Angela and I
I met my partner Angela early in 2009. I was seeing a much older man who was a crossdresser and he used to spoil me and take me out on the town, it felt like love. I had just come out of a 10 year relationship and was very much getting back in touch with my own sexual and female self. I was struggling alone with three children, an autistic 13 year old, a partially deaf gender dysphoric 11 year old girl (from my first failed marriage, neither child was planned)and my five year old son (from my second relationship). Living as a single parent was like a gulag, with terrible pressures of poverty and isolation. My mother who lived close by was a classic sociopath and would be unreliable and cruel. One minute loving us - the next minute labelling us as a millstone around her neck. In the long term I would not manage to keep my family together, although I had tried. She would in time conspire with my first husband to snatch my kids - her reasons being she felt it was wrong for a trans person to be around children and she felt that the 5 or six days I spent with Angela (working for her company actually) were tantamount to neglect, despite her being close by and the children ALWAYS having a babysitter they knew and I knew was caring and responsible. Her diabolical plan to get the kids removed backfired as he took the children to Ireland and went to great lengths to stop all of us seeing the children. The anger I feel rages inside and the children are never out of my mind, the loss is a constant distraction and forgiveness is impossible.
ANYWAY, I digress - I discovered that my boyfriend, the cross-dresser Stephan was a member of a website called TVCHIX, a forum for chat, sexual meets and also simply making friends with people from all walks of life, but the one connecting factor of TVCHIX was that all 90 thousand members were either affected by trans issues, attracted to third gender people or seeking friends who could help them understand transgenderism. It was a cyber town with its seedy side and it's supportive respectable side. just like life, "different strokes for different folks" I joined to surprise Stephan (Judy).....and support him I liked TVCHIX, I could not see that I had anything special to offer anyone but was inundated with offers of friendship and a lot of people wanted to date me, much to my astonishment! To cut a long story short, I was befriended by Angela, who was in the throws of leaving a marriage that had been split apart by Angela's desire to dress and love en femme. Her marriage had been effectively dead for many years before we became close. It was no one's fault.
Angela was to discover and reveal to me that Stephan was married.
I ended the relationship and in time Angela and I started dating despite a geographical distance of 200 miles and her reluctance to get involved with my children. I did not expect anyone to take on my kids. At the time it compounded my sense of worthlessness but I had no intention of returning the children to their fathers, I intended to wait until the eldest children went to University, living with anyone was out of question until the kids were bigger. I doubt that Angela and I would have stayed together but in time fate made me swallow the bitterest pill, when my mother had my two eldest kids taken away from me. She regrets it now - but it's too late.
As time passed and Angela and I used to see each other every other weekend, usually at my house, she would bring her daughter to visit, we slowly fell in love. Initially our connection was fine dining, friendship and very adventurous and liberating sex, and slowly it turned into a complete and very balanced relationship. We knew withing months of sleeping together that Angela was clearly transgendered and not a transvestite, she did not dress as a woman for kicks she dressed as a woman because it felt right. We deliberated long and hard and we knew she would have to transition, I had no desire to live as a lesbian, but always knew that it would be impossible to separate from this vibrant and unique person.
She was and still is vivid, talkative, at time melancholy, highly intelligent, thrill seeking, youthful, hot.... generous and loyal.
So about a year ago she started taking feminising hormones, she went to work as a woman and together as she changed, we agreed we would discuss every feeling, good and bad, thrash it out and very simply take each day as it came. I am no stranger to derision, I have been proud to live in communities of marginalised people, gays and people with disability's. In fact, sometimes in this world it can feel safer to be an outsider looking in. The real world of suburbia, is too often a facade, a painted screen that conceals grim and sordid truths.
As Angela fitted into her new female skin it was decided that she would undergo Facial Feminisation Surgery.... AND THIS IS A BLOW BY BLOW ACCOUNT OF THAT UNIQUE EXPERIENCE.
July 30th
We are flying to Spain tomorrow for Angela's Facial Feminisation Surgery, it will be the last of her savings. It's a huge financial gamble dependent on us working like Navvies when she recovers.
Sometimes Angela expresses concerns that I will not stay as her transition progresses and we wonder how I will adapt to her increasing feminisation. I have no idea how I will respond but I would rather be with her than without her.
I once sat in a down at heel, rather grim Blackpool guesthouse with an old flame, Judy, it was just about the last time we met, and I told her that Angela, her nemesis, was not a simple cross-dresser but actually a transgendered person and that she was going to make the change from male to female....it would involve hormones, voice training, living full time as a woman....surgery.... Judy was shocked and emotional, holding my hands she tried to warn me. She felt that my life had been hard and that I needed stability and normality... a regular family life if you like. Her eyes glistened with tears, she felt I was making a mistake. Life with a transitioning transsexual was not going to be easy. Glancing around the kitsch and slightly garish day room, I felt so sad and torn apart... all I could assert to Judy was that I was going to stay with Angela and not let her down, I could not say what the future held, or whether, we would ever actually even live together, I was just a body adrift in a fast moving current, I was going to have to surrender to the forces that surrounded me and only stand when I found myself ashore. I was fearful but hopeful. Something glued Angela and I together, a shared sense of loyalty, truthfulness...I had no choice. It was sad but it was right and truly hopeful. Judy would be OK, she had her wife and family, I on the other hand was looking to the future and all I could see was a huge multi coloured sign that read
Angela's Magical Mystery Tour
Marvellous Adventures guaranteed enroute
Destination unknown!
At that point, in the late summer of 2009, I did not see that, My Mum would go bonkers, my eldest kids would jump ship and Angela and I would move in together.
So where are we now? I haven't spoken to the kids since March, they do not have a phone. I get messages on a social networking site but I don't know if they are from my son as I know my 1st husband intercepts their mail. I think they are from my eldest son and he is refusing to see me as my mother turned up in Dublin and did her psycho-Nan routine in the street. The Garda were called, she is a nuisance and she upsets everybody.
What am I going to do about the kids? I am going to wait, I refuse to get involved with litigation, drama, back stabbing. I know the kids love me and they know I love them, and for now if they need to reject me because of Angela, what can I do? They went? They were old enough to make their own decisions. It torments me but what can I do? I have no money for lawyers... and Angela is on the edge of bankruptcy. We have two years of very hard work to get things seriously back on track.
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