Remembered Futures
“The most painful state of being is remembering the future, especially one which you know will never come.”
At first I thought that was a quote from Elisabeth Kubler-Ross, M.D, but I couldn’t attribute it to her. Then I checked out to see if Soren Kierkegaard had said it … but no, didn’t appear to be his quote either.
Now before any of you get the thought that there’s more to me than meets the eye … that maybe, just maybe … I actually venture into reading material besides my Cosmo, PC World and Maxim … solely because I reference writings from people who have yet to be mentioned in an episode of Friends … rest assured … there’s nothing more than meets the eye … it’s just me … ya see … all I do is listen.
The quote was mentioned in last week’s episode of Joan of Arcadia, the priest in the show who said it, had previously mentioned Dr. Kubler-Ross’ book, On Death and Dying … which is why I thought she might have said it. As far as Soren Kierkegaard goes, come on … I’m a Jedi … I’m expected to know the writings of a bunch of different philosophers and religions. On yeah, it was also mentioned on a Joan of Arcadia forum board I frequent ! 🙂
Regardless, until otherwise informed, I’ll attribute the quote to the priest in the episode.
And did it ever resonate with me.
As once you start transitioning …
Once you commit to transitioning …
Once you start telling people …
You cease having the possibility for a future that you and others had maintained in your mind for your life up to that point. Now granted, you and others might not have had the same “future” in mind for you … but whatever future each of you had in mind … ceased.
Sure … sure … if you’re ts … there’s a very good chance that for your entire life up to that point of decision … you often wished, prayed, thought about … a future where you were in your proper gender role … at least I did. It consumed me.
But still, parallel with that wish … because I also suspected it would never be granted … I contrived a future in my mind otherwise …
One with a wife, children, happiness, challenges, comforts. Life.
And even today, there are periods when I think about … not growing up the man I had formulated in my mind since my youngest days.
And I suspect my loved ones, on occasion, think of me as not growing up the son, brother, friend they had always thought I would be.
And when you are in the place of remembering such a future … while knowing it can never be now … it is a terrible, terrible place.
Oh sure … one could always cease transition, “de-transition”, pretend it was just a phase … but we all know … once Disclosures are made … you are never looked at the same way again … and that makes the future you were remembering before Disclosure … one which you know will never come.
But futures are never guaranteed.
And just because I had one future in my mind at one point, there was no certainty that would have happened.
Remembering pasts is fine … because those are known events. They really did happen. They bring memories, they bring feelings, they bring connection.
Remembering futures is futile … because you’re not remembering anything that actually happened, in fact … you’re postulating things that most likely would never have happened … and certainly never will. It’s a game of “Ifs and Butts” 😉 … one where the mere exercise of it can do nothing but make you feel bad. Because you almost always remember positive futures … you never remember futures where you get drunk and kill someone with your car or forget to do something causing great pain to others. Naaaa … you never remember those types of futures … negative futures. Everyone and everything is great in their remembered futures … everyone wins the game, everyone has the best job in the world, everyone gets the boy/girl, everyone gets everything they think they might have wanted.
Remembering the future is no different that fantasizing being the hero.
It’s recreational escapism with pain … because while you’re enjoying the recollections of what might have been … you’re getting smacked in the face with the fact that … NOPE … it’s not ever going to happen. And maybe it’s not going to happen because you’re such a loser !! Had you tried harder, had you been nicer, had you been more committed … that might have happened … but because you weren’t/didn’t … it won’t.
Whatever.
You might have done everything right to make the team, get the job, win the heart … but that doesn’t mean it would have really happened … way too many things could have happened to still screw things up for such a remembered future to occur … and most of those things are all out of your control.
Which is why …
I always remember the past, because those who don’t are condemned to relive it (Paraphrased, I know. Besides, there are so many mistakes I can make, there’s no need for me to re-do those already experienced !! :)) And,
I always think about the future, because one must plan, anticipate, prepare and hope.
But,
I don’t Live for Remembered Futures … those are just fantasies with any connection to reality dimmed by time, similar to how I remember myself playing high school baseball better than I probably really did at the time.
No …
I Live for Possible Futures.
Because those … can happen !! 🙂
Yeah … I know … I’m lucky to have Shaft. And I’m lucky to have Singer, Hottie, Sister, Miss Daisy, Tenant and Morrie. They have all shown they are just the most special people around in the compassion and friendship they’ve exhibited towards me during this.
I’m sorry you don’t have a person like Shaft around, but you will someday ! 🙂
In the meantime, I’m more than happy to share a little bit of Shaft, there’s plenty of him to go around ! 🙂 Does offering to share Shaft mean I’m “pimping Shaft”? LOL
I wish I had friends like that 🙁
Makenna
You know that I’ve mellowed on the issue of relocation vs. staying home but I really like your concept of reciprocation, A. It will be work for all of us but I think it will be worth it to stay. I know a bunch of us who are willing to put in the effort. Whether you are Amy or Joe, you are still the person that we respect and care so much for.
Thanks Robin and Yodette ! 🙂 Yeah … seems to me accepting the demise of one set of remembered futures is accepting one’s living death in a way … and the associated stages of grief transpire. This is followed by a period of time in the transition process where you really don’t have a good hold on any future possibilities … you’re transitioning and things are too variable, but once you get comfortable with your transition and your place … you once again find yourself with future dreams and aspirations. Right now I think I should be at that stage where I don’t have a good grasp on future possibilities, but oddly enough … I do. I’ve got a boatload of dreams and aspirations, some incorporating a re-gendering, some not needing such … and I’m oblivious to the possibility that they might not happen. In my dysfunctional way … they all should happen.
Oh, I totally agree Makenna, I think that it’s a challenge enough for ourselves to first have the courage to let one set of futures die and then have the endurance to persist until you can accept the change and see a new set of your own future possibilities. It’s even more of a challenge for one’s friends and family. Moving and starting anew makes a lot of sense … especially if one’s friends and family aren’t willing or interested in working through the re-gendering process of oneself. I was totally prepared to move myself and had planned on it, but the support I’ve received from my family and The Usual Suspects convinced me otherwise … doesn’t mean it’s easy for any of us, experiencing a transition is easy neither for the person transitioning nor for those supporting that person … but it does mean that if you’re lucky enough to have those that will put the effort into it … I think you should also put forth the effort.
Its fascinating Amy that you should have this revelation now…
What our future WAS supposed to be is imprinted on everyone elses mind…our family,friends, kids, relatives, ..everyone. Now that that future isn’t going to be anywhere LIKE the one that was forecast, it hurts people. It hurts them to have to think it through with us. “Ok…now that A___ isn’t A___ anymore, then what kind of relationship am I supposed to have with this person?”. “Do I even WANT to have a relationship with this person?”…
Reshuffles the deck on so many fronts that its hard to keep track of them. Maybe that why so many people just move elsewhere, and start a completely new life. Ya think?
Makenna
Best yet, Amykins.
About a year after my decision,when I was yet living as a guy but I’d removed my beard and been on hormones a few months, I had a dream. Here’s the short version:
I drove down a shady street on a hot dry late afternoon. Tall abandoned mansions crowded each side of the street, yards tan with drought killed grass and stately elms, long untended, cast gloom-laden shadows. Each mansion was unique, but all were three to five stories and had once been lavishly elaborated. All were clearly abandoned and derelict with many of the windows broken. Each seemed such a sad desolate waste.
As I reached the end of the road, I turned to follow a dirt track leading to a copse of old cottonwoods. The soil was mostly sand with little vegetation, but the road lead through a narrow spit of land with a lake on either side, providing just enough to allow tufts of grass and the ever hardy cottonwoods to survive. I stopped the car and got out to walk in the oppressive silence, catching only the breath of an occasional faint breeze.
As I walked I felt a deep foreboding. A rustle to my left turned my startled attention to the first living soul I’d seen. A naked old woman with her back to me was hand washing a few meager clothes in a basin on a rickety old table. Her hair was white and unkempt, brittle with great age. Her skin hung in folds as a woman who’d once been fat but in old age had long barely subsisted.
As I approached to speak, she turned. Her depleted breasts sagged flacidly against her chest. Her deeply wrinkled skin bore the leopard spots of great age but her stance was resolute. She stared into my eyes. To my shock I recognized her face was a time ravaged version of my own. I awoke with a start, shaking in a sweat and my heart doing its best imitation of a snare drum beat.
About a year later, several month into the life I wanted, I had another version of the dream. I drove down the same shady street. Squatters had taken possession of a few of the abandoned mansions. Here and there they worked to make a floor or two habitable. A clothesline had been strung between a pair of elms. Laundry had been hung to dry.
Like the survivors of a nuclear winter, the squatters were slowly rebuild some sort of life. It would take a long time to build a town. It wouldn’t have the wealth and optimisim once lavished by the mansion builders, but it quietly sang of survival and hope.
Nice work on this story Amy. The Priest