We are all given a moment in time that is our own and it is entirely up to ourselves how we use it, but once it has passed it is forever gone and will not come back.
Marianne is dying. I know this harsh statement will shock most of you, except for the selected few I've been confiding in, but it's true. Don't panic though, she'll be around for some time yet, and may not even die completely, because I believe in the thought that as long as we are remembered we cannot truly die. I know she will certainly be remembered, if by nobody else, then at least by myself. How can you forget someone who may have helped save your life?
At twelve years of age, I found myself in a position where I considered ending my own life. I feel no need to go into details, but it had to do with my relations to some of my classmates and a girl I had a crush on. I wasn't afraid to die and had no regrets for my own sake, but in the end I decided that I couldn't go through with it because of the pain it would cause my friends and family, who wouldn't even know why I did it. Looking back through the years, one thing hits me though. This must have happened close to the time I started crossdressing. Sure I had admired the girls around me and wished to be one of them since I was 6 or 7, maybe even earlier, but sometime around age 12 or 13 I started secretly wearing my mother's clothes. Was that just a coincidence?
35 years later I was a husband and father of three sons and still secretly crossdressing, with only my wife knowing about my habit. At midsummer time, I had a medical emergency which led me to realize I had an early onset of Parkinson's Syndrome. That fall I ventured out fully dressed for the first time and began interacting with people as Marianne. Could this be just another coincidence, or is there a connection?
All my life I have felt that I would rather have been a girl, and I'm sitting here thinking that maybe somehow that twelve-year-old boy unconsciously did transition, with Marianne taking control and saving him to protect herself. And much later, as I felt depressed facing the consequences of my illness, she once again intervened and showed me that life was still worth living.
Since then I have enjoyed a multitude of outings as Marianne and she has made a large number of wonderful friends around the world. Lately, however, I have been forced to realize that her end is coming close. As my illness progresses I experience a growing lack of mobility and muscle control, despite medication. I can still manage the transformation, but it takes more and more time and seldom ends up as convincing as before. Unless a revolutionary breakthrough in treatment is made during the next few years, somewhere along the line, it will no longer be worth the input of time and effort and Marianne will have to leave the physical realm and become a lingering memory in the failing brain where she once was born.
We may have swapped positions several times during our race through life but for the last couple of years Marianne has absolutely taken the lead, and for awhile we both thought she would turn out the winner. Now as the track gets rough and turns for the hills, she starts to stumble and realizes she is never going to make it to the end. So she drops her broken stick to the ground and walks away crying, leaving me to pick up the pieces. And I know that it is up to me to save her now or I will miss her immensely for the rest of my life. But do I have the strength? Or may she once again amazingly turn my life around? Whatever happens going forward, for a brief moment in time at least, she had the possibility to rightfully exist on her own terms and for that, I am forever grateful.
