I am sometimes surprised by people, and this time it was my wife. I get up early most mornings to take a shower and shave and all the things one does in the mornings before work. This morning, my wife was up when I was, which is not a usual situationat all. Each morning after I shave, I put on my hair and some lipstick or tinted lip balm (depending on my mood) and a nice dress, so that I can bear wearing my man-suit later for the rest of the day. I usually get a good half hour or in this case hour and a half. So, when I got out of the shower and saw her in the living room I was kind of surprised. She isn’t a morning person so I expected her to say very little. I expected on her seeing me as Beth, to say even less. But she was articulate and didn’t blink when she looked up to see me there. It was a good feeling to be talked to like I was me. She is always talking to Beth, I don’t know if she really understands that. Beth in a dress, wearing makeup is Beth in a man’s shirt and men’s shoes, the same brain. It was just nice.
Also, while I was at work I was talking with her on the phone, deciding what we needed on a shopping list. And I asked her, my heart in my stomach, to pick up some maroon nail polish. I expected her to stiffen up and get avoid-y. She didn’t though, she said that she will try but they may not have that shade this time of year. And that if they didn’t, I could go through her polish and see if there was any I wanted to try. It may not seem like much, but for me it’s a huge win, comparatively.
It’s these small things that give me hope that she will just accept me without needing me to be him. I know it isn’t easy,I don’t make things easy sometimes. I get frustrated and want things to just be the way they should and it doesn’t work that way. Life is messy, no one has the answers and nothing happens the way you expect.Mostly life is just sticky. Why is it sticky?