When Love and Communication Don’t Agree

Dawn and Hannah

The reason I really wanted to sit down and put my thoughts out there and to that end it is to give what I feel like is an open and honest account of the life we live, as Hannah and I traverse her journey from Mannah to Hannah. I wanted to do this so that people can see that there are positives and that although extremely traumatic to the people in their lives as well as themselves, that being transgender isn’t a bad thing. That being with someone who is transgender isn’t strange. That at its base level love is blind and we can’t choose who we love or who loves us, but that we can choose how to react to it. Which brings me to this…

We are human beings that are wonderfully interchangeable. We come in many colors, shapes, sizes, looks, textures, smells, and tastes. That is just our bodies, you add in our minds, our personalities, our beliefs, and our behavior and you see just how unique each one of us can be. Other than simply beautiful, there should be no other labels.

I don’t really keep up with politics and I don’t watch television, so I miss out on quite a bit of what goes on around me in the world. I do occasionally read the news online, but I’ve found that there is way too much focus on so many of the wrong things that I am just angered by the world that I live in. I know ignorance really isn’t bliss and it is more avoidance, but I don’t care. I am too much of a realist and too paranoid in real life to just add to the misery that most people focus on. It is my choice to wear Rainbow colored glasses. It is my choice to believe that I live in a world where people see in color.

So, as it turns out, living with Hannah has been a real eye opener for me. I know that no matter what life throws at me, I can take it. I will be honest though and tell you that sometimes I don’t take it well. This last month has been tasking for both of us and it came close to feeling like maybe Hannah and I weren’t really going be able to work through. We both were clinging to hurt feelings, misunderstandings, and we were both behaving in a way that pushed each other away as well as trying to protect ourselves from hurt.

It is always the little things that make or break a situation and our little things were stacking up, and I was admittedly doing all the wrong things trying to figure out what had happened. Navigating the ups and downs of a person is hard. Intermingle hormones, uncertainty, guilt, and shame and someone who doesn’t know how to open up, and it is even more challenging. Somewhere along the way, I lost my patience and I didn’t realize it. But I did realize that in the process of trying to make Hannah comfortable, I was losing sight of myself, and started trying to reclaim that.

Hannah and I hit an ugly stage in our relationship and it didn’t seem like it was going to be something either of us were willing to overcome. Maybe willing isn’t the word, unable to find the right approach to the issues at hand is really where we were, both of us reacting to the other in a way that the other thought was right, but wrong nonetheless – causing a bigger divide. Communication is so fundamental, but understanding how each other speaks is a really big obstacle. Especially if you have spent your whole life not communicating.

After a good month of misunderstandings, hurt feelings, uncertainty of what the end of the day will bring, something finally snapped into place and things that needed to be said were said, and we have moved on quite nicely. Today, we were discussing meeting her children, something I have yet to have the privilege of doing, how I thanked my kids for being so accepting of Hannah and how proud I am of them for being so awesome, and about her upcoming birthday, which will bring us to a full year of Hannah. It is amazing what a year can bring, and although it is still has a couple of months left, this year has quite changed my life forever.

Tags: featured, Identity, Transition

Category: Transgender Body & Soul