10:36 p.m. - Wednesday, Jul. 17, 2002
Ms Leslie names a blessing
Between Husbands one and two, my mother had a relationship with a really nice, nice man. He was intelligent, funny, friendly, handsome� and rich. His was the kind of personality that drew people to him naturally. He made everyone he came in contact with feel important and interesting. People naturally wanted to be with him, just to spend time in his glow. His name was Howard.

For all that Howard had; the comforts, the travel, the friends� he was deeply troubled. He could never shake the feeling that people, for the most part, only liked him for what he potentially could do for them. He had no effective way to test or validate the love or affection others felt for him. His suspicions made it very difficult to be really close to him.

The best thing Howard could have done would have been to give away all his money anonymously to some charity. It would have been an act so unexpected and shocking that only those few people who cared for him as a person, with no regard for his power or assets would have been able to continue loving him in his new role of pauper. He would have lost an awful lot of physical comfort and security�. And he would have lost a lot of so-called friends. But in return, he would have known that he deserved, and received love. Sadly, he died before he found a way to know if he was loved as a person. That�s a shame. It left his life incomplete.

I don�t know if doctors do this anymore. I know they used to. If a person was suspected of being borderline diabetic, they would be asked to drink a hyper-sweet syrup in a test called a glucose challenge. The huge amount of sugar in the drink would challenge a healthy pancreas to produce enough insulin to process all that sugar and keep the blood glucose within normal limits. If the organ wasn�t quite up to snuff, then the patient�s blood glucose would rise in response to the challenge.

When I look for the positive aspects of transsexuality, I�m reminded of both Howard and the glucose challenge. Most of us, like Howard, go through our lives having to assume that the people who say they love us do in fact love us. We never find out the dimensions of that love. It�s very risky to challenge people�s feelings about us through an act that some might consider outrageous� an act like disclosing transsexuality. Odds are that a significant percentage of our relationships won�t be able to stand the strain. People who know like to call this conditional love; Love that�s extended and valid only so long as certain standards of behavior and thought are met. Conditional love is no love at all, and though it hurts badly to lose even this pretense of love, I think in the long run, it�s better to know where conditional love exists, or has existed.

When I came out, I found support and acceptance from the people I least expected. My nieces and nephews, every one, simply took my declaration in stride, asked what they should call me, and then went right on with their lives. I never asked them to call me anything, but within days, each one had become accustomed to calling me Aunt Leslie. It seemed like the most natural thing in the world and today, I don�t think I�d know what to say if I were called Uncle Blaine by any of them. It�s the same� so far� with my two sisters and my truck-driving, beer-drinking, cowboy little brother. Had I never told him this about me, I would never have known how much he really loved me. The same goes for my sisters. They�ve always expressed love, and that love never flickered, even at the moment I was making my shocking announcement.

So�. This is one of the blessings of being transsexual: It�s the glucose challenge of relationships. It�s a painful blessing more often than it should be, but a blessing nonetheless. I grieve for the love I lost� or never truly had. At the same time, I�m filled with wonder and humility over the unshakable love I�ve found.

I�m richer than Howard ever dreamed of being.

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