When Trans Friends Disappear

Sorry about my absence last month, folks. I’ve had a lot of really bad events hit bim-bam. I wrote about them on my blog. My mum passed after a long battle with Alzheimer’s, and two weeks later, my wife told me she’s divorcing me after 31 years together. So my mood has been extremely depressed.

Add to that, the deaths of several friends this past month, all due to natural causes. That’s what I want to write about. You see, one of the friends who died a few weeks back was a closeted transgender woman. I’ll call her Anna. Some would say she was a crossdresser or a dabbler or whatever, but I include them under our transgender umbrella. She wasn’t out to her now widow, but was out to her first wife. In fact, she started HRT for a while. Things with her first wife fell apart, and Anna moved to Los Angeles, where she was full time for a short time. Then, that fell apart too.

Anna moved again, fell in love, and married again. This wife didn’t know about Anna at all, and never would. Anna then went on Second Life and lived out her feminine life there as a busty bimbo. She never dressed again. A few weeks back, she died very suddenly.

And so Anna passed into memory. Like so many of us, her memory is held by only her sisters who knew her. So many of us hide who we are and then when we go, who knows we passed? My dear friend Katie died a year ago, and friends cleaned out her house before her family could discover decades worth of her Truth. She is buried under her male name, her feminine self only known to her sisters.

I guess my point is that so many of us through the ages have lived in fear of discovery and so when we pass, our feminine sides are unknown and unremembered. Yet, these were the times when they felt most alive — living their Truth. So many live in fear, and discovery is definitely something to be scared about — it destroys lives, even today. Transition is discovery writ large. Transition destroyed my life.

So, next time you have a drink, in whatever guise, please raise a glass to Katie, to Anna, and to all of those whose names we never knew or had a chance to learn.

Be well.

Tags: closeted, featured, Transgender, Transition

Category: All TGForum Posts, Transgender Body & Soul