When I met Tom, he said something to me that stuck out, that remark about how it seemed like I was trying to get him into a cult just because I advised he get around to the part where he doesn't hate being Kiara as soon as possible.
We are all on our own journeys, of course, and there's no reason you have to enjoy the hand you've been dealt, but in my experience -- and I flatter myself that I have had quite a bit of experience by now -- if there's nothing horrifically wrong with the body and life you've been given, there will usually be something to enjoy about it.
For example, I spent a long time as Chantelle. As someone who was naturally born a man and would have preferred to remain that way, waking up with her body should have been a kind of torture. But I liked it -- and I don't mean having chubby thighs and a fleshy behind or thick hair to worry about. I liked going out in the world as her and seeing how it treated me -- sometimes kinder, sometimes less so, than when I was Marc Green*. In time, being Chantelle was a lot more joy than not, and it was a pleasure to go through the frustrations of day-to-day life as her.
When I belatedly returned that body to its original owner, I became Ryan Berardi for the first time. There was a part of me that would have preferred to stay as a woman than navigate the world as a gay man. I had pretty successfully avoided initiated Chantelle's sexuality -- I was on the lookout for it but it didn't come into practice a lot. My hope was that being Ryan would be much the same, because I think in my head, I was still meant to be a heterosexual man and succumbing to Ryan's personal tastes would be some kind of failure.
Well, I "failed," as you know. I met John, and annoyingly, we hit it off and it activated something in this body, or in me, that pushed me hard. I was struck, last summer, by multiple crises: ethical and identity. The latter took a backseat: focusing on worrying about how to help John navigate his life enabled me to become okay with the way I was living mine/Ryan's.
You know the rest of that story, and I have felt suitably roasted for it, but I need to take you back to my mindset there: John was self-destructing much like Marc Green had. The Inn had offered me a reprieve. At the time I thought, if he wants out of his marriage, I'll show him what that would look like.
Stupid, foolish, immature, short-sighted. I think in my wildest fantasy, we would have become a couple. Something that would give us a chance to live freely for a while and help John determine if he wanted to go back to his old life cede give it to someone who could do something else with it. Like I said, stupid. I don't blame anyone who goes to the Inn for rolling the dice on a return, as Dave did. If you haven't been, I don't think you can be made to understand what an eye-opening experience it is... but pulling someone into that against their will? Never mind the fact that it blew up in my face.
Becoming Ed and Cayden was certainly not what I had in mind, but it served me right and we probably got more out of the experience than if we had been two hot young things in love. John is back where he belongs, meditating on whether to tell his wife it's over or if he is going to claim that his dalliance with men was just a phase. And I gained some perspective from the experience as well.
I'm back in NYC for Pride month, and that has been wild. Last year, I did not feel like I belonged, but now I know that I would belong even if I were not living as a gay man. Ryan has a family that is reasonably supportive and trying to be understanding of his lifestyle, but more than that, he has a found family, a chosen family, that have is back no matter what -- including if he wants to lose his mind and screw-around with fifty-year-old married guys. Likewise, I consider everyone who has been to the Inn an extension of my family, my people, and I only want the best for any of them. I've reached out to Emilia and the girls to say as much, although the timing was not right to join me at the parade.
So yes, I take Pride in that. I think there's a lot of good that comes from this. If you could tell someone exactly what they were going to live through after staying at the Inn, I bet a lot would go willingly, but sadly, that's not how the magic seems to work.
We're all stuck doing our best with whatever random crap life throws at us, whether we've transformed or not.
In a month or so, I will not be Ryan anymore (much to the real Ryan's relief) and I do not know who or what or where I will be. It could be the worst possible thing in the world, and then all my positivity here will blow up in my face, but today I don't regret it, and it's the right thing to do anyway.
-Marc/Ryan
*I'm not sure I can call myself "Marc Green" anymore -- I haven't been him in years and I deliberately passed on the chance to take that life back, but... then who does that make me? There's got to be some name in the field above, so I'm keeping it... for now.
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