Sunday, February 24, 2008

Pictures of you, pictures of me

I've been cleaning out portions of my room in stages. Today, I tackled one of my closets. I organized a number of athletic gear, threw out a ton of stuff, and then sorted through a few boxes. One of these boxes contained letters from my past:
  • A summer letter exchange with a New York girl I met online in the infancy of the internet IM system of the early 90's.
  • An exchange with a high school friend fighting in the Gulf War of the late 80's / early 90's.
  • High school friends that moved away.
  • A letter from a woman I had a fling with before I moved to California.
  • High school graduation items.
Most of these letters were sent before email really caught on.

They were, of course, all addressed to my previous name. I am part pack rat, but I've been getting better. Perhaps part of me was afraid to throw away those last remaining things I hold from my boy years...things that indicate the male curtain in front of the one woman show.

I tossed them all away. Well, except for the one letter from the fling...I held on to it, and placed it safely away in an old box of photos.

3 comments:

Kelly said...

I've found that I have a very hard time getting rid of things from my past. I know that a lot of girls do everything in their power to deny the past, but I'm not one of them. I was never unhappy as Greg, just confused, and I'm grateful for everything that Greg did to get me to this point in my life.

Sometimes, when I look back at my baby pictures, or ones from my pre-teen years, I'll just go into horrible fits of crying. It's like I'm mourning for this person that no longer exists. I almost want to say "I'm sorry" to the little boy that stares back at me, like I've totally disappointed him.

I know I'm the same person, but from time to time, when I look in the mirror, it's like I'm looking at someone that I do not know. Maybe I'm crazy to have this kind of disconnect, I don't know, but the whole thing often makes me very, very sad.

Does this make any sense at all?

Kara said...

Don't get me wrong...I still have a number of items from the boy years. Most of them are tucked away somewhere...uhh...pun not intended.

I mourned the loss of "the boy" right before going full time. I think it lasted about 10-15 minutes, then I was over it. Strange, I know.

You're also not the first person that has mentioned not knowing the person they see in the mirror after FFS. People have asked me that in panels, too, whether it felt strange to see someone else staring back. I actually embraced the new me fairly fast, although, ya know, it takes like 3 months to heal from FFS, and well, yeah, it was a little rough there initially.

Kelly said...

You know, when I do look in the mirror, I really don't see any physical changes, my FFS just didn't work out for some reason, but more of a lost soul if you will. I know this sounds depressing and all, but when I look in the mirror or at a recent picture of me, I just don't see any life in those eyes, and because of that, I really don't know who I'm looking at.

Most transsexuals would say just the opposite, that before transition, they were lifeless and the opposite afterwards. I really do hate to say it, but my life was better before this and there are a lot of days where I just want this to be all over. Right at this very moment, I want my old life back and that seems to bet the case more often than naught.

My Spring Break is just 5 weeks away and thus my deadline is just 5 weeks away. It either all ends that week and I go back to being Greg or I make the commitment to never look back. I'm not even sure why I'm waiting, if it hasn't worked after 4 years, 5 weeks isn't going to make a difference.