Getting Closure From My Past

I must be in the blogging mood this week or something cause this is three this week, if I actually end up posting this that is.

The topic of closure is not one that I have really wanted to think about when I think about my own life. I am sure that if for a couple of reasons, first of all that means I am getting old (ha ha okay maybe not but I am almost 29 and I don’t know how that happened). Honestly though when I think of closure I think of loss, grief, pain, sadness, moving on and closing a chapter in my life that very well may never be opened again. It is the finality of letting go of that person, place or thing and understanding that in letting go I am truly letting go with no expectation that I will ever get “it” back in the future. For someone who likes to control things the way that I do that is not something I really do well at this point.

When I joined the military I lost contact with a lot of people who were influential in my late teen years and early twenties. I joined the military right after I turned 21 years old but I managed to stay in touch with some people for a year or two after that. Then I slowly lost touch, mostly because my life was crazy busy and just really didn’t afford much in the way of staying in touch. This was of course in the time before facebook and even email was something that a lot of people I knew in 2004 didn’t do with regularity. Cell phones were just starting to become mainstream as well. Needless to say it was not as easy as it is today.

Then three years into my military service, so when I was 25 years old I left the Christian church and religion, got sober and ended up coming out as what at that time I thought was a lesbian (of course it makes sense now why I never ever felt like that label fit me). When all that happened it was as though an atomic explosion occurred in my life in terms of almost everything in my life changing dramatically in a matter of two or three months. Leaving the church, getting sober, coming out, I don’t really know the exact order of things but that all happened in a three month period of time. So anyway 98% of my life was suddenly gone for various reasons. My own shame, my own self centeredness in the midst of crazy stuff going on in my life, all kinds of reasons I am sure therefore won’t pin it all on one specific thing. However it was extremely traumatic for me. People who were important, deep parts of my life I immediately lost touch with. People who were like surrogate parents for me I just never talked to again. The list is long and extensive of the areas and people I feel like I never had closure with. The military falls into that category although that would not come for another three years and almost falls into an entire category by itself.

For the last almost four years now I have not dealt with any of that, and really for the most part just have not even thought about that time in my life. It has been too hard, too much sadness and pain involved. Over the course of the last year or 18 months as I got farther along in my sobriety, was getting out of the military and starting my own family that need for closure has been triggered at various moments. It is always a very strong feeling, sometimes involving people I never would have expected. There are some who I don’t feel I need closure with, where if I never had it I would not die and regret that. In other words I would not live the rest of my life needing that. Yet there are some who I do need that from.

My experiences have been this so far. Since I came out as a “lesbian” and tried to get closure from a few people I was generally met with rejection in some form. Sometimes it was more outright and in my face than others. In some cases it was not acknowledging an email or phone call, in others it was to my face rejection. Needless to say I only went through that a couple times before backing off and giving it up with everyone else. Then I started to transition, at the same time I had a new daughter and again which one triggered that need I don’t know and really am not sure it matters, only that it has been triggered at various points this last year.

So the reason I write this is in specific reference to one situation, although I suppose it could apply to many. Recently I was back in the town that I went to high school in, I had taken my beautiful bride there a few weeks before we got married. I wanted to take her hiking someplace I always went. Well, as we were there I really got this deep sadness over what I have really felt was this unfinished part of my life, or at least a chapter that was never closed but just walked away from. There is one specific couple there and they were like parents to me for many years, and so they were extremely important and influential in my life. I know that I was also like a kid to them, they never had any of their own and so they “adopted” some of the kids from young life which I was a part of. He is the pastor of the local church that is very involved in the community. Needless to say I remember very well the last time I saw them, it was the fall I finally got into A.A and the three of us went to the fair together. I never saw them again after that day. Anyone who knows anything of A.A or anyone who has been a part of it knows how life can be for someone starting out in it, and that’s what happened. By the time I had gotten my life back together in any fashion I was a “lesbian” and wasn’t sure how that would go so I kept my distance for a while.

Then I got their email address after about a year and sent an email to them, a coming out email but wanting to be a part of their life still email. I never heard anything from them. Now of course maybe they never got it, but in light of all the rejection I was going through then it was hard to deal with so I just chalked it up to another rejection. Well, clearly I need to have closure there. I have had to get to the point that I am able to let go of any idea that the relationship we had would ever be the same, or heck that we would have any relationship at all. Which is hard for me because deep down I want what we had, and in the absence of a replacement relationship it is hard for me to let it go but I need to. So now here I am, four years later and not a lesbian but a man with a wife and child. So how do I have closure? I have considered that, and am not sure. Of course given past experiences the fear of rejection is well founded, and yet I have to let go of that as well. Do I write them a letter? I could write them a letter and not send it? I am thinking that might be the best option and given that I really do well expressing myself that way it might very well be the best option. The dilemma I face is what to say to them? And I can either out myself or use my old name, but I feel like my old name while gender neutral would not be living in my truth. So what do I do? That has been my dilemma for weeks now although I continue to think about it as it is never far from my mind. The excuse of being swamped with homework has been a great one but it doesn’t make this feeling go away so I feel as though I need to act on it. But maybe closure will come in a way that I don’t expect or in a way I can’t imagine. I keep praying on it….yes folks praying haha…to a higher power of my own understanding which is just the universe.

I find that being transgender has continued to prove difficult in these emotional areas, because not only do I need to face the closure/moving on which is normal in life but also the fear and all those other issues that just come with being transgender. I feel like until I get closure on some of these things in my life they just continue to be my demons, and I have plenty of those to keep me busy for a while.