#i truly don't remember if i've seen this done before but

[always-been-aubrey]

"I tried not to think of you but you distract me."

😔

This feeling comes over me more here lately, thinking about my best friend and first crush.

I know you've probably read some of my recollections of being with Chip, but I don't know that I've shared that he was killed in a car accident his freshman year in college, and the pain of losing him so suddenly still grabs and stabs at my heart here some fifty years later...

Oh, sure, I can fantasize about what it would-a, could-a, should-a been like - despite knowing 1,000% that nothing would-a, could-a come from my actually telling him who I was and how I felt - this was the mid-'70's after all, and rural north Georgia - the culture was SO different both there and even in the "big city" of Atlanta thirty-plus miles away...

Transgenderism was called "transsexualism," Christine Jorgensen was the only one I'd heard about having a "sex change" operation, and that she'd had to go to Europe for that, and the only article I found - quite by accident one night while babysitting for a nurse - was in a medical journal, and despite its clinical descriptions and telling of what it meant and what it would take to what we call "surgically transition" today, I felt a million light bulbs go off inside me as I realized first that I wasn't unique, and secondly what I felt and knew about myself was true... not that it made being able to talk about it any easier... but it did let me know - give me "permission" - to feel what I felt for Chip even if I couldn't express it to him directly...

Please note - the following may be triggering and/or a bit graphic/NSFW and/or might be unintentionally "rude" or seen as possibly insulting (though I'll do my best) - please read accordingly... or skip down to the next indentation...

That brief article also put to rest the wrestling going on within me - it was "comforting" to realize I wasn't gay or even bi (and no disrespect intending to my sisters and brothers who are - remember, this was 50 years ago...), but that my feelings weren't "same-sex" attraction, but truly "heterosexual" - I was a teenage girl at the time who found him, and other guys, cute and attractive and, because I was seen and treated as a guy and expected to behave as one, got to see them in the "all-together" in locker rooms and showers (I'll just leave it at that...)

Of course, by this time, I'd already acted on some of these feelings and attractions - experimented I believe was the term that would've been used then - and found some of it contradictorily right and wrong at the same time... but the few times after that, when I "relaxed into" my girlhood/womanhood, these contradictions disappeared and only resurfaced when my partner treated me (or expected me to treat him) as the guy/man he thought I was...

You may now "safely" return to the rest of this post... thank you for your understanding...

And so when Mom came in that bright, sunny morning to tell me what had happened the night before, the sun went immediately behind the only cloud in the sky, and to this day, despite the slow recovery it took me to get over his loss, it still presents itself in many subtle and bittersweet ways... some regret, of course, given what I've learned and done since then, that I'd not known or been able to act on, but also some strength and courage to embrace who I am, how I got here, and share - mindful of the costs to both of us - with others how I truly feel, and, most importantly, who I truly am...

...and there is so much more to come...

Ho provato a non pensarti ma tu mi distrai.

Eric Berardi

[kukekakuningaskris]