In the voice of a fifty-two-year-old man

I could have avoided all that trouble if only I had remembered to ask for help. But I didn’t, and look what it cost me: a brief hospital stay, weeks of physical therapy, and people doting on me as if were infirm. Not to mention the bills. All this because I coudn’t swallow my pride and ask for help lifting that damn couch. It’s made me realize I’m certainly getting older; even in my forties I felt the vigor of youth, but less so every year. I just couldn’t accept it, and a slipped disc is what I have to show for my arrogance.  I’ve got to think differently now.

My last PT session was last week, but I’m to do plenty of homework exercises and stretches per the good Doctor Crown if I want to continue seeing results and regain as much mobility as possible.

However, this painful journey of injury and recovery was starkly overshadowed when my own beautiful daughter called me a bigot… I tried explaining to her that I had only been making a joke, but Elise claimed I was hiding behind it. “What’s the joke?” She’d said, “That trans people are freaks? A joke typically implies you don’t believe it, Dad.” I didn’t know what to say. I was horrified to be confronted. I was hurt. I felt betrayed.

This occurred right after my last session. Elise had picked me up from the rehab center and we went out to eat to celebrate. Our server approached with water and menus and left us alone. I whispered to Elise, “Is that a man pretending to a woman, or the other way around?” It only spiraled downward from there, and I don’t want to repeat the rest of the conversation.

Anyway, after a day of Elise giving me the cold shoulder, I was sitting in my office and she showed up in the doorway, saying nothing, but delivering a book: Being Transgender, A Look Inside the Life. 

It had been sitting there on my desk, untouched by me, ever since until yesterday, and I couldn’t bear avoiding it any longer; I had to get rid of it. But just as I was reaching for it, I darted my gaze, not wanting to look at the cover, and it landed on Dr. Crown’s homework, and the realization struck me.