in time, while the �he� stuff will be present and future. I don�t know. I can only assume.

And maybe the real problem is I haven�t really mourned the loss of my girlfriend yet. I have really very few girlfriends in my life. I joke that I am a serial girlfriend-haver. I have one or two women that I really connect with at a time, and when a friendship fades after however many years or miles or whatever, that person maybe gets replaced with a new girlfriend if I find and connect with one. So to lose a girlfriend, for me, is a big deal. They�re not easily replaced.

Don�t get me wrong on that last paragraph � I don�t want this person gone from my life. I�m not saying I�m mourning her loss because, pshaw, I can�t possibly have a transgendered friend. No no no. I�m sure that he and I will always have a friendship, and a bond. But I think it�s going to change, isn�t it? My girlfriend is gone. Or going away slowly. Changing.

So now, all of a sudden, I can�t send emails with the greeting, �Hey, Girl!� Or feel like I can complain about my husband and say things like, �Boys are so stupid!� I guess it wouldn�t be appropriate to invite him to my girls-only spa day baby shower (which will end up whittling the huge invitee list from two friends to one). I don�t know what the protocol is in the future for visits and such. I mean, I would have no problem picking up by myself and traveling to visit any of my girlfriends for a weekend. But I�m married, and I wouldn�t pick up and travel by myself to visit a guy friend for a weekend � it�s not really appropriate. So what category does he fall into now?

Crap. It�s really complicated.

(Ha. Imagine how complicated it is for him! I can�t even begin to fathom what he must be going through, himself. Obviously this journal entry is very ME-focused. None of this is to minimize what he is going through � or to make light of it. I honestly can�t imagine very many life paths that would be more difficult than the one he is on. But today, here, I�ll just deal with my thoughts.)

Okay � so I also want to be really supportive of my friend. Like I said in the above paragraph, regardless of how wanted and chosen this path is for him to take, it�s going to be really difficult. The social aspects, the medical aspects � there are so many challenges � most of which I probably can�t even imagine. I want to be able to be there for him when he needs it, because that�s what friends do.

I think I�ll tackle the rest of this another time. I�m emotionally exhausted. My friend reads this journal, which is a good thing, I think. (Hi, Friend! Hopefully I�ve told you enough lately that I love you and only want the best for you and for you to be happy. The reason I haven�t said any of the stuff here today to you directly yet is not because I haven�t wanted to talk more about it, but because I hadn�t mentally processed it enough until now to be able to talk about it coherently. Sorry for the run-on sentence. Does it make sense? I bet it does. You�re a process-it-internally person yourself � that�s one of the reasons we get along so well. Anyway, I hope the jumbled thoughts in this journal entry make enough sense to you that you can kind of understand where my brain is (summary: confused, but working on it!). Hugs.)

I really get so few comments in this journal that I don�t think I have to add this disclaimer at the end of this entry � but I�m going to add it anyway. Supportive, thoughtful comments on this very discombobulated journal entry are welcome. Ignorant, hateful comments are not. (I don�t think I have any ignorant, hateful readers � but in the off chance one stops by, there�s the warning.)

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Last Few Entries

Back? - November 10, 2007
Just a break. - June 19, 2007
Caddy day in the pool. - June 05, 2007
Sleep! And sleep, and sleep! - June 01, 2007
Happy days are here again ... - May 30, 2007

� More about Etty Hillesum, the woman in the photo.�