My wonderful wife blew me out of the water. Yesterday she and her mom went to Carmelindas, a local resturant for lunch. Gill and I used to go there every Saturday for breakfast and we became well known and liked by the staff and other customers there. We were "regulars". Anyway, the waitress asked why we never went there anymore, and Gill told her that it was because we lived so far out in the country that it wasn't practical. Today Gill went back to the resturant and took the waitress aside and started to explain that the reason we didn't go anymore was because that I was transsexual, etc... and Gill started to go on to explain my/our situation. Gill got a little way into her explination and the waitress held up her hand and said "Stop right there, you don't have to worry about that, you just come back to the resturant, cause we missed you". Now I feel really great about the resturants reaction and how they want us to return, but the greatest thing of all is what Gillian did. It took a lot of courage. She is definitly the most wonderful wife. Sometimes i don't realize just how lucky I am.
:-* :-* :-*
Stephanie....it sounds like you have a wonderful wife! She seems to care very much for you!!! Hold your head high when you do go back to the restraunt!!!
Hugssss
Sazi
awww thats awesome :) I agree, go in proudly :)
A good start for the two of you Steph, nurture it. don't ever neglect it or not listen to it. Time and love writes the ending paragraph. Been rocky for me. Started when I talked to her about it all and how it was outgrowing all the defenses I had built to make it not so. The usuall shock, disbelief and where was I going with it?
Matters were worse because I couldn't say where I was going with it. I just had to drop shields and start walking in order to see what happend and I had no idea if I would need to go the limits or not. Now that was a little bitty "Fib" but It keep her off my back. The only thing that concerned me was how to hold a life together while doing it.
Well, the job went, so I went back to residentual Drywall (uhg) work to make a living while looking for a location and a job to get the job done. I found what I wanted here in sacramento and moved in expecting to go to work within days. Didn't work that way. HR dropped the ball and my paperwork got tied up in Background check. That was a chuckle, spent a bundle clearing up trash from teens and early adult years ago, had a perfect work record with apparasals included going back more then 25 years, I was totally police and FBI printed cleared and approved, and here I am tied
up waiting for criminal background check. It would have been funny had I not have to wait 2 months to go to work without even being able to collect unemployment?
And already having had picked my spot and not being put off by HR getting me held up for hire, I couldn't take another job unless it got to the point I would have to. They finally ran out of stall and I was still there, so I started out as an on call. I spend about a year and a half on oncall status, about 3 times as long as anyone who has come aboard since. Finally got my full union benifited position though and put the benifits to work. They covered all therapy, medical and perscription. No Co-Pays
I went to work for Kaiser Permanente. They had no Gender Identity policy then, but they had an excellent General anti-discrimination policy, and aside from taking so long to clear my plain as day background, I've had no complaints about their treatment of me. Then the passed a specific Gender Identity clause in their Discrimination policy a few months before the Identity addition to law came into effect for the state of California. Perfect, but not so good for my Woman.
She threatend to slam the door on my rosy lilly white if I started hormones, so guess what? I moved into another place on my Birthday, just weeks after starting HRT with nothing but money from my last check in my pocket and an 85 T-Bird I had put back together out of the Pick and Pull, but she tracked like a cat and purred like a leopard with a decent 5.0 to get out of it's way with.
Anyway, wrong turn, right at the light and curve back around. My Woman started experiencing deep depression and aggrivated some other conditions she has and wouldn't ya know it? she talked to her supervisor about her "problem" and within weeks she was fired for failure to meet production quantities. After having just won a company award for having exceeded quality standards. And now, guess whos fault that was??
She got real poisonus after that, and I moved out, but she had to come check on me, she didn't like the neighborhood I was living in and eventually talked me back into her place, like we would learn to deal with it together. But the ultimatums never stopped, she said I was killing myself and she wouldn't stick by and watch me do it. And then of course everything she was going through trying to cope with something she couldn't accept. running cat fight, fang to bone. I was getting sick, but wouldn't take time off from work and jeopordize the job and insurance and I whacked a couple of times but always made it back and it would be like happiness to her every time I'd hit a wall, thinking that would stop things, but I'm full of surprises when my wheels get turning, and at times I've been running to far over redline but I found ways through everything, over, under and through if I couldn't just walk around and it would crush her even more, throw more fuel on the fire for her part of it. Things finally ended up in Orchiectomy just to keep keep me in the HRT program on a low dose, and thats when it finally got to her that win, lose or draw, she would never get back what she had, and she began to try to make peace with it.
I still don't know if we are going to make it through this together or not. I will never know until she returns to work and doesn't need me for income or insurance. Only when she doesn't need me anymore will I find out if she wants me bad enough to keep me. It's a toss up and I'm not counting on any 50/50 odds.
She surprises me sometimes though. she's began to ask me along when she goes shopping and walks with me, not 10 ft ahead. She said her husband is dead and referres to me as her "sister-in-law". I don't really know how to take that but if it keeps her in motion, she can see it how she wants. I asked her to attend the Dyke March festivities at Delores (sp?) park in SF last saturday and she agreed to.
She dressed in match to me, in my own cloths to boot and went. There she was, holding on to me in the middle of somewhere of 2 to 3 thousand women and managing to fit right in. She even had a great time with the women around us.I bought us each a theme event T shirt, "Dykes Across Bounderies, We will not be devided" I'm wearing mine at left, and with others, I stripped to the waist and put it on. she pulled hers on over her top, but the point is, she wore it.
It's rocky, and you can take nothing for granted, but if the bonds are stong, it can happen.
A word about "Dykes across Borders". It ties in with a link to Womyns Festival about widespread seperatist womens and Lesbian groups and discrimination against women of color and the Female Identified posted in FTM's Topics. It was a call for all Lesbians and Female Identified to come together and unite, regardless of race or birth and end the petty bickering and discrimination among us. It was hard to keep up with speakers from the middle of a couple thousand or more women with minds to speak, but it was beautiful, and I and others like me were made to feel included, without questions or difference in treatment. It was an experience, we could do well to listen to such things in the rainbow.
Terri
Quote from: Terri-Gene on June 30, 2005, 04:02:51 AM
It was hard to keep up with speakers from the middle of a couple thousand or more women with minds to speak, but it was beautiful, and I and others like me were made to feel included, without questions or difference in treatment. It was an experience, we could do well to listen to such things in the rainbow.
You are a woman, with other women. Why would you say "I and others like me"
Just my opinion but if a person see themselves as different is that externallised and perhaps others can then see that difference? It is just as easy to recognise confidence in a person as it is the lack of. I can say that because almost 6 years ago I had 0-zero- confidence. I did what I knew was right for me and somehow it all came out right. In all truth I probably owe most of it to my friends and my Family I have here. They gave me so much more that I can ever return.
Terri is so right about the Rainbow. Only when
everyone stands up and demands their rights will anything happen.
Leigh
"You are a woman, with other women. Why would you say "I and others like me"
You very well know my views on that Leigh, though you have often told me to consider myself no different. I wish I could, in some circles here, I can feel that way, but in most, I am among the "Female Identified", phrased that way of course so as not to aggrivate the argument as to "are we really women". It's just that I have come up in that environment and I have to respect it. In your terms, I am when I hear the quack, and not until. and to me, that quack must be universal, not just hear and there.
May "Dykes across borders" succeed in it's message. It would end so much pain for so many.
And thank you for the inclusion, though you have said it many times, some opinions I value more then others ....
Terri