Finally Dana

We are all the product of choices. Our lot as humans is to make flawed observations of the world around us, then make a choice with too little information. We do not live in an objective reality, instead all we can see is our own subjective interpretation of events. This flawed process is how all decisions great and small are made.

I knew I was trans. I chose to keep it hidden and buried. I chose to get married and fall in love. I chose to build a life, buy a home, adopt some dogs and plan for a future that some part of my always knew was tenuous.

Finally, I chose to live instead of die. With that choice, Dana was born.

That choice had consequences. I have written about some of the ones that I feel, such as the lonely nights. However, my choices impacted far more than just myself. The woman I loved lost her husband and with that, lost her dreams of the future. She never thought she would have the life she did, so when the dynamics so abruptly changed, she made her own choices.

She chose to reject me. She chose to separate and to treat me cruelly. She chose to sever any possibility of companionship, friendship, or even civility. Like all of us, she was making choices based on her own perception of reality and in her view, I had broken all previous covenants and destroyed any semblance of trust.

I chose to live instead of die, but she saw me chose to kill her husband.

I am Dana. I cannot return to the man I was because I was never actually a man. I made the choices I did because of societal pressures, religion and family, but most of all, because I was weak.  We are both living with the consequences of those choices.

I wish we could be friends. I wish I could hold her again. I wish we could sit in companionable silence staring at our phones. I just wish that we were together again.

We are not together, and we will never be. As much as I want to impart my hopes on the world around me, I am forced to acknowledge the truth as I see it.

Our relationship is over.