Quote:
Originally Posted by racquel
The whole idea of what makes someone a real friend ... It's complicated. I mean, I had so many good friends growing up. Everybody I ever met seemed to like me. I knew four different people who each considered me to be their best friend.
To make a long story short, all of these people now think I'm literally insane. They feel sorry for me and avoid me. Sometimes I think they're right. I don't think they went from being great friends to being evil people. It's unreasonable to think I'm right and everybody else is wrong. And maybe it's unreasonable to want a boyfriend who isn't afraid to be seen with me if my childhood best friends don't want to be seen with me.
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Racquel, for what it's worth, I would be proud to be seen with you. And it is absolutely
not unreasonable to want a boyfriend who isn't afraid to be seen with you. In fact, anyone who is afraid should be disqualified.
I was careful not to characterize any "ex"-friends or potential "ex"-mates as evil or bad people. My focus on what it means to be a "friend" is generic for a reason: a friend is a friend is a friend. The inability to maintain a friendship can be explained by all sorts of things, as you know and as you partially recount, but it doesn't make one a bad person. We all have a lot of things to get over: prejudices, conditioning, etc. And they can get in the way of us being friends. But it doesn't change what it means to
be a friend.
Quote:
Originally Posted by racquel
I still feel like I'm the same person I always was. After awhile you start to wonder if it's possible to be loved without being understood, though. My former friends definitely don't understand me. Is the problem that the person my friends loved never actually existed? I've only changed on the outside.
People have trouble getting past their prejudices. I'm not sure if that makes them bad people or not. I mean, it's hard for me to convince myself that they were never "real" friends because they couldn't handle my transition. It's definitely depressing.
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Don't forget that the problems your former friends, who were surely "real" friends, have with you now are
their problems. Sure, it hurts, but whatever you do, you must not take ownership of their inability to handle your transition. They must own it, along with all the other hangups they carry around that keep them from you.
One other thing: you state that you've "only changed on the outside." I'm sure that's not really true. Isn't it the case that going through your transition brought you some inner peace that you didn't have before? That's surely a change on the inside, and I'm sure a positive one.
