I saw this terrible Pride police car a few weeks ago at Yonge and College but it was turning a corner way too fast for me to take a pic and prove it wasn’t a pinkwashed fever dream. But today on the way to my massage I spotted it on Church street. Just sitting there, empty, trying to look like a friendly fixture of the gay village. Suspish. It’s got lights on it so it’s clearly used to go to emergency situations and not just driving around to make the Toronto Police department look good. It looks ridiculous. My massage therapist said probably a bunch of white gays are happy about it somewhere ha ha. Oh my god.

Anyway this post isn’t all about how ridiculous the Pride police car is.

I actually wanted to write here because I was talking in therapy about being sad about people who basically left my life either just before or at the beginning of my transition and how I’m a whole different person since then. I don’t know if I am a better person. I am a happier person though and I feel really good about my body now and I feel more confident and just, yeah a whole different person. I’m not saying these people left my life because of my transition though. In all cases it was regarding other things. Like, one was a miscommunication because I got angry at her for not vaccinating and said “I can’t talk to you right now!” because I got annoyed but I guess she heard “I can’t talk to you ever!” because she blocked me on everything and disappeared. Another was my ex and we don’t need to talk about that anymore. Another was a different ex who I think got pissed at me because I got concerned about her telling me she was alone at Christmas and I asked if her partner broke up with her and anyway THAT WAS A BAD THING TO ASK even though I was genuinely concerned and not trying to be a troll. Anyway she refused to talk to me for months and then I finally texted her to say I was transitioning and she said congratulations and that was basically the last time she talked to me. She still technically follows me on Twitter and Instagram but honestly I think she probably muted me and just forgot to unfollow because she does not ever see anything or say anything. I tried to send her a message at Christmas and she never replied and I don’t even know if she has the same phone number.

ANYWAY as you can see none of those reasons for not talking to me has to do with me being trans. But it sucks anyway. I don’t know, except for the ex we don’t need to talk about again, the other two were people I’d known for decades. So them not talking to me sucks, it’s like losing part of my history or something. EXCEPT the person they knew was kind of not real. Like I know I had a whole life before I transitioned. But in a lot of ways I was not who I am now.

At the Flaherty Seminar Angelo Madsen Minax was saying something about being a different person after transition and Steve Reinke was saying “No you’re the same person.” They kind of argued ha ha. And honestly I can kind of see how both things are true. Like, I think the core of me was always who I am now. But obviously outer appearances changed and various things changed for me internally both mentally and how I physically inhabit my body now. Like I have more energy and feel more clear and am able to have casual sex which was something I was so bad at before. And I’m stronger which probably helps my confidence. It’s a different body than I had before. I have prostate tissue now! That’s a trip. I have a small dick. I have more muscles. My shape is different and I can eat way more food.

So I guess it’s just kind of a sorrow at never being able to be who I really am with those three people in particular, because they were so close to me at one point in my life before I was more myself. I could even say I loved them all even though all that happened. But I’ve exhausted my avenues of trying to repair those relationships. So that sucks. I guess they’ll never really know the real me. That sounds so dramatic but it’s true. And it’s not even like being sad the exes aren’t lovers with me, because for at least one of them that’s not what I want again. It’s more just not being able to be friends that sucks. Like, I thought I was pretty solid with all of those people at the time. And I wasn’t. And in a lot of ways I have nothing to apologize for to make things up with them, which is annoying. Like, in some ways some of them need to apologize to me. And that sucks.

I had a friend who flipped out on me and had like, some kind of breakdown, and said a LOT of ugly things. And then she tried to be friends with me again and I tried but she would NOT apologize and I had to walk away for good because her behaviour had just been so over the top and I couldn’t let someone do that and come back into my life without apologizing. It sucked but it had to be done. I was asking for so little after she had basically tried to singlehandedly dismantle my self esteem in a really misplaced rage. It was depressing she couldn’t even do that. But that friend was a terf anyway so its just as well we don’t talk.

Yeah. I hate feeling sad about losing people but that’s life I guess. I did try to mend things with all of them and was rebuffed every time. And I can’t always be the one reaching out. And obviously I don’t mean much to them because none of them reached out to me. There was a fourth person I kicked out of my life near the beginning of my transition but that was because that person was extremely abusive and I needed to do it for my safety. So that person definitely has to stay out of my life. But the three mentioned above are just kind of sad for me to lose. But I’ve lost them already.

It’s just depressing to see how short life truly can be and realize I may never speak to these people again. Like, I don’t even think they know what my voice sounds like anymore. That is TRIPPY! I literally sound different. When people hug me I feel different. And these people are just going to be nursing a grudge against a person who doesn’t even exist anymore. Legally my name is different and I know probably only one of them for sure knows what my name is now.

BUT ALSO…maybe they weren’t very good people for me if this is how it all played out. Maybe some goodbyes are really GOOD byes. Even if they hurt.