Tag: Annie

Entry #43: Safety

It did not take long after Annie and I met before I learned of her fear for her own safety.

The stories that she shared about Ellen and her growing up and facing the world, forced me to take notice of the world around me in ways that I never anticipated.

I made sure that whenever we were out together, I would always be sure to scan the faces of those around us, and ensure that no one ever got too close as to make her uncomfortable.

But, it was the time alone with her while she was sleeping, which I found to cause me to worry more than I could explain. I loved to lay and watch her sleeping, lay my head down on her chest so I could listen to her heart. However, inevitably my thoughts would focus in on what else could I do to ensure her safety. I knew that there was a lot of discrimination in this country, but I had never had to deal with it on a personal level before. Hours would go by some nights while I wrestled with the fact that her fears had now become mine.

Short of leaving the country to make a life together in a safer place, there did not seem to be any other viable solutions. Over time, we discussed this and made our plans. Plans that we were never able to complete.

So, here I am, 12 years and seven months later. Over the years since her passing, I haven’t given a lot of thought about the state of the country. And yet, while there has been much progress regarding equality and the struggle for many groups to find a voice and be heard, it seems like every week I hear of more murders committed against people of color for no other reason than hate.

To be sure, Annie was part of that group. Although the terminology has changed over the years, make no mistake that the hate and discrimination that might have been more subtle back in those days, is still with us and the current regime in this country now advocates outright violence for their extremist followers.

The regular murders of transgender women of color in this country is sickening and heartbreaking. I don’t have a magic wand to come up with a solution. All I have is my memories of Annie and yes, Ellen, and wonder what their lives could have become were they still here.

From where I sit, if something major does not change after this election, then I honestly have to wonder if this country can survive to ensure true equality. More and more, I come to the conclusion that his country no longer holds value to me if there is no equality. Canada is calling, once the borders are open again. Leave or stay. Whichever I decide, my memories of Annie will always be with me.

Just a thought…

Entry #42: Fear

Recently, a reader asked me what my motivation is to write this blog. I can sum it up in one word.

Fear.

As we all get older, many people encounter cognitive and mental acuity issues, dementia and more. So, being in control of my mental faculties, at least for the moment, this blog addresses my fears of losing that control at some point. You see…I remember absolutely everything about Annie, so I put these memories down in writing, just in case the day comes when I cannot remember.

I remember everything…

Her laugh

Her beauty

Her fashion

Her strengths

Her weaknesses and vulnerabilities

Her desire to be accepted and loved and her fear of not being accepted and loved

Her smell

Her taste

Every single inch of her body

How she looks when she is sleeping

Her ability to communicate with me through simple glances

The list is endless right now and my fear is that the memory list may get shorter as I get older.

So…I write…

Entry #39: 12 Years

In  just 10 days, the anniversary of Annie’s passing will be upon me.

I find it impossible to face the fact that it has been so long. Not a day goes by that I do not think about her. The most mundane of things I observe at any given time will make me think of sharing what I am seeing at the moment.

I have read so many articles on grief and moving on, that at times my head spins. The hard truth of the matter is, I cannot move on. One result of not being able to deal with her death, is the fact that I gave up drinking alcohol in any form.

Failure to drink alcoholic beverages has managed to keep most of my demons at bay, except in the rare occasion where I forget and actually take a drink when out with friends. It only takes one. One drink and the depression and darkness overwhelms me and all I can think of is Annie, even while still being among other people. Immediately, my demeanor changes and I must find a way to graciously make an exit. When this darkness roars back, I am in no mood to engage with anyone.

Twelve years without her. Twelve years without intimacy because I am simply afraid that nothing and no one can ever replace what we had together. How could I ever share the baggage I carry with anyone else? Would anyone else care? Would anyone else not run in the other direction, should they find out? My silence, my darkness I find to be the safest of places.

Twelve years without her has made me into a different person. I don’t enjoy large crowds and most of the time I am quite content to be solitary and alone with my thoughts. I listen more than I speak, and I suppose most people think of me as rather indifferent due to my lack of engagement in what I perceive to be inane conversation. Just another piece of baggage I carry with me.

As the date gets closer, I will close myself off to more and more people. It is just what I do. Right now I will be thinking of her and make plans to visit one of the favorite places we shared together. Spending the day in one of her favorite places won’t eliminate my funk, but it will grant me a few hours of pleasure, just by reliving our mutual love for that place.

Many writers and other people just say to move on and get over it when dealing with this type of grief. In my case, the fact is I will never be able to get over it. I will never be able to get over the fact that Annie died without being able to experience what she worked her whole life to achieve. She was cheated out of the love that I have for her and the life we would have made together. In a world filled with hatred and dismissal of who she was, we had our own little bubble of safety and love that provided her and therefore myself with a peace that is lacking in the world even after all these years.

So here I wait for the anniversary of her death yet again, and I wonder how many more anniversaries I will see before I am able to join her.

Entry #38: Memories

Sometimes an every day observation can become a trigger of memories from the past.

Recently, I was out and about and happened to glance at a passing metro bus.

There was a young couple I could see through the window and it brought me back to a time when I had my first girl friend.

At the time, I was 15 and she was sixteen. I was a transfer student into a new school and knew no one. By the luck of the draw I entered into a biology class and was assigned a table and partner. 

I don’t think I grew up in a bubble, but the fact is that everyone I knew and saw at school was white. I didn’t know or have any non-white friends. Not purposely, but that’s where I lived.

So I was quite surprised to be paired up with an African American girl. As it turned out, we both hated the class and neither of us could grasp what the hell we were supposed to learn. 

She made the funniest faces constantly during class. Well, we hit it off and became friends. More than friends. I would walk her to home and school and we began to spend all our free time together. Within a few weeks we were inseparable.

We were young and naive and thought we were in love.  There were many trips around town on the bus together as neither of us were old enough to drive.

We loved to hang out at the beach and kiss and make out everywhere we went. This lasted well into the next  school year.

Laura was a petite little thing and while the teenage hormones raged in both of us, she never let me get past the heavy kissing part. I didn’t care, because all I wanted to do was be with her as many hours of the day as possible.

She never brought me to her house, nor did I bring her to mine.

A mixed race couple was taboo in those days and we knew neither of our families would approve.

So it happened one day that I went to meet her before school and she didn’t come out. No one answered the door. Not the next day or the next either. I showed up on the fourth day and was pounding on the door when a neighbor lady asked what I was doing there. I told her I was there to see Laura. The lady said matter of fact, they moved three days ago.

I was stunned and frantic. How could she just leave like that? Well, we had no cell phones, computers or Internet back then so it was impossible for me to find out what happened or where she had gone. She was just gone.

I would not see or hear from her again for over forty years.

When I met Annie I was so confused, I tried to do a little research and began writing a blog about our shared experiences. It became an outlet for me and Annie enjoyed reading it and then we tried to dissect everything we were experiencing. When Annie died, I decided that I could no longer look at all the things I had written and had shared with her. There was no longer any joy in those words.

It was quite a shock then, to receive an email from the blog only days before I intended to delete it all, from someone who claimed to be Laura from my high school days. Of course, I did not believe her for a minute, but in follow up emails, she told me things that in fact only she would know. So we began to correspond.

I had so many questions. Among them was, why was she reading my blog at all?  She said she had stumbled across it when doing some other reading, and after reading it all, she had a feeling it was written by me so she reached out.

Turns out, she was as lost as I was over her leaving. In fact, her father had seen us together more than once, and had decided without telling her that the family would move rather than let us keep seeing each other. I just could not understand and finally she admitted to me the reason. Her father feared for her safety and refused to believe I was a decent person. I continued to ask why and finally she admitted that she was transgender and knew this about herself for years before she met me. Not only did her parents not know what to do with that information, they tried to hide her away from anyone they did not know personally.

After they moved, within months she ran away. Eventually, she ended up in England, finished her education and began a career. Here it was forty plus years later and she has a successful career and had been living in Japan for over a decade. Laura said she is happy with her life and the choices she has made, is still single and has no desire to ever come back to this country. But, she said, she would love to meet me sometime. I said that would be difficult as I never travel to Japan.

Laura said there might be a solution. She was scheduled to speak at a conference in Canada in a couple of months, and would I be interested in meeting there? Once she gave me the dates, I could see I had some free days from the tour and agreed to meet her there.

Our visit was so good. She is still as petite as she was in high school and just as beautiful, although with a few more wrinkles like the rest of us. We talked for hours, and in the end I was so happy that she found me before I could delete the blog. I told her all about Annie and she already knew most of it from the blog I wrote.

We have stayed in touch since she went back to Japan. She really wants me to visit there. She said once I see it for myself, I would understand what peace and beauty there is in that country, and why she will never leave to live anywhere else. One day, perhaps I will take her up on her offer.

She is happy in who she is, has found acceptance there, and her life is so much more in tune to nature and with peace. I could use some of that myself.

I guess I am glad to have seen that couple on the bus, because some memories are from a better time that might be past, but still a part of ourselves.

Entry #37: Grief

So often I sit and enjoy the beauty of nature and the city around me, only to have my mind turn to darkness and grief.

Grief, because I can no longer share the beauty I see with Annie. The anxiety  overwhelms me and everything I do.

During these times, I desperately want to travel to Thailand to visit her final resting place.

Yet, I am terrified of making that trip, because once I see her final resting place I fear for what I would do to allow me to stay with her forever.

This is my normal state of mind, and it is not a good place to be.

Entry #35: My Darkness

Not that long ago, I was asked when the darkness started to be evident in my life. I couldn’t really put a specific time on it, although I suspect it was at a young age.
Like most families out there, mine was dysfunctional no matter which way you looked at it. I don’t recall ever hearing the “I love you or I am proud of you” words. Ever.
As an introverted young person, I kept to myself most of the time and grew to embrace the chaos and dark thoughts that started to make themselves known to me more and more often.
Music became my lifeline from a young age. When performing, those dark thoughts never managed to make themselves known. I always knew they were there, but in music, I was always able to keep them bubbling under the surface.
I might have been fooling myself, but I thought I had it under control for all those years.
While the darkness was always there in the background, it didn’t manifest itself in an all empowering force until I lost Annie.
Annie brought a light into my life that had never been there. For the year or so we were together, I did not have a single dark thought and I believed I had beat it for good. I didn’t even come close.
When Annie passed, everything I knew to be true died. The darkness that enveloped me was unlike anything before. The most difficult aspect after facing the fact that Annie was gone, was losing the music. My life up to that point existed solely for my ability to perform and to please Annie. Music was my only safe place, and now it was gone along with Annie. There was no longer any kind of lifeline left. I spiraled down into an alcohol fueled frenzy that I only survived due to a friend dragging me back from the abyss.
I still saw friends, although not as often, and I could tell they knew I wasn’t right, but I rebuffed all their questions and put up my walls. I no longer saw the point. They tried, but over time I pushed many of them away.
I have been a captive of my own special darkness for going on eleven plus years now. It rules everything I do and the walls are now impenetrable.
The real friend list is pretty short now and they, just like my many acquaintances have no idea what goes around in my head. The music is still lost to me, although I do go to a show once in a while and sit in a dark corner and try not to engage with anyone.
My darkness is now my security, and I am no longer afraid of it. No one knows, for the simple reason is I don’t trust anyone enough to tell them. Nor do I want to. I cannot imagine that I could possibly meet another person who could bring back the light the way Annie did.
This surely isn’t the way I planned to finish out my time, but it is my reality and I am ok with that.

Entry #33: Singing Rocks

Annie and I  loved the beach, but not in the sun.

If it was a cloudy day and we were near a beach somewhere, we manages to take time from our work to just sit and enjoy the sounds and sights of the ocean. We also enjoyed sitting in the dark at night in those same places where we could just snuggle up together under a blanket and discuss our amazing luck in having found each other.

One night we found ourselves at one of our favorite beaches. We had brought a blanket and some wine and planned on an evening together enjoying the solitude and each other. Unfortunately, a lot of other people seemed to have the same idea.

We gathered up our stuff and decided to walk down the beach in a direction we had never gone before to see if we could find a quieter spot. In a short distance, the beach sort of curved around and we found ourselves in a nice quiet place. There wasn’t a lot of sand there and the beach was covered with millions of small rocks and pebbles.

We found a nice spot and while just sitting there the tide came up and the water started to rush up onto the pebbles. As the water receded with each wave, the sound of the water rushing over the rocks was amazing. We had never heard anything like this before.

The water would wash up in normal sounds and as it receded it was like the rocks were singing. It was mesmerizing to us since this was a totally new experience.

I can’t even begin to count how many times we came back to this same spot. We always checked to see what time the tide came in so we would not miss it.

I would love to go back and hear the rocks singing to me again.

But, I just can’t. It could never be the same again.

Entry #30: The Shower

I asked many times, but Annie always refused my offer to join her in the shower.

She said that she couldn’t face me in such a vulnerable manner. She also said she was terrified that I would come to hate her.

So it was that one night while out to dinner, we decided to play a little game of guessing the ingredients contained in our dinner. The winner would be entitled to anything asked for, but could not reveal what it would be in advance. I felt pretty confident.

We kept score during dinner and in the end I did in fact win. I told Annie I would collect when we went back to our room.

Back in the room, I took her by the hand and we walked into the bathroom. I said my prize is to shower together. She sobbed and said she couldn’t bear it if I left her. I wrapped my arms around her and said that would never happen.

Once in the shower, she made sure to face away from me. I hugged her from behind and told her to make the water to the temperature she wanted. She did so and with shaking hands picked up the bar of soap.

I said no…you cannot have the soap. She turned her head to me and her eyes were filled with tears and she asked why.

I said I am the only one who can use the soap here.

That was just the first of many showers together. After that evening she asked many, many times for me to join her.

Those are nights I will never forget.

Entry #29: Montreal

Montreal was one of our favorite cities. I didn’t travel there often before I met Annie and because of that I knew little of the city. That all changed with Annie.

Annie loved Montreal and convinced me to travel there more often so we could meet and she could show me all the great things about the city. It only took a few trips for me to realize how much I had been missing and how this particular city was so well suited to who we are and our dreams together for the future.

As I write this, you have to remember that all of this transpired a long time ago. Annie was never welcome in the U.S. during that time. The fact that she had a successful corporate career was a testament to her drive and the fact that she found herself in a company that refused to allow discrimination within its ranks. Even by today’s standards, many companies pay lip service to non-discrimination but turn an eye away from actual instances of it.

I became an expert at watching for “the look.” The more often I saw someone looking at Annie with disdain and hostility, the more dismayed I became for her safety. The reality of the situation was that since I was accompanying her, those feelings were projected onto myself as well.

We shared our feelings over this many times and we worked hard to find a place where we could live and have a future together in a welcoming environment. In the end, Montreal became the obvious choice. Even though it was only a short plane ride away, it was like traveling to another world where your gender or color of your skin held no sway over living an every day life in peace and happiness. The U.S. held no such hope for us. Even today, while I still live in the U.S., I would prefer to live somewhere else that is more inclusive and welcoming to everyone.

Without Annie however, there is little motivation for me to leave. Without Annie, life has become something like living on a treadmill. The day-to-day is repetitive, all the while my memories of her surround everything I see and do.

Her picture in my phone and her iPod, which frequently finds itself in my pocket, represent the shattered life that remains from the love that we shared for each other.