blame it on the rain

This week, we haven't been able to keep up our 'excursion to the beach' bargain.

It seems that when our friends back home in Vancouver have a lot of sun, we get all their rain.

I don't mind so much.

The rain here is warm.

Plus!

When it rains it means our lazy asses don't have to go water the garden.

That saying, 'When it rains it pours', is MORE than true here.

A lot of the time, Vancouver's bad weather is that horrible misty rain, which floats up and under people's umbrellas.

No point in an umbrella when it's that fine mist.

Here?

No such thing.

Never fine mist.

When it rains, it literally pours.

Everyone runs for cover.

Our Favourite was here yesterday, to find out what time we could drive Our Fave's Mom to her sister's house.

She has a best friend in her sister.  Her sister will make her happy.

Even though we eventually went for that walk on the beach yesterday, I know that a best friend always makes us much more content.

We are her personal chauffeur, as we gather all her, our godson, and the kids' belongings and pack them into our little Carolla.

I always make Our Fave's Mom sit in front, even though every time she tries to sit in the back, because it's the rule in our car.  Visitors in front.

Most folks have motorcycles, so as we drive along that narrow street of her family's village, people look in at her like she's something pretty fancy, and I feel like all she's missing is a tiara.

Anyway, it was raining and Our Favourite was here to find out when we'd be leaving.  I asked him to go tell his mother that we'd be there in 10 minutes.

20 minutes if you count in that everything is Dominican Time.  Even ex-pats get stuck in that time warp.

He told me he couldn't go tell her until it stopped raining.

I thought maybe my lack of Spanish was hearing the wrong thing, but nope.

He couldn't walk to his house because it was raining.

The kids here don't go to school when it rains and even shops shut down.

But it wasn't until his mother said that the rain hurts her and gives her a headache that I finally understood.

In Vancouver, the rain debilitated me, as every injury I had from the motorcycle accident was inflamed and I would lie writhing, unless I was whacked out on pain meds.

Here, the rain is warm, and to me it's lovely, but when you've lived here from birth, well, the rain is cold and it hurts.

It's pretty amazing how one woman's pain is another's joy.

It's so true to everything in life.

It's all relative.

Like my Big Sister reminded me, even though I see our house as the size of an average abode in Vancouver, here it is a mini mansion.

Everything is relative.

All I know is, here, I am grateful for the rain, and people look at me like I'm nuts as I walk around in a tank top and shorts, smiling, because I know once the sun comes back out, I'll be dry in 10 minutes.

I put my most admired, heaviest sweatshirt on Our Favourite, and off we went to drive around our royalty.

Indeed, I did my best to make her feel comforted yesterday.

Even if our lack of Spanish somehow had us buying her sister's chicken their feed for the month.

OK kids.

The buck-buck-BUCKAW stops here.

... did you get my chicken joke? ...

Time to put up some more boundaries.

And learn some more Spanish.

i love my family and friends, even if they don't understand me completely

Our DR Family

The first day we arrived here, the housekeeper was so damn sweet.

She had figured out how to say, "Welcome to your new house, Hector and Andréa."

Here, in the Dominican, people can't say Papi's name very well, so when they look at a document with our last name on there, they immediately jump to thinking his name is the first part of our last name, 'Hector-Brown', and call him 'Hector'.

So, our non-English speaking housekeeper made a cute little sign that had our welcome on it.  You'll be able to see it in Episode 2 of our YouTube reality show!

Right now, as I write this, I'm uploading Episode 1.  I'll tag it on here when it's actually finished uploading.

Anyway, on top of making us a sign, she also had a meal of rice and fried eggs ready for us.

Lotsa salt!!  Holy!!  But we were so damn hungry and tired, we ate it with zeal!

They are so incredibly sweet.

When the internet person came to hook us up, she came running down the road to make sure he was a 'bueno persona' because she's so protective of us.

This wasn't even her working day!

She just wanted to make sure she knew the person who was in our house, because she wants us to be safe.

She is definitely our DR Family.  She comes by to help us without pay.  Just to 'help' us.

One of her 4 boys, the smallest one, will bring me fruit fresh off the trees and the smile on his face as he gives me a mango is incredible.

He is so proud to be able to give me something and it shows.

He has nothing, but to make me happy with a mango made his (and my) day.

We really haven't had a chance to rest, until now because I'm so sick I can't do anything.

We run around to get the puppy better, get the cat his dental surgery, get the internet, get our cable, cleaning supplies, food etc.

Oh, update on the stove.  We now have one burner!  So I made us a nice pasta meal last night with meat sauce.

Not that I got any nutrition out of it.  It just went through me, but it felt good to put something other than corn chips in my yack.  I'm sure you don't want to hear about how I'm living on the toilet.  I've resolved to not eat anymore, so that I can have a rest from being sick.

Anwyay, there are so many 'priorities', it's hard to figure out what is first!!

~ Stove fixed.
~ New bed so I'm not in agony.
~ New doors that bandidos can't just push open because the hinges are rotted from the sea.
~ Bars on the windows so that we can sleep with fresh air.
~ Taps that work, water pressure AND hot fucking water for a shower people!!
~ Lights.  Oh, we have about 3 that work.
~ Dressers so we can finally put away our clothes.

There's more.  Oh, so much more.

However the 'more' is really just stuff that would make our lives 'nice'.  Like a lounging chair to sit in the sun.

I tried putting my towel out on the grass just to lie in it, but soon found I had laid right next to one of 100 ant chambers that are in our yard.

That 'relaxing' moment was short lived as I ran screaming patting myself off.

Then we got a hammock.

I lie elevated, however, I can't type on my computer while I'm out there, because we don't have a wall up yet.  The bandidos will see our computers and rob us, so we hide indoors.

Oh our wall?  In order to have a wall, we have to pay off the commissioner!  They say, "No!  You may not put up a wall and destroy our scenery for our native people!

That's sweet and all, but they will let us do it for a 'fee' of $2,500.

Yup.

Bribery works here like gang busters.

Anyway, yes, we are off to a rough start, but my Eternal Friend, who just moved back from a 3rd world country giggled in an email, asked me if I really believed it would be easy.

I suppose I knew it would be work.  Just not this hard.

I'm trying very hard to stay optimistic and know what I've always known.  Things will always get better.  Always.  They always do.

giving up is easy.  i will delay the urge, just for today

2 weeks.

My eyes have gone down a bit.

I finally stopped turbo crying when I had an actual telephone conversation with Papi.  It was good for me to let him know in voice what my terms of condition are.

1. I will go home when he's 2 weeks clean and sober and not a day sooner.

2. I will not live with an active addict or alcoholic, not even for mi esposo. 

3. I love him

Still, the love of my life is not exempt from these conditions and I will never live with that bullshit again.

I've done it too many times in my struggling life, and this is not the way my life with my love was supposed to be.

He has made his mind up about being clean 'n sober, because he had such a bad experience the other day, and doesn't want to have that life of crying on a curb in the streets of the DTES.

One of his messages said, "I feel like an addict again."

It's the lies coming from alcohol if you think you can control it.

Of course you can!

Until it gets it's grasp on your meaty tendrils and then you're alllllll his.  That's when nothing matters more than another drink.

The wife you love so much doesn't matter, even if she's crying at home alone, begging you to take a cab and come home, because the drink has a hold on you.

No, you won't take that cab.

No, you won't come home.

I know this.

I've lived this.

Both from my end and from the end of the person who has loved me, yet left my heart dangling in agony, because their addiction had a hold of them and I no longer mattered.

There is nothing harder than watching someone you love kill themselves in front of your eyes, and having to leave love because of it.

Nothing.

There is no grieving like it, because you don't get closure when they're still breathing.  There's nothing you can do to save them, you can only save yourself, and watch them bob in your wake.

I have a lovely friend who has given me her home for a few weeks, while I watch mi esposo get better day by day.

I've never really believed in prayer, but I feel like it's what I'm doing now.

I pray my love makes himself better so I can go back to my beautiful marriage.

I pray I have the strength to believe that our lives together will be ok.

I pray the tears I cry as I write this will dissipate after I've written it all out and can go find coffee.

I pray for the dreams we have mustered to come to reality.

I pray for Papi.

I am grateful he sees the brutality of addiction so quickly.  

Most people have to go a little further to find it, and sometimes, that little further is too much to be able to see the crumbs to follow back home.

I miss him so much. 

I haven't seen him since I left for Seattle on Friday at 8:45 a.m.

I have a beautiful friend who has forced me to eat berries.

It was a good choice.  They're an addiction that is good for you.

I am grateful for these berries, the outpouring of friendship, support and love we have both received during this, and the optimism that I will be able to go home and have my marriage.

I would be very grateful if I had my lovely coffee.

And my Fuzzy Family.

And my life with Papi back to normal.

i have faith in my future

Gender Odyssey!

I'm at Gender Odyssey!

Remember last year, when I was supposed to go, but performing put me on a stretcher to the hospital instead?

Well, here's a little bit of irony for ya.

They couldn't give me a refund, so I had to put the money toward the following year instead.  So, I decided I would go.

My Person and I packed up our stuff and left our trans loves behind to celebrate Vancouver's Pride Weekend without us.

Now, in retrospect, I see that perhaps I should have just swallowed the ticket price, because my dearest Papi is home sweating through the tough process of bartering and bargaining for the house sale.

Anyway, here I am in Seattle.

I made it here.

About half way through the ride down, my bitch of a back decided to go into a fit and is in full seize.

Now, here I lie in the hotel room, doing the pain killer nod and realizing I'm yet again stuck flat out on my back.

We went for our sign in anyway, and as I hobbled and limped about, I had a chance to see so many people who have so much love for this conference.

Inclusion everywhere.

There is a beautiful air of comfort, knowing there's so many more people out there who understand one another.

Absolutely amazing.

My favourite was sharing a shuttle and an elevator with a family, whom of which, one, or possibly both, of their children is transgender.

We couldn't figure out their story, because we haven't seen them speak yet, but to me, being in their presence was amazing.  A family who loves their children enough to allow them a space to be who they feel they are in their soul.

I proudly placed my little identification 'happy faces' on my name tag.

A yellow 'happy face' sticker is for 1st time attendees, and an orange one is for friends, significant others, family and any other ally I've missed.

However, I haven't had a chance to use the damn pass, because I'm stuck lying here on the queen size bed in this hotel room.

Nice enough place, let me tell you, I recommend them 100%!

Here!  Check them out!

Anyway, as I write this, Papi is on the phone, wheeling and dealing with selling the house.

I am half in and half out of nodsville.

Not to mention, My Person has passed out from too much driving and we both had insomnia last night.

I look forward to giving you an update on the different workshops that I'm hopefully going to make it to tomorrow.

I won't be doing my usual coffee blog, but that's ok!

I'm doing it now and will give you an update tomorrow evening when I have more to talk about with this amazing conference.

Oh.

I realized something.

I saw many handsome trans guys during very the small amount of time we were hanging out in TransLand.

What I realized is, I'm 100% a Tranny Chaser.

I am attracted to trans guys.

And damn if I ain't lucky enough to be married to one of the hottest ones out there.

every day i learn more about myself, and open myself to even more self-exploration

Stale Mate.

i thought i'd let you know that a blog has allowed me a guest blog on their site.  I hope you can make it over to check it out :) ... and now, on with the show.

Some people have opinions.

I say some, because that is with the exception of people who only think what they're told to think, and consequently, follow the herd.

None-the-less, it's important for people to think freely and question what they hear.

My love and I have had a lot of opinions thrown our way, and some really hurt.

Then there's others that really hit a place that makes us think about our own actions and opinions.  Some have really swayed my thinking to see another side, and I like that.  It means I'm growing.

I shared some of these opinions that my friends have shared with me, and sometimes it hurts Papi.

Sometimes, my friends feel the need to be the sentinel.  I really appreciate this support.  It means a lot to me that someone would protect me.  It proves I'm loved, even though I know it already.

Anyway, when I shared one with my love this time around, it really made an impact on mi esposo, who felt very defensive.

That's when this conversation came up.

My love says, "Do they ever think about how I've supported you in your difficulty with this?  They don't know how I feel.  I feel like ever since this whole thing started, it's been all about you."

excuse me? gimme a moment to pick up my jaw ...

Papi and I went back and forth: "You just started hormones without my knowledge!"  Volley:  "You cried for weeks on end and it hurt to see you that way!"  Counter: "You started the procedure before I'd even had time to process it!" etc. etc. etc.

i don't need to tell 'you', my imaginary friend ... you've been here the whole time listening.

Well, we really don't have many things that we actually 'argue' about, but this became one of a few disagreements that I can count on one hand.

There was finger pointing from my love, there was 'talk to the hand' from me, and there was absolutely no way either of us was going to back down on this one.

We finally agreed to disagree and take 50/50 on the whole thing.  It showed just how far we've both come in this.

When I say both, I really mean it.

This is not a venture for one person when you're a partnership.  This truly is about two people in a marriage.

Some of the passionately political people would never ever look at my side and see that I have any say in the matter what-so-ever. 

as if i really don't matter? oh i matter bitches!

Others in my camp feel that my love should never have gone through with this procedure, stripping me of my gay title after marrying a 'woman'!

This is where the **ahem** 'conversation' turned to the topic of support.

I confirmed, "When this all first started out, you had all the Rah-Rah-Tranny people shouting 'Good on ya!' and what did I have?  Squat.  I had to fight to find people to talk to, but you had happiness right from the beginning."

My love and I spoke about this, and I realized that we have actually met in the middle when Papi said, "Well, all the people who used to comment on Facebook have sorta vanished."

Where I have had to add one heart at a time to my list of support, Papi lost one person at a time, because my love is free thinking and doesn't do what anyone else says he should do.

My love started out strong, and myself?  I was weak.

I'm gaining strength, while Papi is having rude awakenings of false friendships, which is promoting an air of discord in my love.

In the beginning, I would never have imagined a middle ground between us.  At the time, I felt like there was a fence dividing us as we walked our path.

Well, the fence is gone and we have both looked on each others side.

But I still had one more thing to say, "Ok ... so maybe it's been both of us that it's been about, but I think it's a little more like 50.5 on your part."

Oh it all started again where the bartering came and my love said it was more like 60/40 on my part.

It was sorta funny by this point.  Our laughs began and the silliness had reached a stale mate.

We truly are both in this together.  It is 50/50.

Then as Papi was starting his shift, I received a text: "I feel like I need to start a blog!!"

Oh boy.

And you think I air my laundry a bit too much?  You'd really get to see what TMI means if this ever happened.

The Princess and the 'T'

"Honey guess what I'm getting?!?"

i'm afraid to ask ... so i won't

"I'm getting sideburns!" Papi said and jumped onto the bed.

I honestly looked with all the bleary eyed vision I could, but I didn't see anything.  Then Papi continued, "You'll have to get a magnifying glass to see it but it's there!!!"

I rolled my eyes and laughed at my love, and I was immediately reproached, "Don't try to say you can't see it!  Don't lie!  Honey can you see it?!?"

I finally spoke, "All I see is mole hair."

"HONEY!!!!" Papi yelled and the bed seemed to be having it's very own earthquake as mi esposo crawled up close as possible to be sure there was a cheek stuffed right in my face.  Even Sir Bark-A-Lot felt the fear and his eyes widened in fear of the possibility of a giant human trampling him.

No.

I didn't see it, but all of a sudden, Papi was at an angle that enabled me to see something else.  My eyes must have bugged out of my head, because my love could tell what I was looking at.

"Yeah!  See!  Under my chin, I've got more hair!!"

Indeed.  There was more hair under my love's chin.  Coarse, black hair that was definitely the beginning of my fear of the beard.

I couldn't deny this one.  There was definitely hair there, "Yeah, I see it," I said with not as much enthusiasm as my love wished for.

I just can't be happy for it.

Shaggy, stubly, smelly, dirty beard hair is not on my list of 'likes'.  We all know that by now.

My love only wants a soul patch, and it seems that's where it's not growing.

i still don't see the sideburns

A soul patch is much different than a full on man hair beard.

I get reports daily about the various people that will either call my love a girl or a boy.  It was the same before all the poisons started being injected into my love's body.

I still don't like the hormones.

I still don't like that stuff careening through Papi's blood.

I still have moments where I feel like bargaining.

I guess this means I'm still not past the 5 stages of grief.  I'm definitely in a better place than I was in December, but damn!!!  I have yet to find utter peace at the end of the path.

rainbows and puppy dogs and my butch back in my arms ...

I know that everyone who has followed my journey says I'm doing well, moving fast, being strong, but I just don't know if I will ever be out of denial.

all i see is my butch

I still don't have pronouns down, and I'm not sure as to when I will.

Well, other than when we get to the Dominican Republic.  I'll be speaking in Spanish, so I will be using the proper pronouns there.

But here?

Nope.

I just keep repeating my love's name.  I sound like a teen who can't stop talking about her first true love.

And I'll tell you, saying Papi's name over and over, in front of every sentence, non-stop is a bit aggravating to me, so I can't imagine how annoying it must be to others!

None-the-less, I continue to work through this.

My bargaining stage flows in and out, and I never speak it out loud.  I just think it, "Maybe you could just be without breasts and forget about this male transformation thing as a whole."

No.

I never say it out loud.  I just imagine it.

I envision my love saying, "These hormones aren't giving me a soul patch that I want so there's no point in being on them anymore."

i am a princess in a fairy tale land ...

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 ...

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?