Bridges Go Both Ways

You never know from one day to the next what life will have in store for you.  When I was in my mid 20s I swore I never wanted to have any children, as I was self-consumed, I had the perfect husband and a career I loved.  By the time I hit 29 an internal clock started ticking and the ideas I had in previous years of never wanting children vanished and were replaced with ideas of creating a family. The me at 29 was a different person than the me of 24, and thank God for that, because if the younger me had had her way, I would have never had the four children I was blessed with.

Flash forward 25 years.

It's been everything I could have hoped for and so many things I could have never imagined.  It's been way harder than anyone ever tells you and more rewarding than anything I ever deserved.  I sometimes think, selfishly, "I'm glad I have all of these children to keep me company in my old age - to be there for me in my future."  But ... just having children in no way guarantees that they will be close to you, be your companions, be anything other than people you give birth to, raise and send off into the world.  I am not particularly close to my parents and maybe that is why I have been driven to create close relationships with my own children.  Maybe we create what we don't have so as to sustain us or fulfill us in ways we were missing.  Maybe it's just luck, but I know that I have tried really hard to create relationships with my children that will last my lifetime.

This desire to never lose my children is the main and most important reason I came to finally accept and embrace Chris being transgender - one of the most difficult events and transitions I have had to deal with regarding any of my kids.  There have been others, some still going on, with others of my children, but none, thus far, as difficult as Chris's turmoils and changes - and my resistance.  You hear people say sometimes, "Would you rather be right just to win a fight?"  That was sort of the battle I fought with myself when we found out Chris was/is transgender - me constantly weighing reasons why/why not - me constantly battling my needs and desires with his - me constantly wanting to resist a change I did not understand or welcome - me constantly questioning everything to the point that it nearly drove all of us crazy.  When I finally answered the question, "Would you rather be right just to win a fight?" my answer came ... "Not at the loss of this child."  And after I concluded that I would not and could not risk losing Chris, I realized how much he needed me to help him survive this thing that was so much bigger than anything I had ever, personally, dealt with in my own life.  I realized that my pride and fears and self were standing in the way of being there to help him, and also potentially doing the very thing I truly feared more than the thing its self ... potentially destroying a bond I had worked so hard for so many years to help create.  It finally occurred to me that the bridge I was destroying between Chris and I, not only would keep me away from him, but him away from me, and he needed to be able to get to me and I needed to always be able to get to him.

If I could go back and tell my 24-year-old self one thing, I would tell her ... "It's far easier to burn a bridge than to build a bridge.  You are the architect of your life - create what you don't have, create what you need and remember that many of the bridges you build are not always for you to reach a place or a person but very often for someone to reach you."

Bridges go both ways ...