So I was thinking today (it’s rare, yes), and I realized that I haven’t actually taken the time to write about my relationship much yet.
So I’ll take a minute now.
My beautiful fiancee, who I’ll call Gong Li (though she’s much prettier than the actress), is a lesbian. Yes, I said “is“. But that’s another blog topic altogether. First, the mushy stuff.
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She met me as a lesbian, in a long-term committed relationship with another lesbian, about 2 1/2 years ago. At an ugly sweater party. I was instantly drawn to her, this funny, smart, gorgeous and well-traveled woman. And silly. She is most definitely silly. (Which I adore.) She was telling a few people (myself included) about her travels to Antarctica.
Fast-forward to a day almost 2 years later, when she came over to my girlfriend’s parent’s house on a man-made lake in the middle of a suburb. Me and her (her and I?) took a canoe out onto the lake while my girlfriend and another friend stayed behind to…be boring or something. Anyways. Gong Li and I stood in the shallows, water up to our thighs – or in her case, chest – (get it? because she’s short) aaaannnddd started a competition seeing who could catch the most fish. (Thus began our longtime competitiveness, something that carries through into our every week together. Fortunately for me, I’m naturally an expert at everything and she stands hardly any chance at all.) <—-proper grammar.
So, like I said, fortunately for me, I am of course the better fisher-person, and won. Despite her very noble efforts. Perhaps if she hadn’t continually tangled her line like a silly girl all the time, she might actually have beat me instead of tied me.
Oh yeah, we tied with three each. Whatever, details.
Anyways. On the canoe-ride back, I turned to look at her (sitting in the back, the steering position, clearly not knowing her role) and told her I’ve always felt like a boy, and just recently realized I was trans, and may have surgery to eliminate my breasts in the near future. Needless to say, she was barely phased. She just smiled and said “oh, really?” and asked a few tactful questions because she was curious.
This was also the day that she saw my chopped off hair for the first time. I had cut it from several inches past my shoulders to a couple inches total. It was a drastic change. My girlfriend’s mother kept saying “I can’t believe ***insert birth name*** cut all of her beautiful hair off!” (to be fair, I’m pretty sure I wasn’t out to her at the time, though if I was, there wouldn’t have been much of a difference).
Gong Li just looked at it and said “I like your haircut.”
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So, a few months later, my girlfriend (who in actuality was my fiancee but later made it clear that she was uncomfortable as such and didn’t want to marry me) broke up with me. I had been on T(estosterone) for 4 days.
Sometime I will write something about this breakup. But right now, I’d rather not go in to it. Suffice it to say that she left me because of my transition and she couldn’t handle being with someone other than another lesbian = another woman.
And thus 5 years of (what I thought was) a good relationship was flushed down the toilet because I wanted (needed!) to feel comfortable in my own skin. But lucky for me, there was someone waiting for me, she just didn’t know it yet.
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A few weeks later, after the days of no-sleeping and no-eating and crying your eyes out that all of us are obliged to go through after the breakup of a long relationship, I was feeling slightly less like an ugly zombie and decided to venture out to a friend’s house. The same friend who had been there that day at the lake invited me over to her house. I found out later that it was Gong Li that told her to invite me.
After some movie time and talking, Gong Li and I left our friend’s house and walked to our two cars together. She told me how she felt betrayed and lost after her breakup of an 8 1/2 year relationship, and how it came out of the blue, like mine. She told me that it gets better and that I am a good person and would find someone someday. And she gave me her number if I ever needed to talk or wanted to hang out. I thought she was sweet to care.
About a week or two later we went out to a movie together, and sat and talked afterwards. I knew I didn’t have a chance with her. After all, my last relationship had proven to me that lesbians can’t be with men, and that includes transmen.
But I liked hanging out with her nonetheless. She made me feel funny, and special, and worth someone’s time. And soon after we started dating. Of course, we had a long discussion about the implications of our decision, how it would affect our friends (though we had no idea the mess shit-storm calamity we would start), and what it meant for her sexual orientation. She told me that she was scared that one day she would be 40-something and unhappy being with a man. I told her I just wanted to try, because she was so special and we had such a strong bond, and what if we didn’t try and missed something amazing? She said she just wanted to be with me, whatever that meant or whatever that took.
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So, here we are, 6 months later. She encouraged me NOT to wait for my top surgery, but to go for it (which I did, on December 31, 2013, after which I was cared for by the most amazing Asian nurse, looking faintly like Gong Li but smelling like bacon pickles cake food). She loves breasts – and I must admit I had nice ones – but her love for me outshone her desires. My ex had wanted me to wait on surgery, she said “just in case” me being trans was a “phase.” And we had dated for 5 years!
Along comes this girl who I’d known as an acquaintance for 2 years, we start dating, and she feels so strongly for me that she puts aside her feelings in order for me to be happy. After only dating a matter of weeks.
Wow.
What did I do to deserve such a woman?
Her love for me blows me away, and I have no idea how to reciprocate. How can I ever show her how much she means to me in this same way?
Transforming teddy 