Owning It
As I watched it again though, I found I didn't own any of it. Of course the non-war (Viet Nam) was going on in all it's tortured glory and taking us with it. We were stuck between our parents from the WWII era who had no understanding of why we would fight so hard against serving our country-when in fact we weren't. I never saw the Viet Cong attacking my town...but this is not a late night political rant.
What I really didn't own was my transgender identity.
The soft clear angst of a few of the Simon and Garfunkle songs from the movie took me back to the normal uncertainties of my age compounded by this pesky idea that I wanted to be a girl sometimes. Hind sight is always 20-20 but I do wonder (outside of the obvious) how my life would have changed had I faced myself so long ago. As my late wife once told me "be man enough to be a woman".
Who knows? Of course I have all the excuses in the world of how I went on to lead a fairly successful male life and all the while constructing a huge patch to run it all.
I want to think if I had faced it all then, I would I saved myself a tremendous amount of pain and suffering. Then again running away led me to some of the very special people and experiences of my life. As I sit here writing this, all the angst of my graduation years has faded and reality is setting back in. Life has a way of doing that I suppose.
Someone once told me if you are lucky enough to live long enough you can divide your life into 30 year cycles. Many times my path to the final 30 and out cycle was very tenuous. The reassuring fact is now I'm at last at peace with my entire self. If the force above took me away today, I'd have to say "thanks for the trip".
In the meantime Dustin Hoffman married Katherine Ross in the Graduate and all is right with the world and I own it.
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