Grief

So much on my mind tonight that I really don’t even know where to start. I am feeling very melancholy, for various reasons. Chaz Bono premiered his documentary tonight, where it follows his transition. It was a highly anticipated event and although I was swamped with homework I took it with me and went to my buddies house and we watched it while I worked. It was a good documentary; I really can see that it will benefit a lot of people. It helped me because so much of what he went through, in a lot of aspects of his transition but especially with his girlfriend I felt I could really relate to. It made me feel as though a lot of what I am going through is probably pretty normal stuff that guys go through as they transition.

To get to my buddies house though I drive in the direction that I used to go when I would go to the base. In fact he is one of the few reasons I go that direction anymore. So on this beautiful evening, as I drove there I saw at least three separate aircraft either taking off on some kind of mission or doing what we called a local trainer. Needless to say I saw them flying, and I felt incredibly saddened. My apartment that I am living in is literally directly under the flight path, or the final approach path I should say. I see them fly low over my balcony every day and as I stand there and watch some days I imagine what checklists are being run, what they are saying to each other. I play the scenarios out in my head, as though I still do it and will be doing it again. Not a day goes by that I don’t think about it and feel saddened. It is a rare night that I don’t think about it as I lay in bed, imagining the job or a mission I flew and thinking about the people, places and things I did. Thinking about specific details that I remember as though it were yesterday when in fact it will be a year in mid June since I have flown. It floods back to me without asking it to and the sadness over takes me regardless of what I do to stop it.

For the most part that area of my life is very shut off. Ask anyone near me and I almost never talk about it and if I do it is not very freely. I have no pictures on facebook or anywhere else that I look at. Generally speaking it is an off limits topic. That is because if I think about how I had to choose between being true to myself and giving up the dream I had my entire life it is so painful that on some occasions it is nearly unbearable.

When someone transitions it is a hard thing for the families and friends to go through. It can be like a death to them in some ways and a loss. It can be a long and hard struggle, although some longer and harder than for others. There can be a lot of loss associated with transitioning. Some transgender people have more than others, it looks different for each of us. I hesitate to use the word “choose” when talking about transitioning because to me while I did make the conscious choice to do so it was more out of desire to continue living. By living I mean I couldn’t go on sober knowing the truth about myself which left two options- don’t transition and go back out and then die or just kill myself. Neither option seemed too appealing. So I gave up my life’s biggest dream and hope did the hardest thing I imagine I will ever have to do.

In the process though I never really did process all my emotions around the situation and leaving the military, or even the last couple years’ miserable living under Don’t Ask Don’t Tell. So many things about the situation that have been left buried and not dealt with. I feel like I can’t face it yet, it is too raw. Yet if given the chance to go back today, as Jackson I would do so in a heartbeat with very little thought. I know that I would, I would give anything to do that.

I don’t regret my transition at all. However now that I am past the initial stages of it and am more comfortable with myself I can think about things more. I can process things I didn’t before. Through that happening I am finding myself wishing so badly that I had been born in the right body. That I would never have needed to transition and feel like I lost so much because I was born, raised and learned to live in a female world in which I did not belong. So while it was not right for me to live there, I did for 28 years. That was mostly all I knew in a lot of ways and so I am finding the shift somewhat traumatic I suppose one might say. That might be a little too strong a word. I find myself struggling and wishing that it had not happened this way. I don’t know why it did, or why it does for so many other people. I don’t understand how it could happen that I would end up with a  male brain but a female body. Maybe the same way that some babies are born with both sets of genitalia, I honestly don’t know. Whatever the reason it was the lot I was given in life and take it or leave it this is me, this is it and I am slowly learning to live and accept it…all aspects of it, painful and joyous that they are.