5 stages of grief.

You're supposed to go through these in order, apparently. So far I'm not following the norm, but in my life, I never really do. It's supposed to start with denial, move to anger, begin bargaining, fall into depression and finally accept it. Well, I'm like a bull in a china shop right now, crashing from one to the next.

Really I started with denial before my love even told me about the decision of male transformation. I honestly thought that if Papi just kept binding, packing and using the men's washroom that would be enough. From the beginning of our relationship, my love has been vocal about removing those beautiful breasts through 'top surgery'.

I could understand Papi's pain in a way, because I have never been happy about my own breasts and wanted to have a breast lift since I was a teenager. I have never wanted them to be bigger, I've wanted them smaller so I would never have to wear a bra like some of my itty bitty titty friends. That has always been my dream. But I learned to accept my breasts and I found million dollar bras that made me feel more comfortable about them.

I've never really been happy with anything about my body and my eating disorder has hindered what I see in the mirror. I had to come to terms with my disease and take control of it. I now have control over the disorder, it doesn't rule my life anymore, but I still see distorted images of myself in the mirror. I honestly don't see the 'tiny' body people tell me I have. I just accept that they see something different than I do.

Anyway, back to the stages. When Papi first told me of the decision to become an F-M, depression set in and it hasn't left. I have cried tears of grief over losing my wife every day but 3 for a month now. Sometimes I feel like when I'm being honest with my love about my feelings, I'm giving Papi a look into my war trenched brain and I have hopes that this will give my love a hint that I would like to bargain.

I won't bargain out loud, because I cannot be the one to ask my love to change anything about this decision. If my love does anything to change this decision, then that choice wouldn't be for Papi, it would be because of my pain over the whole thing. If that happened, there would be resentment on my love's behalf, because Papi wouldn't be doing it for anyone but me. It would destroy our relationship. Resentment seeps into love and rots it.

So, just as my fear predicted, there were the words last night from my love, "I'm going to stay on a low dose of testosterone."

I was terrified. Was Papi doing this for me? Oh my god, if that's the case then there could be bitterness in the future. I said, "You can't do this for me. It will destroy our relationship."

"But I see you crying every day and I don't want my decision to be what destroys our relationship."

So. There was a bit of bargaining. I just stared at Papi and didn't say anything more. I can't be the one to make any decisions for my love. I have to remain silent when it comes to this. I already harmed the heart of Papi by telling the truth about the change in smell I've noticed and how it affected me.

This is so hard. This is the hardest, fearful and lonely thing I've ever gone through in my life. My gorgeous wife is leaving me and is being replaced with a person I don't even get to see or meet until they're here. I don't know who this person will look like and they are not who I married. I married my beautiful butch. All I want is my beautiful butch.

The grief is overwhelming. If this is the depression part of the stages, I really don't want to see the anger part! It might be over the top! In my life, I've noticed that a sign of my own depression is when I take on strangers as if I were a mama bear and god forbid anyone do wrong.

It happened on my 'off day' day off from speaking to 'you' my imaginary friend. I saw a man hit a woman because the elevator was too full and she was trying to tell him to stop pushing. Nobody did anything, so I intervened by stopping the elevator door with my foot, grabbing him by the shirt and telling him to "Get the fuck off this elevator NOW!"

He was shocked and slightly afraid, but I saw him look for any kind of evidence that I was someone with lawful authority. When he realized I wasn't that person, he told me he was staying on this elevator. I told him I would remove him if he didn't do it himself and then everyone left the elevator leaving me, the other crazy person alone with the nutbar.

Finally, a man bigger than me decided to take control and I happily allowed him to. When I got on the next elevator with all the people who had left the violent man, one woman said, "You're very brave to have done that, but you have to be careful. You don't know what you're dealing with."

I replied, "Oh I know exactly what I was dealing with!" Us crazies know each other well.

"But he could have hit you."

"I would have hit him harder." And I looked at the 80-something man beside me who gave me the nod of approval.

Yup. When I'm crazy, I'm really crazy. I wanted to take out all the hurt and pain on someone who really deserved it. I would have become that mama bear that in the past has lifted a man off the ground by way of his shirt and slammed him against the wall, leaving him to piss himself.

He was drunk and was warned about my precious keyboard that he was leaning too close to. He fell on it and spilled his beer onto the knobs. I saw red and it resulted with him running out of the party with piss stained pants practically crying of fear. I was too busy trying to save my keyboard to notice the flee.

I don't know where this mama bear comes from, but when she's here, she's a scary person. My heart's pounding just thinking about her. She's an odd part of my personality. If I'm having a depression over the grief this bad, I'm very afraid about the anger stage.

I would like to just jump to the acceptance part if I could. That would please me. I want someone to tell me how to do this. Anyone?