You Are My Favorite Hero, Or Should I Say Heroine! I Hope I Will Find A Woman Like You To Settle Down

You are my favorite hero, or should I say heroine! I hope I will find a woman like you to settle down with.

When you no longer recognize yourself.

As I sat down to make today’s TBT post, I decided I wanted to go back a bit further, so I randomly selected 2009 as the year to browse through.  With each month, so many memories came flooding back.

My daughter turned three that year and my son wasn’t even a year old.  How cute and adorable they were!  My daughter was such a trooper (this was the year she had to start her NG tube and later her G tube).  I was still married then, and we had taken our trip to San Diego that year and had seen and done so many great things.  I smiled as I came across photos of pets that I loved dearly but are no longer with us.  I found photos of the biggest and best Halloween party we had ever thrown… I had forgotten just how awesome the decorations had been.  There were so many faces of friends and family, some I still see, some I don’t, and some who have passed on.  There were hikes and adventures… soooo many memories, good and bad, were made that year.

But there was something wrong - something off - about all of it.  In all of these photos I was missing, replaced by an impostor.  The memories were mine, to be sure, but I was nowhere to be seen.

In the past year, I have changed so much that I can no longer even recognize my former self.  Sure, logically I know that it was me, or rather some version of me, in all of those photos, but whatever connection I may have once had to that person has apparently withered and atrophied to the point that it no longer exists.  My memories - the happy ones, the sad ones, and everything in between - are now undeniably inhabited by a total stranger.

As this realization sunk in, a sadness swept over me.  Even as I write this, I’m fighting back tears.  I couldn’t be any happier about where I am in life right now.  I am finally the person I was always meant to be.  I have friends and family that love and support me.  I have supportive coworkers and a successful career.  I have my health and I’ve never felt more beautiful, inside and out.  Up to now, I’ve felt so very lucky that this has all come at such a small and happily paid price, but now…

The price I’ve paid cuts a lot deeper than I had realized.  The true price of my transition is the loss of my past.  It’s just not… mine… not anymore, and so begins the next chapter in my transition.  I have to find a way to be okay with this, or I have to find a way to reconnect with it - to reclaim my past.  I’m going to strive towards the latter, though I’m not sure where to start.  Maybe the first step was simply to recognize and acknowledge it.  Now to figure out the next step…

Whether or not I can recover my past remains to be seen, but all of this has managed to make me acutely aware of how important it is that I now focus on making new memories, memories that will completely and forever be free of that interloper.  This past year, and even a majority of the year or two before it, has been completely focused on starting over and rebuilding my life, but now that this is largely behind me, it’s time to refocus on living this wonderful new life with my friends and especially with my family.  It’s time to close the curtain on the second act of my life and to bring on the third!  It’s mine to own, and I’m going to make it amazing!