A Letter to Young Halle

One of the hazards of connecting here in Blogistan, is the large amount of time that one can spend traveling the world, reading and thinking over the diverse ways our sister (and brother) -hood deals with the reality of trans-ness. It is truly rich.

Last night Bree posted ‘wonderful interaction’, an account of one back and forth in a cycle of email contacts with a correspondent who hopes that by sharing what she now knows it might help Bree in her own life choices. Bree hoped her post would inspire comments. As one of my grandparents might have said,  “ it’s to laugh! Have I got a comment for you!”. Her correspondent’s purpose in writing resonates with me. It is in fact one of the main reasons this blog exists, so yes I have a comment as it appears having run through Halle’s filter of self-examination.

I find it amazing how we struggle to intellectually reason away this ‘problem’ of trans-ness we find ourselves caught in. Our culture has created the myth that what we experience is just something we have invented in our minds. We spend a lifetime burying it, in one way or another. A truly fascinating book (for all of us, not likely for the rest of the population) would be a collection of the multitude of ways gender-queers of the world have distracted themselves from their other selves through a lifetime of denial.

If only one good thing comes from all of these electron exchanges here in Blogistan, it might be from the effect it has on the young of our sisterhood, reading the stories we share.

I know my life path would have been different had a chorus of voices spoken to me at the age of fifteen or so, of the futility of denial. Speaking of the young, the worst effect of that resulting change of life path might be the loss of the children, born and raised by two loving parents who will never meet and procreate. Our gene pool will be changed for the worse I believe, since there are no more loving, caring people that I have ever met in my life than those who share this bond and their mates who struggle to continue to love them in the best way they can.

As concerned as I am for our young selves, deep in denial, it is their future spouses whose lives might be bound up by it that deserve a large dose of concern. While we can argue up and down that ours benefited from a loving person who cared for them and did their best, there is little arguing the fact that they believed the person they were with was a man, and they deserved to know that was not true. It is the nature of denial that is as complete as that demanded by our society that even we did not dare to contemplate that our self-deception was not a true banishing of the girl within. If we had been warned, as only those who have traveled this road can warn, maybe it would have spared these loving spouses the grief of our death (or at the best, alteration) to become a woman. At the very least, we could have informed that loved one of the truth as we see it from hindsight.

An alternate title for my blog might have been ‘Letters to Young Halle’.

I now acknowledge that she did exist, even though I did all that intellect and ‘good common sense’ of that time could help me do, to push her thoroughly away.  I got rid of her so that the man could emerge and take charge of a life that was clearly floundering in a sea of mindless bigotry toward the gender queer of that world

You have been given the gift of our stories. Try to be true to yourself.

Hugs,

Halle