Promises, promises

The silence was too immense.

I hurt Papi.

My love decided to speak about the frustration of this evolution moving too slow.  "It's going to take months and months before any of this gets started!"

This came because My Person had posted on Papi's Facebook page, that in her opinion, it looks like the process is moving fast.  My love felt this wasn't so and told me.

My Person knows.  My Person spoke for me in recognition of how I feel, as she's my echo.

To me?

It's moving like a freight train.  This process is racing.  My wife is running away from me as fast as possible, leaving in the dust another person.  I welcome every single delay in the advancement of my love's male transformation.

All I could do was sit and stare at the ceiling.  I just didn't want to cry about 'it' and the fact that my love wants to leave.  My presence in the room was hushed din.

I sensed sorrow and abandonment in my love's energy.

I couldn't stop the stillness my lips had forced upon me.  I couldn't share how I really felt, because there was too much to think about at the same time.  The taste of these emotions sat stale on my tongue, awaiting their moment to spit their expression.

Silence.

At one point, I felt I could try to speak to my love, and when I looked over it seemed as though my uncried tears had made an appearance on Papi's face.

Goddammit I can't escape them no matter what I do!

"Are you ok?" I asked knowingly.

"Yeah."

An obvious lie.

So now, my silence has put us both under the same dark throng.  My uncommunicative response has maimed us both.

We could only talk and laugh about the monkeys on TV that were getting drunk by stealing tourists' drinks while they lie unsuspecting in the sun.

Being that my love and I are both clean and sober, I'm going to assume that Papi was thinking, as I was, that a drink would certainly numb the nerves that we both fell prey to in this moment.

When Papi left for the graveyard shift, the truth came out.  "I'm a little hurt that you won't talk to me."

I was pretty sure the 'little' was an understatement.

With all my strength, I tried to explain that it wasn't that I didn't want to talk 'to' my love, it was that I didn't want to speak about 'it', lest I cry again.

Please don't make me cry again!

Realizing I'd hurt Papi made me cry anyway, as I helplessly watched mi esposo precioso close the door, leaving me with non-english speaking animals.

You want silence?  You got it.  All I got was a room full of privileged 4 legged critters and not so much as a text from my love.

Until a little later.

Thankfully, I'm good at getting things out in texts when I really need to, and this was one of those times.  It's another place that I can hide in a bubble of confidence, because I'm not face to face with the conflict.

There was no typing and erasing with speechlessness as there was the day before.  I confessed all my feelings.  I exposed my truth about how I only get my wife for a short while in this marriage and then for the rest of our lives together I get the other gendered person.

The person that isn't in my wedding photos.

I told my love that the 'forever' it takes to get this male transformation underway is too short of a time for me.

Then my desperate bargaining to ease the pain I inflicted upon my love came out.

I promised that I would do my best to deal with 'it' without silence from now on, even if it makes me cry.

I stick to my promises.

I have so much work to do.

Just because I'm not sitting in the La-Z-Boy padded cell in that comatose state like I did for 6 weeks doesn't mean I'm out of the woods yet.

It took a long time for me to get to sleep last night ...