Christmas Questions

I have mentioned several times in the past that I attend a private support group for transpeople.  I've been going for years and the members are like family to me.  I don't discuss this group much because it is private and so I keep it that way.

Christmas 2010

Once before, I shared the topic questions on this blog.  Tonight I do it again as I think they are particularly thought provoking.  

I have mentioned many times that I hate Christmas.  So that adds another edge to these questions.  These questions come from my therapist.  Yes, these are personal questions, as are the answers but I've shared FAR deeper secrets on this blog already, so...

1) I'd like you to share two Christmas memories with the group - a positive one, and a negative one. Please be very specific and personal, rather than generic.

 

2) How do you feel overall about the Christmas season?

 

3) Are there ways in which your being transgender affect your experience of the holidays? 

4) If your feelings are mostly negative, how can you turn that around? 

So here are my answers as they stand this minute, subject to change.

Christmas 2011: my "draggiest" look

1) I'd like you to share two Christmas memories with the group - a positive one, and a negative one. Please be very specific and personal, rather than generic.

The positive one is easy- watching my daughter on Christmas morning the past five years.  She still sees Christmas as Magic, and I wish I could keep it that way for her forever.  But how can I when my own Christmas spirit is well and truly dead?

The negative one?  There are so many.  But above them all has to be Christmas 1990.  I was a couple of months since my first suicide attempt, and I was working at TGI Fridays in King of Prussia Mall.  The customers were simply miserable all season.  But what made it worse was a Broken Promise.  You see the person who left me a few months before LOVED Christmas.  And she promised to show me what Christmas was all about.  We met just before Christmas 1989, and our affair flared hot and bright just after the New Year Ball dropped.  And she promised this, and of all the promises she broke, this was the one I regret the most.  I spent that Christmas desperately lonely and still tiptoeing close to my own death, thinking of what could've been- what Should've been.  

Wow I cried so hard.  

This person who left me; we didn't speak for many years and then we became friends again.  We are still friends today.  In fact, last Friday, I attended the Christmas Open House she and her husband throw every year.  And it was a wonderful time with fantastic food and fun company.

2) How do you feel overall about the Christmas season?

I think I've answered this many times.  I HATE it.  All these years in retail, wholesale, and food service have soured me on People in general and Christmas in specific.  I firmly believe that the Holiday season bring out the absolute Worst in people.  'Tis the season to be a**holes.

Photoshop Practice 2012

3) Are there ways in which your being transgender affect your experience of the holidays? 

Well, yes, very much so.  I am no longer living with my family and probably will not see my daughter this Christmas.  I DEFINITELY won't see her open gifts this year.  That said, this year I'll spend the holiday as my true self and my roomie Linda will be joining me at my parents' house for dinner, where last year she spent the holiday alone.  So I guess there is a positive outcome.  

Being TG is part of the tapestry of my life, and affects every little bit of it.  

December 2013 Renaissance Christmas party

4) If your feelings are mostly negative, how can you turn that around? 

I'm open to suggestions.  I try to latch on to the positives, like my daughter's face or helping friends, but my experiences with people are so damn horrible and so hardwired...

So there they are.  I think they're very insightful and probing questions.  How would you answer them?