I should be writing my biography for the volunteer organization website but I’m trying to deal with something that I thought I was over with. so… I usually deal with these things with words although I’m accused of oversharing and sometimes it comes back to bite me but I do it anyway because for me it works

Last weekend was the first time I was ever going to stand at a microphone in public, This was poetry, something that has exploded in my life as of late. I always knew it was there but never realized what comfort I could draw from the right collection of words in just the right order, but I digress…

I had made no secret of how important this was going to be to me, I had posted it on facebook and was rewarded at the venue by the appearance of a number of my friends showering me with love and support. I didn’t expect to see my daughter, she does live in Wilmington after all, and so I didn’t give it a second thought. What changed was her post the next morning showing the frost on the mountain at her new home in Mars Hill. I was absolutely crushed when I realized she was less than a half hour away.

The sense of loss that trans people generally deal with leaves us susceptible to slights both real and imagined. I took this personally and dragged it as baggage to my therapist appointment a few days later. I spent the better part of an hour crying and trying with her help to find a way to get past this. She suggested I call my daughter and tell her how it affected me, I thought I would actually do it in a letter because I’m better with words on paper, but before I could do either she called me.

I told her how disappointed I was that she was here but didn’t show at the open mic, which would have meant so much to me. Here is where I get to the crux of the matter, she said that she couldn’t come because she was here with my ex-wife. I said they should have come together. She said, well she didn’t say anything exactly, more like stuttering and mumbling and muttering. Her incomprehensible verbiage left no doubt that my ex would rather be stabbed in the eye with a hot poker than to ever be in the same room with me again. I think this actually applies to being in the same county, in fact if it wasn’t that our daughter lives 20 miles from here she would rather not be within a hundred miles of me.

Wow…. My ex and I were together for over 30 years, we have a wonderful daughter together. I have not laid eyes on her in 2 ½ years and not spoken a word to her in a year and a half. That she can hate me with such ferocity for wanting to live really shocks me. I really do believe that she would have been so much happier if I had simply had the decency to die or kill myself.

The poem I presented at the mic last week spoke of the loss of my oldest friend and how much it hurts to lose the people that we share our history with, the people that know our stories. There is no one in my life that I have had more stories with than my ex-wife, I thought that eventually she would get over her anger.

It is becoming abundantly clear that will not be the case, I do wonder if she tells new people she meets that I died a tragic death leaving her a poor struggling widow.

Welcome to the life and loss of a transgender woman.

P.S. – I want to make it clear that I understand and appreciate the difficult tightrope that my daughter is forced to walk between my ex and myself. I’m grateful for that which she shares with me.