I have always been what I would consider to be gender blind. I have never really fully identified with being sexually attracted to either men or women on a consistent basis. It’s more like, every so often, someone will come along that catches my actual interest, and I develop feelings for them, and when it happens, I could give a damn what they have between their legs.
I have also, probably because of my gender blindness, always been incredibly open minded and accepting of people, and who they are and want to be. I have always been a very kind and supportive human being, and I strongly feel it’s because of my religious upbringing (I know, I know, most people use religion as an excuse to be vehement and hateful, but I was raised to love and accept all).
Because of my open and accepting heart, I have found myself in relationships with both men and women, and have never had a single ounce of trepidation about either. Recently, however, I breached new territory in my life in the wild world of love that has set my life in a whole new direction.
Recently, I fell head over heels in love with one of my best guy friends, completely out of the blue. We began speaking and eventually hanging out two or three times a week after we hit it off at a party. We could talk about science fiction novels, movies, love, life, all the places we’ve been and wanted to go ... I spent hours just hanging out in his presence, doing nothing of any importance but somehow feeling more alive and fulfilled than I had in years. Regardless of the fact that he was in a relationship at the time, I found myself slowly falling prey to that feeling like maybe the missing piece of the puzzle in my life had fallen from the sky into my lap in the form of this no-nonsense, blue-eyed New Yorker.
As we continued to spend time together, our friendship grew and deepened, and we developed such a sincere level of trust and intimacy with each other that I felt like I could tell him my darkest secrets, and in January, he told me his.
He pulled me into a bedroom at a house party and told me that he had always felt like he was meant to be a woman and that he could no longer stand living a lie. He informed me that he was planning on beginning the long, tedious, and scary road toward transitioning to living life as a female. He sat in silence for a few moments, awaiting what my response would be and as I listened to what he had to say, I was stunned to discover I didn’t have much of a response.
I had decided so long ago that I would openly love and accept whoever happened to cross my path that I was accustomed to making friends who down the road would privately tell me the things they had been holding inside their entire lives. I have had countless friends come out to me for the first time as homosexual, homosexual friends tell me they’d fallen in love with someone of the opposite sex, friends coming to terms with their bi- or pan-sexuality; I have mentored LGBT kids for years and really have heard everything you can think of.
So needless to say, in those initial moments of truth, it didn’t phase me at all. I want him to be happy, loved, and fulfilled with his life, however he chooses to live it because that is all of our fundamental right as human beings, and because I want the beautiful person I see to be reflected when he sees himself in the mirror. I told him that I would stick by his side and help and support him through whatever he decided to do, and that I would genuinely love him for whoever he needed to be.
