Regret

Last night my mind wandered to a friend of mine, a very dear friend whom I loved with all my heart.  She and I were sisters and struggled through the same trials.  I met her when I was 19 when she was just 21.  She met me through an online trans message board when both of us were beginning transition.   She needed a place to stay for the night so she could attend her therapy appointment in Dallas.  She herself lived in southern Oklahoma about 3 hours north so an overnight stay would relieve her of a lot of driving.

It wasn't long before we both found ourselves in Tulsa together.  This wasn't planned and in fact happened quite accidentally, but we were delighted to find one another.  We were two peas in a pod.  We learned nearly everything together.  We both went to college and had jobs as we transitioned, both commiserated when times were tough, and both chased boys and went to clubs together.  We went through our highest highs and lowest lows together, and on the fateful night when my life was threatened, she was there to rescue me.

Of all of the trans people I ever met, she was the only one I found that was anything like me.  At first we both attended trans community meetings, but the constant looks at us like we were two pieces of meat and indirect hostility toward the two "young ones" forced her away from them.  I continued to attend, fascinated that people so different from myself and my friend, were also trans.

In time, I made my choice to de-transition despite her vehement objections while she stayed the course.  Through the years we kept in contact.  She had SRS and a BA, and I got super active in church.  We both found our careers about the same time, and both married around the same time too.  She adopted children, became a mother and had a family with her husband a few years after they married.  That is when we lost contact.

We were so similar, yet how different our lives had become.  She eventually achieved all I ever wanted while I made what I thought were the right choices for my eternity.

I was thinking of her, and the thoughts dredged up feelings, powerful feelings, and very old feelings of deep abiding regret.  Last night I wept bitterly trying to bury my face in my pillow so as not to alarm or wake my sleeping spouse.  I wept that I had lost touch with so dear a friend.  I wept because I made the choice so long ago to end my transition and thought of the life I wanted and the life I could have had.   I wept that I stopped transition so I could have a temple marriage and now would never have one.  I wept for believing GID was a beatable mental illness only to learn it never was.  I wept that I stopped my transition so I could find another path only to have that path (hormones) ripped away from me.  I wept remembering my mother’s admonition that I may be making a mistake as she believed I would have been much happier had I remained female.  I wept because, despite all the advice that had been offered to me regarding my dysphoria, I consistently made choices believing myself to be the exception, that I would somehow be saved from the pain.  I wept that I married believing I could beat this, and in doing so inadvertently trapped an unaware soul in the hell that has been my fight with my dysphoria.  I wept that I had a child, as male, and would never have my greatest dream, to be a mother.

But most of all I wept for something I could never have.  Something none of us, trans or not, can ever have.  I wept because I wanted “the past.”

I cannot have the past, nor can pining for it and feeling regret ever bring it back.  I began to think about suicide in my grief for the first time in years last night.  I realized though, that giving up my future was not worth the pain from my past.

What I can have is the future.  What will I do to make sure my future is brighter than my past?  What will I do to ensure that 10 years from now, I am not looking back at this day with regret for the choices I made or didn’t make?

I don’t know the answer, but I know regret is a powerful thing and it can motivate us to change our futures or it can mire us in bitterness about the past.  I choose to have a better future.  I will not let my lost opportunities cost me potential future happiness.

I’d be lying though if I said I’m not in pain.  My feelings are powerful, and I fear for the future and what it holds and who I might hurt along the way (myself included).

Needing prayers right now,
Kate