The Night My Egg Began To Crack
It's the fall of 2021. I knew something was up with my gender identity but I was not sure exactly what that meant. I got on a waiting list to see the person who ended up being my therapist. My wife and I knew…something. I had an identification with femininity. I knew that a part of me did not feel complete unless I could present in a feminine manner. But I really didn't know what that meant. I had an enormous collection of women's clothing. I do a lot in life logically, but this wasn't logical at all. I had been presenting feminine at times in the privacy of my house but not around my kids. I had a work colleague that I came close to telling about this. But tell her…what exactly? I had trouble putting language to it.
In December of 2021, I had dinner with a friend of mine who was half my age. We both work in IT and are involved with the same non-profit. For a while, I was trying to find a way to hire her in my day job, but things didn't work out and she got a job at a consulting firm. She was set up well. So, we are at dinner, and whenever we get together we tend to talk for an extended period. We're certainly from different generations, but have just always been on the same wave lengh on things.
So we are at dinner, and we're talking about all parts of life, and she starts talking about her relationship. She's been dating her partner for years. This is when she starts telling me that her partner has transitioned and is a transgender woman. Um, wow. This is absolutely incredible. I start hearing about her, her partner, and her life, and I am absolutely transfixed. How is this possible? How could someone possibly transition and start living as a woman? This is certainly not what I anticipated we'd be talking about at dinner. How is her relationship solid through such a major change? As we're talking, I have this charge going through me, like I'm really alive for the first time in my life. I can't imagine what it takes for someone to just walk away from all the expectations placed upon them. How do you do that? How is my friend someone who is in a romantic relationship and she stays with someone through such a major change while holding down a high powered job in corporate America at 24? HOW IS HER LIFE EVEN POSSIBLE?
This night was certainly the beginning of my egg cracking*. I had such deep internalized shame about who I was. Facing that shame head on was not something I was ready to confront. But here in front of me was a young woman who I had a great amount of respect for, who's partner transitioned and she was committed to staying with her partner. The gender change wasn't something that appeared to phase her. So she's now engaged to a woman after transition, so what? She's still attracted to her partner. I was completely blown away. It's December of 2021 and I am 48 years old, but this is the first time I see an example in my own life where someone I know has a path forward out and trans.
At dinner, for the first time in my life, I start talking about who I am to someone other than my wife. I certainly didn't have an appreciation for who I was yet, and my end of the conversation was very tactical. But I start telling her about my clothes collection. I really wasn't experimenting much with makeup, because I had to be ready to change my appearance at a moment's notice. I might have to hop onto a video call or my kids could come home and I really didn't know how to take makeup off quickly. In my mind, I was completely comfortable with this dual existence. In retrospect, it's obvious that Veronica needed to come out. It was just terrifying to talk about. How did I even talking about this in a restaurant in my town? How did I tell this to a young woman that I have so much respect for? I know she's partnered up with someone who is trans, but how would she ever have any respect for me again? I didn't respect this part of myself, so how could someone else respect me?
This evening that we shared absolutely changed the course of my life. It was no longer theoretical that someone could be transgender. Someone could actually transition and their partner could still love them. All my life I wanted to live differently and had settled for less than half a life. But now, I can never think that society has put the notion of transition out of reach for me. The work is on my end to start to come to terms with this.
A postscript to this evening. Over the next year, we worked closely together in the non-profit. I still very much struggled with respecting myself for who I was in late 2022. Near the end of the year, here comes my friend who is so sure that I can help her grow her career that she starts working for me. That goes well beyond her having respect for me, she has full trust in me. I still didn't trust myself enough to live as I needed to and she puts a big part of her future into my hands because she has that much trust in me. I exited 2022 with still only three people knowing who I really was - my wife, my therapist, and my friend. I think she knows what a positive influence she was on my life, but I don't know if she knows just how influential that night and our friendship has been on my ability to get here. I can't imagine being here without that dinner in December of 2021. She has been supporting and cheering me on the whole time, and for that I am so grateful.
*In the transgender community, when someone says their egg cracked, it means that they realized that they are transgender or nonbinary, and that there is no way they can go back to their former life.