A Toxic Relationship

 

Image from Jurien Huggins
on UnSplash

One of the problems I faced when I went down the gender transition route I chose was facing a huge toxic relationship. 

 More than likely, many of you regulars assume I am writing about my second wife, who I was married to for twenty five years until she unexpectedly passed away at the age of fifty from a massive heart attack. In reality, the toxicity I am referring to was within myself. I wouldn't wish the ripping and tearing I went through from my battling binary genders on anyone. In other words, my old male self was fighting the best he could against me learning and living a feminine life. Deep down I feel he knew he was fighting a losing battle, which made everything so much worse. 

What happened was, following the brief moments of gender euphoria I experienced along my journey, I really resented having to go back to my male world. When I did, I took my frustration out on whomever was closest to me. In doing so, I was trying to lose relationships and jobs I had in the meantime. Somehow, through all my gender toxic tendencies, my wife and I managed to stay together. Jobs, were a different story as I lost several due to my foul temperament. I was lucky in that I was in a rapidly expanding industry at the time and had acquired a strong network of acquaintances who helped me obtain new employment. Finding all those jobs however just enabled me to be even more spoiled and toxic.

Speaking of being spoiled, along the way, I was perfecting my knowledge of women's fashion and makeup so I was able to cross dress myself better than ever before. Then, I started to go public more often in what would turn out to be the earliest stages of realizing I was a transgender woman and not a very serious cross dresser. A huge difference when it came to understanding why I was so toxic. The more time I spent trying to maintain my old unwanted male lifestyle, seemed to be a waste of time when all I did was daydream about being a woman. Mainly because all of a sudden, it seemed possible I could. If I went on my appearance only. Which of course I leaned later was just a small part of crossing the gender border to arrive at where I wanted to be.  

Through it all, my wife managed to stick it out with me, even though she was completely against me beginning gender affirming hormones and transitioning any further. In many ways I was completely torn. On one side, I loved her completely but on the other resented her for being the woman I always wanted to be. It would have been interesting if she would have lived if we could ever worked out the biggest puzzle I had. Which of course was my transgender inner woman who increasingly was struggling to live her own life. The end result was one night I could take the stress no longer and I tried suicide as an end to my torment. Happily now, I was a failure and can share my feelings with others who assume my path to get here was so smooth. Destiny and good genetics were on myside as I was able to work my way through the lonely days of my life and live long enough to come out of the other side. 

So, ironically, the biggest toxic relationship I had in my life was with myself. When I was able to understand the reason behind all of my torment, the fog went away and I was able to understand where I needed to go to live a better life.