Note: I recently suffered a serious loss, but I'm not going to write about that now. The wound is still too fresh.
The past couple of weeks I have experienced an unprecedented amount of life as a woman. Parties, lunches, Zumba, candlelight vigils, and even performing music on the stage. I'm very out these days...but only in select company. Specifically, among my church friends and in the local LGBT community. Sometimes I get caught up in the euphoria of being Wendy and start to forget that my very existence is threatening to some people. If I'm seriously thinking about living full-time as a woman, I feel like I need to bring myself back to earth by remembering times when I didn't experience such warm acceptance.
Not that I have experienced any real threats or violence so far--thank goodness--but there have been times when I knew I was clearly an alien presence to someone. A couple of examples will suffice.
One Sunday afternoon a couple of years or so ago, I decided to go out shopping. I was dressed very casually with the intent to blend in. I wasn't very successful, apparently. As I emerged from a store, I encountered two well-dressed middle-aged ladies, obviously fresh from church. As soon as they saw me, one audibly gasped and dropped her bag in shock. The other indignantly exclaimed, "Look at him!" I chose to ignore them and walked to my car, but I was utterly humiliated. I lost all heart to shop and went home soon after, my tail between my legs.
More recently, I was enjoying a potluck lunch after the service at church when a couple I'd never seen before sat down near me. This was their first time visiting our church, and a friend introduced me to them. I smiled and greeted them both. The wife smiled warmly and said, "Nice to meet you!", but the husband did not speak and refused to look at me. I could tell I made him very uncomfortable, and he in turn made me very uncomfortable. After a few minutes he got up and left, never acknowledging my presence in any way.
As you can see, I have never really experienced anything earth-shatteringly bad (yet). Just enough to remind me that the world isn't all sunshine and rainbows, and that the farther I walk down this road, the more of these prickly moments I can expect to experience.
