In considering acceptance. And Sugar says...

"Dear Sugar,

I’m transgender. Born female 28 years ago, I knew I was meant to be male for as long as I can remember. I had the usual painful childhood and adolescence in a smallish town because I was different—picked on by other kids, misunderstood by my (basically loving) family. Seven years ago I told my mom and dad I intended to have a sex change. They were furious and disturbed by my news. They pretty much said the worst things you can imagine anyone saying to another human being, especially if that human being is your child.

I cut off ties with my parents and moved to the city where I live now and made a new life living as a man. I have friends and romance in my life. I love my job. I’m happy with who I’ve become and the life I’ve made. It’s like I’ve created an island far away and safe from my past. I like it that way.

A couple weeks ago, after years of no contact, I got an email from my parents that blew my mind. They apologized for how they’d responded when I told them about my plans for a sex change. They said they were sorry they never understood and now they do—or at least enough that we could have a relationship again. They said they miss me and they love me.

Sugar, they want me back.

I cried like crazy and that surprised me. I know this might sound odd, but I believed I didn’t love my parents anymore or at least my love had become abstract, since they had rejected me and because we’ve not been in touch. But when I got that email a lot of emotions that I thought were dead came back to life.

This scares me. I have made it because I’m tough. I’m an orphan, but I was doing great without my parents. Do I cave and forgive them and get back in touch and even go visit them as they have asked me to do? Or do I email them and say thank you, but letting you back into my life is out of the question, given our past?

I know what you’re going to say, Sugar. I read your column. But I need you to say it to me.

Thanks.
Orphan"

"Dear Orphan,

Please forgive your parents, sweet pea. Not for them. For you. You’ve earned the next thing that will happen if you do. You’ve remade yourself already. You and your mom and dad can remake this too—the new era in which they are finally capable of loving the real you. Let them. Love them back. See how that feels.

What they did to you seven years ago is terrible. They now know that. They’re sorry. They’ve grown and changed and come to understand things that confounded them before. Refusing to accept them for the people they’ve become over these years of your estrangement isn’t all that different from them refusing to accept you for who you are. It’s fear-based and punishing. It’s weak rather than tough.

You’re tough. You’ve had to ask impossible questions, endure humiliations, suffer internal conflicts and redefine your life in ways that most people don’t and can’t even imagine. But you know what?

So have your parents. They had a girl child who became what they didn’t expect. They were cruel and small when you needed them most, but only because they were drowning in their own fear and ignorance.

They aren’t drowning anymore. It took them seven years, but they swam to shore. They have arrived at last on your island.

Welcome them.

Yours,
Sugar"

http://therumpus.net/2011/03/dear-sugar-the-rumpus-advice-column-66/

(Sometimes I think this is the most beautiful thing ever written.)

-L (6/27/12)

Ten months.

Yesterday was the ten-month anniversary... 'Anniversary' is such an inadequate word. Wrong. No celebration is represented, only most deliberately honoring her and sharply regretting the fact. That we have to. That taking her life and youth and well-being for granted no longer applies. Is no longer possible. A fact as wrong as the word 'anniversary' to describe the 10th.

My heart growls for a different reality, like the rumbling hunger of a skipped breakfast/lunch/dinner/lifetime worth of meals. My head subsists on numbness and neglecting memory. On skipping hours. I'm returning now from a trip to Newfoundland with M -- my/our first since Costa Rica and the sudden lack of Katie. Heavy, this hole-shaped her. A her-shaped hole. And getting darker with every passing "first since." Come two months from today, on Oct. 11th, 2011, we'll no longer be able to look back a full year and wonder, 'what had she been doing then?' Come a year past from that date, she'd have already been gone. Empty, the thought and its feelings of this soon expected new fact -- just like the already tired old facts of this last year.

["My sister's life was 21 years long."]

["My sister's life was 21 years long."]

["There is no 22."]

No 2011. And no acceptable explanation. No 'okay.'

She takes with her our remaining years as well, as adequate. As acceptable. 2011 has been barely a blur of a year. So will all the other years, however many more there might be. The her-shaped hole remains, and a hole won't be painted over, despite the vibrancy of hue offered. Even though she deserves to be decked out in only the brightest of colors. So we just keep painting around it -- outlining/contrasting/highlighting the black, as there's no covering a hole with paint. Or words, for that matter.

[last night i dreamt about you, my sweet sister. it was the fast forward from the before to the after, and all of it i'd photographed with my phone along the way. browsing through the wretched time past, spent in a house that was unfamiliar to me, i somehow notice a brief blur in one of the electronic images of the after. i zoomed in, and there you were, defying all that has most recently become true, despite ourselves. it was you, but it wasn't. 'you' were floating above the room, parallel to the floor and looking down on it serenely. i recognized the outfit you wore. so it must have been you, despite the impossibility of your position and timing. i ran around the house, trying to call everyone's attention to the concrete proof that you existed still, somewhere, in some alternative realm, and that you peeked in on this one occasionally and looked to be at peace with it! like you were still here, almost. but when i found people around, the different faces of my family, the picture was gone. not just you, but the picture itself, having taken you with it. i could no longer find it among the other dull, gray images. i spent hours hitting the snooze button this morning, trying to buy the time it would take to once again spot the image before i had to awake. to this. but of course i couldn't.]

-L (8/11/11)

Nine months. And Sugar says...

"[19.] When my son was six he said, “We don’t know how many years we have for our lives. People die at all ages.” He said it without anguish or remorse, without fear or desire. It has been healing to me to accept in a very simple way that my mother’s life was 45 years long, that there was nothing beyond that. There was only my expectation that there would be—my mother at 89, my mother at 63, my mother at 46. Those things don’t exist. They never did.

[20.] Think: my [sister’s] life was [21] years long. Breathe in.

[21.] Think: my [sister’s] life was [21] years long. Breathe out.

[22.] There is no [22].

[23.] You go on by doing the best you can, you go on by being generous, you go on by being true, you go on by offering comfort to others who can’t go on, you go on by allowing the unbearable days to pass and allowing the pleasure in other days, you go on by finding a channel for your love and another for your rage."

http://therumpus.net/2011/07/dear-sugar-the-rumpus-advice-column-78-the-obliterated-place/

(Thanks L.D.D.)

-L (7/10/11)

Five months. And Sugar says...

"That place of true healing is a fierce place. It’s a giant place. It’s a place of monstrous beauty and endless dark and glimmering light. And you have to work really, really, really fucking hard to get there...

You will never forget her. You will always know her name. But she will always be dead. Nobody can intervene and make that right and nobody will. Nobody can take it back with silence or push it away with words. Nobody will protect you from your suffering. You can’t cry it away or eat it away or starve it away or walk it away or punch it away or even therapy it away. It’s just there, and you have to survive it. You have to endure it. You have to live though it and love it and move on and be better for it and run as far as you can in the direction of your best and happiest dreams across the bridge that was built by your own desire to heal."

http://therumpus.net/2010/07/dear-sugar-the-rumpus-advice-column-44-how-you-get-unstuck/

(Thanks A.)

-L (3/10/11)

Four months. And Sugar says...

"Most things will be okay eventually, but not everything will be. Sometimes you’ll put up a good fight and lose. Sometimes you’ll hold on really hard and realize there is no choice but to let go. Acceptance is a small, quiet room."

http://therumpus.net/2011/02/dear-sugar-the-rumpus-advice-column-64/

(Thanks J.)

-L (2/10/11)