Susan's Place Transgender Resources

I just wrote this letter but I can never send it so, I thought it might make me feel less broken if I released it into the aether of the internet... meh... Names have been abbreviated to protect the innocent. :-P

My darling M,

You will never read these words, nor feel what I so desperately wish to convey in them.  Yet I must write them all the same.  I miss you.  I miss you every single day, especially when it rains.  I miss your humor, and your intellect, and your gentleness.  I miss telling you 'good morning,' and you telling me 'goodnight.'  I miss worrying about your health when all you were eating were "$#itty noodles."  I miss everything about you so much that it feels as if a part if my own body has been severed.  You changed me for the better, and I am eternally grateful to you despite the cost of losing part of myself when you left - a part I know that I can never get back.  I don't want it back, I only wish you had kept all of me.

You were the girl I'd been dreaming of since I was twelve years old, and the one I never imagined could be real, but you were!  You are very real, and when faced with the reality I had prayed for for fourteen years, I failed you.  Perhaps the sorrow I feel now is some karmic punishment for my failing you.  I couldn't see your growing unhappiness; I couldn't hear your fears through my selfish optimism.  I couldn't protect you from the harshness of others or the quiet disdain you found in yourself.  I couldn't make you see your worth or your beauty no matter how much I wanted to do that for you.  You are your own person so, I couldn't change your reality.  I am infinitely sorry that I failed you, as a boyfriend and as a friend, so terribly that you felt that you had to run from me.  I never meant to hurt you, and if I did, I would do almost anything to change that.

I only ever wanted for you to be happy, and healthy, and free, and to be with me.  I wanted to change the world for you - to reshape it so that you could finally see even a fragment of what I saw, and still see, in you.  Not knowing if I can or not, I am compelled by the memory of you to try. 

I can't seem to stop crying as I'm writing this; it's been nearly a year now but the loss of you still haunts me.  I find myself suspecting that you were indeed the girl I'd dreamed of for fourteen years, and thus that you quite likely are my first, last, and only love.  That I have lost you seems impossible to me.  It feels like you're on a trip, or gone to school, or otherwise M.I.A. but destined to return to me. 

I only ever wanted for you to be happy and to be with me.  But I have failed you, and you can no longer hear me.  You cannot hear me say that I will always, always love you.

Hugs. Writing it can really help... hope it has. :)

Wow, so touching, i really hope that this helps your sadness... Its a shame that she will never see it, such a shame!

L Katy  :-*

It's beautiful and very touching letter Ian. Big hugs. I know it's no consolation, but I'm sure should be proud of the guy your becoming and what your doing to take care of yourself now. It's difficult when we lose someone we care a lot about and when it gets to the point of being able to convey somethings that we wanted to say before it was too late we are left with doing something exactly like what you did. I had a close friend who died tragically just over a year ago. I know she would  be proud of the woman I have become. Big hugs.
Mariah

Oh Ian, that's beautiful and heartbreaking.

May I offer some perspective? If not, please feel free to ignore the rest of the message, since I know you didn't ask my opinion and I don't have any right to push it on you.

I don't think you failed anyone. Sometimes relationships don't work. Not always because someone didn't try hard enough or didn't heed the other person's misgivings. The intensity of your feelings for someone isn't an indicator of how right the relationship is. That's worth saying again.

The intensity of your feelings for someone isn't an indicator of how right the relationship is.

Sometimes you can love someone intensely, longingly, painfully, and yet not be well-matched. It's happened to me, too. If it was right between you, it would have worked.

I hear the pain in your letter, and I know how crushing that pain can be. Regret and dashed hopes are some of the hardest feelings to get past. But you are a special, valuable person, and you have a lot to give a partner. Please find someone who is absolutely thrilled that you're with them.

You deserve no less.

Quote from: suzifrommd on May 01, 2015, 06:19:36 AM
But you are a special, valuable person, and you have a lot to give a partner. Please find someone who is absolutely thrilled that you're with them.

You deserve no less.

I am special and valuable in the sense that I have an uncommon perspective, and I'm useful.  I get things done to glorious, self-destructive effect.  Haha. 

I have a lot to offer many people, to my students and fellow scientists, to other transgender people because it is impossible for me to not fight, and to my family and friends.  But I didn't have enough to offer her or what she needed.  To me, that is failure.

I don't see how anyone could genuinely be thrilled to be with me.  I'm serious and unyielding and too intense.  I think trying to be with me must be like trying to ride out an entire hurricane within the eye - even though you're completely safe, you cannot escape the knowledge of the storm around you.  Yet if were not this way, I possibly wouldn't have lived to adulthood, and certainly wouldn't have accomplished what I have thus far.  The nature that makes me useful also makes me too difficult to love, I think.

I really do appreciate your kind words, Suzi, and I'm not trying to just thoughtlessy discount them.  It's just that I don't know if I will ever be happy so, the only perspective that I have right now is that compared to this, other personal challenges seem quite minor. :P

Ian, I know it doesn't seem like it now, but there is definitely someone out there who you would be perfect with. It often happens when we least expect it. I never expect I would find someone that I would truly love yet I did back in December. I still don't know how that is going to end, but I have learned often relationships don't come without risks. Sometimes you have to take a chance and see what happens which in this case means they approached me. He saw the value of what I have to offer and someone will see that in you. All I can say in the meantime is be yourself, believe in yourself, hold your head high and be proud of the wonderful person you are. Just keep trying and at it because sooner or later the right person will come along. Good luck and hugs.
Mariah