Cutting off a friendship because I fell in love, and another reason I need SRS

It's been a while since my last blog entry and a lot has happened in my life since then. Actually this is going to be a blog entry that I meant to write a earlier, but I needed a little more time.

So, the boy I liked: I really really liked him. He is a trans guy. He hasn't started hormones yet (well he might have by now) and he has like this somewhat cocky way of holding himself that I found really attractive. He has like this really arrogant front he puts up. Anyway I also think we really connected on a lot of different levels. 

What happened: 

He blew me off for a while. Basically our friendship was such that several times it seemed like we were about to begin a relationship, each time more than the last time, and each time he would distance himself from me before anything really happened. Also this is a pattern I recognized, and though (ask any of my close friends) I have girl emotions, I am very very good at hiding them. I think he was scared of a relationship and I think he kept himself distant in an attempt to not have one. There's more I could write but it probably isn't important.

Well I decided that he really wasn't being much of a friend, and that whatever his reasons were and however much I understood them I wasn't going to stand for being blown off for months at a time. So, I deleted him from facebook. He noticed like a day or two later, and started showing up at my work (which was still the lesbian bar) and telling me all night how much he "loved" me, and then sent me a text begging to stay friends.

Actually the text said something like "Please can we be friends, I secretly love being the geeky guy who is friends with the kind of bitchy, really popular girl." I thought about it overnight and told him we could stay friends but he had to start treating me better. 

And he basically did. Then we met up for karoake and he brought this guy with him and it looked like a date, and I lost it. I started getting crazy jealous and left the bar early. I stewed over it the next day debating whether or not I should tell him I didn't like him dating other people and then early Friday morning I told him. And I told him that I really couldn't be a friend to him if he was going to be dating other people. Then he told me it wasn't a date and I had to apologize for getting crazy. Well that night he came in and was in a really good mood about it. Contrary to being mad that I basically told him we weren't going to be friends if he dated other people he seemed quite glad it happened, and actually started acting more like my boyfriend than not. And even turned down a couple situations that would have led to a lay.

This went on for a about a week and then we actually had the conversation we really needed to have. He told me he didn't want a relationship and I told him we couldn't be friends. So it ended that night. I think we both wish things could have been different.

He told me that he wasn't in to women, or that he was but only occasionally, and that he thought we had an intellectual connection. I think that was bullshit, and I told him. I think he was/is scared. He's had a couple really bad, abusive relationships in the past, and I am not someone he can control, and that scares him because he can't be the victim again. Also though we held a lot of similar interests, and mental capacities our relationship wasn't strictly intellectual.

Anyway, a part of me wants to say that I did a very selfish bratty thing by cutting off our friendship, as in "You won't be my boyfriend. Fine. We can't be friends."  But the reality is, I was completely honest with him. I am not capable of being friends with someone I am in love with. I tried it once before and in the process I made myself miserable, and caused he a lot of misery as well and though we did become very close, she did eventually dump me and we barely talk anymore and I doubt that will ever change. I think in this regard, there is a certain closeness even beyond physical that I don't like having with someone who isn't committed to me.

Maybe were I a "perfect" person, I'd be able to be friends with all the amazing people who bring that inner person out of me, that person most people never meet, and I wouldn't get jealous when they continued to date other people. I'm not a "perfect" person, and I'm 30. I know what my "flaws" are and they are unlikely to change. Furthermore, no friendship is worth going through what I would have to put myself through to be friends with him.

So it's been a couple weeks and I pretty much haven't seen him since we had that conversation, and I doubt he will ever be in my life again, and that hurts, but not as much as it did when it happened. And I doubt I'll ever be completely over him. I've had a few exes I've never gotten over. I don't have the ability to forget connections I've really felt with other people.

Oh and I'll just quickly mention that I'm going to be moving into a tiny studio apartment. It's the best location of any apartment I've ever lived at, and I can't wait to be living alone again: just me and my dog.

And I'll be able to save for my SRS.

I have this pattern in my life of falling for people whom I can't have a relationship with and those with whom I can, it never lasts very long. The longest actual relationship I've ever had was for 6 months with a girl who told me repeatedly not to fall in love with her because she could not love me back. I think this pattern probably has a lot to do with my body issues. Any sexual relationship I get involved in is going to include a body part of mine with which I absolutely do not identify. I don't think I could ever be intimate with someone I really cared about using my current equipment. It wouldn't be me and I would always resent the person for having sex with something that wasn't me. 

I don't necessarily want to harp on this surgery, but it is kind of the most important thing in my life and getting the funds for it seems almost impossible. There is absolutely no way to describe this condition to non trans people. There is no way for me to describe how much I really want to fall in love with someone and have a relationship and how that isn't possible. It isn't that I'm worried other people won't accept my body, it's that I know that I can't. I can't. I tried for years, and it isn't even a self acceptance issue. My body is wrong.

Click here to donate to my SRS fund.

Being (somewhat) stealth at my new job

I only have two more nights left at the gay bar where I have been working for a little over a year. It's time to move on.

I'm not going to write anything bad about Babe's or the management. I'm sure you've heard all the complaints you'll ever hear. The truth is it was a job that payed decently when I really needed a job. One way I'm different than I was four years ago is that I'm not so quick to quit a job because it isn't perfect. I've had a couple of job offers since I've been looking but where I am now is the one I accepted.

And I think it's going to work out REALLY well for me. I'm proud of the food the kitchen puts out, I'll have the freedom to get creative and be able to create some of my own recipes, I think it's a kitchen where pretty much everyone is on the same page, and I'm comfortable with the menu and atmosphere. It's very close to what I would like to open up if I were to open up a restaurant.  I'll also have much better hours.

Oh and no one except the owners know I'm trans. I discussed it in my cover letter and said I'd rather my co-workers don't know. This is what I want to write a short entry about.

It is so wonderful. I'm treated like a normal person for the first time since I started transitioning. That isn't exactly a fair statement to my other friends and co-workers. It isn't that I've been being treated like someone weird or something; everyone has been incredibly accepting. It's just that I've been different. I'e been a woman who isn't quite a woman. I've been a man who is becoming a woman. I've been someone in transition. Now I'm just Natalie, a woman who works in the kitchen and is probably a lesbian.

Well actually in that regard I outed myself the other night when I complained about my current room mate who is also an ex-girlfriend. And everyone knows I'm coming from the lesbian bar.

Of course I don't consider myself a lesbian. I'm still figuring this one out. Maybe pansexual; I think that fits me better than most. Odd how many trans people identify as pansexual, but anyway...

I really hope my co-workers don't find out, which might be next to impossible considering how many people in Richmond know me, but it is giving me the chance to taste what life in another city might feel like. I think I want to move elsewhere after I get my surgery.

Being trans for me is really just an embarrassing medical condition. I mean I'm not a man who really really wanted to become a woman. I'm a woman who had a severe prenatal hormone imbalance, or something. Anyway I do seriously believe that my mind and spirit are as female as any other woman's. And I guess when people aren't aware of my past that believe the same thing.

I feel that in hiding the fact that I am trans from my new co-workers they are actually forming a more honest opinion of who I am. I think they are better able to see the real me. and I guess this is one big differenence from being gay and being trans.

When people assume that I am exclusively attracted to men I feel like I'm hiding from them a big part of who I am as a person. When people assume I'm not trans I don't feel like I'm hiding a big part of who I am. I mean it's more like I've had a trans experience rather than actually being trans.

I've written before that being transsexual is not being transgender. I think that's why I'm glad no one knows at work. I don't want everyone to know what medications I have to take and what surgeries I need to get, especially since "transsexual" carries so many assumptions about queerness that I don't feel paint a realistic picture of who I am.

Really what I have at this new job is what I've always wanted: to feel like people see the real me.

I wonder if I can ever truly have that in an environment where everyone know my trans past.