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A reply from Dave
May. 11th, 2001 11:06 amI opened my e-mail this morning and there was a reply from Dave from my coming out e-mail. Here it is:
hiya,
i'm really sorry it's taken me so long to reply. the end of the semester was absolutely crazy, and then i was gone in alabama with stacey's extended family right after finals were over and all that weekend, and then i started back on monday working the same type of long hours i was before, like 7:30 am to about 6 or later most nights. my research hasn't exactly started back up the way i would have liked, and i feel like i'm spinning my wheels most of the day looking for filters to order or standards for the x-ray fluorescence machine or instructions for the ion chromatograph or just more journal articles on fine particulate matter and source-receptor analysis and heavy metals and aaaaaahhhhhh. it's just crazy and i have so little time to learn all this stuff and try to make it work before the only
guy that knows the ion chromatograph leaves at the end of the month. so i'm a little stressed - actually more than i was with classes, actually. i really really enjoyed 2 of my 3 classes last semester. i almost didn't want them to end. i wanted to keep going and learning more cool stuff. my research just isn't that cool to me, and lab work, especially on instruments i know beans about, isn't my favorite thing exactly.
i guess i needed some time maybe, too. i can sort of see where jay might see this as a bigger deal, but i don't mean that he should shut you out or anything. it might just take him a while. part of it kind of just boils down to a simple thing like when you talk to somebody else, you have to start saying and thinking to yourself in terms of he and him instead of the she and her that's been customary for years. not a bad thing or anything, but at a basic level pretty different. but like i said or at least should have said back in sophomore year when you first came out, your being happy and content with who you are is the most important thing. it still is. this just may take some most time to get used to. i have some maybe silly questions, too, but that can wait til later. i just wanted to let you know that i'm not wigging out totally and ignoring you, that it's just been even busier than usual and way busier than i thought it was going to be after finals were over. i'll talk to ya later.
dave
So I just wrote a reply:
Hi Dave,
Good to hear back from you. I was a little nervous when I didn't hear from you, but I figured you were just swamped with grad school, plus I know I gave you a lot to digest, so to speak.
> part of it kind of
> just
> boils down to a simple thing like when you talk to somebody else, you
> have
> to start saying and thinking to yourself in terms of he and him
> instead of
> the she and her that's been customary for years.
yeah, that's pretty much it. I mean, there are tons of weird ass psychological issues that go with it to, but that's what therapy is for, right? for the everyday issues, I'm still the same person. I'm just a lot happier. When I went home for christmas, I think my parents were really surprised and pleased to find out that I wasn't some strange alien person -- I look *pretty much* the same, sound *pretty much* the same. Hell, I even tell the same jokes and whatnot. I think it was a big relief for them to realize that they do still know me, and that I"m not becoming a completely new person. Jay told me that he doesn't believe I should become a "new person" and that because it took me 23 years to come to terms with it, it will perhaps take him 23 years to come to terms with it. I thought that was sort of being dramatic and selfish, and although I'm disappointed that he basically disowned me, I'm keeping an open heart, so if he ever decides to call me up, I'm not going to hang up on him.
anyway, I'm glad you're not totally wigging out, and even if you're wigging out some, that's still cool -- it's pretty big stuff, in some ways. I would much rather have folks talk to me about it, though. I think that's why I'm hurt by my brother -- he never even talked to me about anything -- they ignored my coming out letter for 2 months, and then when I asked them if they even got the letter, he basically just said "we don't support
you". I feel like if we had some sort of conversation where he expressed his concerns and aired his questions, things might have been better. But that might just come over time.
But the reason I'm telling you this is because I don't want you to think there's anything you can't ask me. I'm a pretty open person who'll share a lot of my life with near-strangers, so I'm definitely ok with talking to people who've known me since I was 13!
In the meantime, here are a couple of websites that give some good info, just as sort of a starting place. (this isn't *instead* of asking me stuff)
http://my.voyager.net/supenn/tsfaqwhole.html http://www.users.qwest.net/~ajgoodrum/gender101.htm
But anyway, sorry things are so busy at school for you. I'm glad that you liked some of your classes, and fie on research not going well. Someday, Dave, you will have a life that's not filled with mammoth exams and huge time crunches and stressful academic demands. Though it's hard for me to imagine that, since you've been doing it for so long -- what, 10 years now? :)
Since I last wrote, I've had a couple big things happen. Melanie made the definite decision to attend University of Chicago law school this fall, and I'm moving in with her in September. If you had asked me a year ago whether I would be making this kind of commitment to a person that I believe to be a longterm partner, I would have branded you as insane. But I guess life works in funny ways. I should have known that by now, especially with all the stuff I've been through. So anyway, I'm still going to work on getting those photos to you, so you can be nauseated by our cuteness. She's really cool and funny and smart and keeps me in line. We're very much a like in a lot of ways, and in other ways she's a more rational less opinionated version of me, so it keeps me in check. She's also dated and had relationships with both guys and girls, and likes aspects of both, so she's really cool about the whole trans thing. That's definitely one thing I worried about when I decided to transition. I thought that I would be sacrificing my chances of finding someone to date me with my personal happiness and sanity, because I was going to be some sort of "freak of nature". But in the end I figured there's no guarantee that I'd find someone to date anyway, so I might as well be happy by myself. But then I got lucky!
I sent off my tuition yesterday for a homestudy course I'm taking this summer on sound engineering. If all goes well, then I'm going to start working on building a home studio and doing my own creative projects. It will probably be a hobby/part-time job for awhile, but if I really love the techinical stuff, I'm going to go for more training, maybe an internship, and see about making that my new career. Probably won't happen until next year, but I'm excited by the course this summer. It will also keep me busy, since Melanie will be gone for almost 2 months -- she's going to be a counselor at a girl scout camp in Vermont. When she comes back in August, we're going to take a road trip to California -- we're not sure which route will take, whether we'll dip south through through the Grand Canyon, or go through the moutains up north. I'm excited since I've never seen a lot of the terrain out there (only Ski trip to colorado and that trip to Reno in college) and I've never even seen the Pacific Ocean before. Then we're going to fly back to Chicago -- we'll be driving her best friend's car who's moving out to CA with her boyfriend and couldn't drive it herself. Maybe I blabbed about all of this already to you, but I'm excited about it, so my apologies.
Alright, I should get back to work, but good luck with all your projects and research and stuff. Say hi to Stacey for me -- I hope teaching is going well for her. Take care.
___________________________
I signed off under the name "Ray-manda" which was corny but I thought sort of funny. I'm definitely trying to stay with my plan of controlling the dynamic of the conversation about my transition. I obviously over-simplified some stuff, but I figure you gotta start small and be reasonable and not scare people away. The complexities will come soon enough. Besides, Dave should be used to me exposing him to radical concepts by now. I dragged him to my first pride parade, and taken him to different clubs, experimental movies, music, etc. etc. I think it all started when we went on a date to see the "the Crying Game". Hmmm....ironic.
hiya,
i'm really sorry it's taken me so long to reply. the end of the semester was absolutely crazy, and then i was gone in alabama with stacey's extended family right after finals were over and all that weekend, and then i started back on monday working the same type of long hours i was before, like 7:30 am to about 6 or later most nights. my research hasn't exactly started back up the way i would have liked, and i feel like i'm spinning my wheels most of the day looking for filters to order or standards for the x-ray fluorescence machine or instructions for the ion chromatograph or just more journal articles on fine particulate matter and source-receptor analysis and heavy metals and aaaaaahhhhhh. it's just crazy and i have so little time to learn all this stuff and try to make it work before the only
guy that knows the ion chromatograph leaves at the end of the month. so i'm a little stressed - actually more than i was with classes, actually. i really really enjoyed 2 of my 3 classes last semester. i almost didn't want them to end. i wanted to keep going and learning more cool stuff. my research just isn't that cool to me, and lab work, especially on instruments i know beans about, isn't my favorite thing exactly.
i guess i needed some time maybe, too. i can sort of see where jay might see this as a bigger deal, but i don't mean that he should shut you out or anything. it might just take him a while. part of it kind of just boils down to a simple thing like when you talk to somebody else, you have to start saying and thinking to yourself in terms of he and him instead of the she and her that's been customary for years. not a bad thing or anything, but at a basic level pretty different. but like i said or at least should have said back in sophomore year when you first came out, your being happy and content with who you are is the most important thing. it still is. this just may take some most time to get used to. i have some maybe silly questions, too, but that can wait til later. i just wanted to let you know that i'm not wigging out totally and ignoring you, that it's just been even busier than usual and way busier than i thought it was going to be after finals were over. i'll talk to ya later.
dave
So I just wrote a reply:
Hi Dave,
Good to hear back from you. I was a little nervous when I didn't hear from you, but I figured you were just swamped with grad school, plus I know I gave you a lot to digest, so to speak.
> part of it kind of
> just
> boils down to a simple thing like when you talk to somebody else, you
> have
> to start saying and thinking to yourself in terms of he and him
> instead of
> the she and her that's been customary for years.
yeah, that's pretty much it. I mean, there are tons of weird ass psychological issues that go with it to, but that's what therapy is for, right? for the everyday issues, I'm still the same person. I'm just a lot happier. When I went home for christmas, I think my parents were really surprised and pleased to find out that I wasn't some strange alien person -- I look *pretty much* the same, sound *pretty much* the same. Hell, I even tell the same jokes and whatnot. I think it was a big relief for them to realize that they do still know me, and that I"m not becoming a completely new person. Jay told me that he doesn't believe I should become a "new person" and that because it took me 23 years to come to terms with it, it will perhaps take him 23 years to come to terms with it. I thought that was sort of being dramatic and selfish, and although I'm disappointed that he basically disowned me, I'm keeping an open heart, so if he ever decides to call me up, I'm not going to hang up on him.
anyway, I'm glad you're not totally wigging out, and even if you're wigging out some, that's still cool -- it's pretty big stuff, in some ways. I would much rather have folks talk to me about it, though. I think that's why I'm hurt by my brother -- he never even talked to me about anything -- they ignored my coming out letter for 2 months, and then when I asked them if they even got the letter, he basically just said "we don't support
you". I feel like if we had some sort of conversation where he expressed his concerns and aired his questions, things might have been better. But that might just come over time.
But the reason I'm telling you this is because I don't want you to think there's anything you can't ask me. I'm a pretty open person who'll share a lot of my life with near-strangers, so I'm definitely ok with talking to people who've known me since I was 13!
In the meantime, here are a couple of websites that give some good info, just as sort of a starting place. (this isn't *instead* of asking me stuff)
http://my.voyager.net/supenn/tsfaqwhole.html http://www.users.qwest.net/~ajgoodrum/gender101.htm
But anyway, sorry things are so busy at school for you. I'm glad that you liked some of your classes, and fie on research not going well. Someday, Dave, you will have a life that's not filled with mammoth exams and huge time crunches and stressful academic demands. Though it's hard for me to imagine that, since you've been doing it for so long -- what, 10 years now? :)
Since I last wrote, I've had a couple big things happen. Melanie made the definite decision to attend University of Chicago law school this fall, and I'm moving in with her in September. If you had asked me a year ago whether I would be making this kind of commitment to a person that I believe to be a longterm partner, I would have branded you as insane. But I guess life works in funny ways. I should have known that by now, especially with all the stuff I've been through. So anyway, I'm still going to work on getting those photos to you, so you can be nauseated by our cuteness. She's really cool and funny and smart and keeps me in line. We're very much a like in a lot of ways, and in other ways she's a more rational less opinionated version of me, so it keeps me in check. She's also dated and had relationships with both guys and girls, and likes aspects of both, so she's really cool about the whole trans thing. That's definitely one thing I worried about when I decided to transition. I thought that I would be sacrificing my chances of finding someone to date me with my personal happiness and sanity, because I was going to be some sort of "freak of nature". But in the end I figured there's no guarantee that I'd find someone to date anyway, so I might as well be happy by myself. But then I got lucky!
I sent off my tuition yesterday for a homestudy course I'm taking this summer on sound engineering. If all goes well, then I'm going to start working on building a home studio and doing my own creative projects. It will probably be a hobby/part-time job for awhile, but if I really love the techinical stuff, I'm going to go for more training, maybe an internship, and see about making that my new career. Probably won't happen until next year, but I'm excited by the course this summer. It will also keep me busy, since Melanie will be gone for almost 2 months -- she's going to be a counselor at a girl scout camp in Vermont. When she comes back in August, we're going to take a road trip to California -- we're not sure which route will take, whether we'll dip south through through the Grand Canyon, or go through the moutains up north. I'm excited since I've never seen a lot of the terrain out there (only Ski trip to colorado and that trip to Reno in college) and I've never even seen the Pacific Ocean before. Then we're going to fly back to Chicago -- we'll be driving her best friend's car who's moving out to CA with her boyfriend and couldn't drive it herself. Maybe I blabbed about all of this already to you, but I'm excited about it, so my apologies.
Alright, I should get back to work, but good luck with all your projects and research and stuff. Say hi to Stacey for me -- I hope teaching is going well for her. Take care.
___________________________
I signed off under the name "Ray-manda" which was corny but I thought sort of funny. I'm definitely trying to stay with my plan of controlling the dynamic of the conversation about my transition. I obviously over-simplified some stuff, but I figure you gotta start small and be reasonable and not scare people away. The complexities will come soon enough. Besides, Dave should be used to me exposing him to radical concepts by now. I dragged him to my first pride parade, and taken him to different clubs, experimental movies, music, etc. etc. I think it all started when we went on a date to see the "the Crying Game". Hmmm....ironic.
