Life is a journey we all take, and every journey winds us down a different road. Some are more treacherous than others. Others think they have a hard road until they meet someone else. I’m a believer that you control the road to your own destiny… to a certain point. You can choose which road to go down, but those roads both lead you to the same point, which is your ultimate destiny… who you are and who you were meant to be. The journey you choose is simply the experiences you go through to get there. I’ve never thought my journey was one of the more difficult ones. Interesting, yes, but never one that threw me into circumstances I couldn’t handle or felt harshly defined me in some way. Nothing ever made me stop in my tracks and wonder if I was going to make it all the way down this road and make me question if I should have chosen another route.
Recently, though, I met someone who has had a more difficult journey and has had many instances, it seems, to choose the easy or hard path. She’s a recent transgender, and we’ll call her Jenn for purposes of talking here. When I met her, I knew she was a transgender, but I had no idea how she got there, nor how far along she was. I had lots of questions, though… you see transgenders on shows like Jerry Springer, but most aren’t like that. Then you have the recent publicity of Chaz Bono, which gave the transgender community even more of a spotlight. But I don’t think most jump into the spotlight – they just go about things as who they feel they were meant to be.
Needless to say, I had so many questions going through my mind that I was curious about with Jenn. But I hardly knew her and wasn’t about to ask. Never actually meeting anyone who was a transgender (either way), I was very intrigued and just wanted to know more. And since I never knew her before she was Jenn, I had no idea what she used to be like in terms of what brought her to go through such a life change so far into her life. Though it was clear she had an amazing support network based off the spurts of conversations we had in our little group.
Then I discovered she had a blog. Oh, the world of blogging, where you can ramble about whatever you want and have no idea who will eventually see it. But reading about her life since the full coming out as a female, as well as some of her stories about growing up, were like a novel I couldn’t put down. She has been through so much and growing up in a relatively small town made it even more so. It gave me all the perspective I wanted with the questions that were going through my mind upon our first meeting. Some of the internal battles she dealt with growing up, knowing from such a young age that things just weren’t right. Some of the initial battles with the outside world from small town ‘townies’ that just didn’t get it. Even following ‘standard protocol’, getting married and having a child (who’s now grown). I was most impressed about how supportive her wife was through it all – the extreme support of a spouse that shows why you marry your best friend in the first place.
In my opinion, she should turn all of these posts into a book. I know there are a lot of people out there like me that are just curious, but either don’t know anyone, or know anyone well enough to strike up a conversation of, “hey, why did you decide change you gender?” I knew there was a story behind it. But you never know if it’s a story they want to share, or if they’re of the opinion of, “That’s my past life and I want it to stay that way – in the past.” One thing I can say for sure is that it takes a very strong person to take that step and decide that it’s time to fully commit and change to the other gender. But then I also think it takes a strong person just to be in the shoes of someone that feels like that… to have to hide that side of your personality and only let it out in bursts, often in private… I can’t imagine having to live like that.
So I don’t know if Jenn will ever actually read this. But like her blog, mine is just as public. I hope if she ever does, though, she knows that her journey, though tough, is actually quite inspirational and I hope she continues to stand proud, as she has been. If anyone knows how a journey leads you to who you were meant to be, it is her. And she’s also one that knows how the roads you chose make you stronger along the way.
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