Okay, finally, Christmas is over. Finals are done. Now my tired little brain can start back on the seemingly oppressive ordeal at hand. The general state of my life. Lovely.

  To be fair, they're days when I handle it with unnatural grace, but today isn't one of those. Now, I could ramble on on here about what's going on, without cluing everyone in to the details that make this a very strange and unusual situation. It's taken some time to ponder doing just that, but I have made up my mind to be very open about this, partly in case someone else that's going thru this may read my postings and may help them. A second reason is that while my husband has a pretty good support group of friends at work, my online friends are about it for me.

  My husband is transgendered. He came to this realization about a year ago. What all this means is that he is male in body only. His mind and soul are female. I know it has been incredibly hard on him to admit this to himself and to me and I don't envy him, at all. But I can't even begin to explain what this does to me. Since he is going thru his (at this point, I should be getting used to saying 'her') transition, I have to find out within myself, how this will affect our relationship. He (er, I mean she) is very understanding of my position, to the point of openly saying that he/she will not hold any ill feelings for me if I can't 'hang'. Just as long as we remain friends, at least.

  Now, we have spent alot of long nights talking this thru and we have both decided that we will remain roommates, at least until I finish with college. If I want to date, that's fine with, er, her. In fact she's encouraging it, since I've always been, well, a bit of a wallflower. And I agree. What makes this so hard, is that we had a good marriage, never a cross word between us, despite my shifting moods (A cancer here. Crabby and moods that change with the tides.) And a still love him. I know that the soul will remain the same and, ultimately, that's what I feel in love with.  But, I don't think I can deal with this, not to the point of remaining in a committed relationship. It's not that the thought of, in essence, being lesbian, but I don't think I can adjust to being the 'male' of the house, for one. It's very evident that she is very 'girly', the diva, as I call her, far more than I am.

   It's just hard some days to know and have to accept that 'he' is slowly disappearing, never to be seen again. The man that I feel in love with, the one that kept me from becoming another statistic because of a violent boyfriend. The perfect gentleman that stole my heart. My shining knight in a shining black pickup truck. Now, I have a great friend, but I don't know if it'll ever be more than that between us. It's sort of funny. So many people, men and women alike, have marveled that I didn't pack my bags and bug out when he told me. That's just not my style, I'm too darn stubborn to give up on me or anybody else. In some ways, I wish I could, just walk out and leave all this behind and get on with healing the pain, but I won't give up on her. She needs me, someone there when she goes thru all this, all the emotion and issues that will arise from this. Maybe, after her transition is complete, then I can think about me.

  Meanwhile, life goes on. As soon as I can get someone in this one-horse town to hire me, we'll move into a bigger place, mainly so we can then have separate bedrooms and I can start adjusting to being single. Maybe part of what makes this so hard is that it pretty much forces me to look at myself. Not the outward appearance that everyone sees, but the person that stares back at me from the mirror. It's bone chilling to ask who she is, what does she stand for and you don't really know the answer. All my life, I've seen to everyone else, from my family (The very ones who cast me off like yesterday's newspaper, simply because I wouldn't bend to their rules) to the friends that ended up stabbing me in the back, to my husband. I've gladly been a housewife since we've been married, putting myself on the back burner in the name of his career and family. But now, who else can I put ahead of me? The dogs, maybe? For the first time in my 31 years, I can make decisions based on what's best for me, the devil with what anyone else wants or thinks best for them. I think that scares me as much as the thought of losing my husband in this. I've always been the support for so many, but I'm not needed in that role, not anymore.  I guess the best why to describe my feelings, is that I feel like I live in one of those snowglobes. Life has turned it upside down and shook it, violently. Now, all that remains is to wait and see where all the snow falls to.

  Okay, I've rambled on long enough and to say the least, this has drained me. So, I think it's time to put in a Docter Who DVD and get lost in the TARDIS...