I think the point i'm trying to make for myself is that what was the point?
That question is the basic foundation for every religion that mankind has ever invented. As such, the answer is way above my pay grade, except that I've never found much solace in any of the proposed answers.
My guess, and it's only a guess, is that he/she is still in limbo about the answer themselves and are still experimenting and probing. And that seems to me to be well and good, the stakes are high and the changes are permanent so it seems at least prudent to really, really be sure before you go. As Jerry used to sing:
Since it costs a lot to win, and even more to lose,
You and me bound to spend some time wond'rin' what to choose.
Goes to show, you don't ever know,
Watch each card you play and play it slow,
Wait until that deal come round,
Don't you let that deal go down, no, no.
Perhaps some of the native population was correct when they spoke of 'two-spirit' persons. That some of us are not one or the other, but both, and if that's the case its a hella lot harder to find that balance in life then it is for people who simply assume some mistake was made that can now be corrected.
And I know well what that conflict is like, in so many ways. Everyone wants you to be one or the other, to chose or lose - that is must be THIS OR THAT, never both.
The way I've explained it to people is to reference another part of my life. I was (and still I'm I think) a very 'gifted' student. (All that means is I took tests well). I did very good in school. Everyone (OK not all, my ability to piss people off in three words or less was a god-given gift that I've always had) love my papers, my writing, my tests and all that. They assumed, and groomed me to go all the way. They told me that to not use all of those talents would not just be a waste, it would almost be like spiting in the face of the Almighty. So, ever trying to please people, I did just that. And they were right, I did well, I won awards, I made Phi Betta Kappa as an undergrad and Phi Kappa Phi as a PhD and got my PhD with a combined GPA over all three degrees of 3.94. Not too shabby.
On the other hand - because this is all about the other hand - I also demonstrated from a pretty early age that I had some mechanical skills. Lots of kids take things apart to see how they work. I was the kid that not only did that, I also put it back together and had it running better than it did before. I rebuilt a car engine when I was 14 just to do something 'carish' before I got my license. I believe that I personally kept J.C. Whitney in business that year. In 8th grade, when my parents refused to buy me the expensive stereo I was demanding, so I showed them, I built my own amp and speakers and was rocking the block until the police told me to turn it down. I had a lot of people in my life who encouraged me in that path also.
So, now, in both parts of my life there were people who understood at least part of who I was. They helped me and encouraged me (hell, I bet my parents spend more in parts building the speakers and amp then it would have been to just go out and buy it). But they could never see 'the other.' And, not just that, but they willfully and blatantly condemned the other. The academic/school types were all about the mechanical/electronic stuff being 'common labor.' That working with bands (I started when I was 16 - yeah, the band guys could make the instruments make music, but I could make all the stuff work in the first place, which was kinda critical to the process) was just 'an amusement' and a frivolous waste of my time and potential. I should be spending my time reading Marcus Aurelius in the original Latin and not trying to make some car that I bought in a junkyard for $45 dollars run after I put well over $1,000 in parts into it (this are 1971 prices).
And those guys, my father chief among them, who helped and encouraged me in the mechanical/electronic stuff always poo-pooed all of that school stuff as 'so much book learning' and thought most of it, if not all of it, was pretty much worthless in real life. A guy named Cliff (now that's a macho name) who was my car guru when I did the engine deal, who ran some greasy run down shop close to my house and answered about a hundred million questions from me, always referred to it as (and I'm going to quote him exactly, because it's important) "rat-->-bleeped-<- knowledge." And by that, he meant - as he told me many times - that whether or not the sun went around the earth, or the earth went around the sun, or if Mars was closer than Venus, or the other way 'round, didn't make a rat's ->-bleeped-<- worth of difference in my life, or anyone's life really. And to be fair, he's pretty much right about that too.
I mean really, how much are all them PhDs worth when your stuck out on a rural highway in Iowa in February about 3am and your car won't start and it's below zero? You could burn them to keep warm, that's about it - and at that, they ain't going to keep you warm for long.
But, then again, once you're all safe and warm back at your house, and sitting there wondering about the meaning of life and all that and why you should even bother, well that Marcus Aurelius guy can be pretty helpful all of a sudden.
I can assure you that when I was in grad school it made them almost livid that I wasn't going to teach some crummy summer class for them, but instead was going to tour. (And they were not exactly overjoyed when I got back with a bitchin' tan, sexually satiated, and more money in my pockets then they had in theirs.) To be fair, I gave them a chance to match the money that touring would make me, and they never did. (I should have paid attention at that point, but...) And the people I toured with gave me no end of crap about the school thing. They called me 'the professor' in a way that could not have been more derogatory had they used hate speech.
But I'm very sure that all that book learning stuff made my work much better, and I'm just as sure that doing the tour kept me sane and gave me the energy to go back and do the next 9 months. So....
What do you do when have half the people in your life telling you that you should do 'thing A' and that doing 'thing B' would just be a waste of time, while the other half are saying the exact opposite?
All I could do (because I was determined if nothing else) was nod and passively agree with them and go on my own way and do both. It was never about one or the other, I always intended to do both, as I liked both - for different reasons - and never quite got how everyone else was so set that it had to be A or B, and not both.
Why couldn't I work with the band and read Marcus Aurelius? Did being able to pass algebra without ever studying (it just made sense to me, unlike Calc or Trig, which I never got) preclude me from being able to do real work? Did working with my hands mean that I couldn't enjoy Jane Austin?
So, why can't Nick and Adrianna cohabitate the same body? Surely you Erica, you above all people, ought to know that such things are both true and possible. Perhaps he/she is both, and has no desire to kill one off in order to let the other out.
Perhaps it might even be a good thing, a powerful thing. No doubt my dad shelled out major money to J.C. Whitney and Heathkit precisely because he was all worried that I liked to wear skirts, play with makeup and hang out with girls, and he thought that all that stuff would cure me. No doubt my mother put up with me basically disassembling a big V-8 engine all over her designer kitchen, and working with bands (which got me home at like dawn, if then, reeking of various strange smells) so long as I kept up my grades.
And maybe you're just going to have to wait and find out what the end path is. I know that's hard, if not, as Tom Petty sang, the hardest part. But I also know that being young and broke limits a lot of opportunities that may well change as the financial situation changes.
And, as the Jerry quote went, because the stakes in such things are huge, taking the time to decide, as opposed to just rushing in, makes a lot of sense.
P.S. - for the record, and not for Erica, I don't think there is any "detransistion" going on here. Adrianna has not undergone therapy, HRT, or SRS, so she never went there in the first place, which makes it impossible to go back.
