Everyone Else's

I've noticed something over the past 19 years.

Everyone else's pregnancies are so much shorter than mine.
Everyone else's children grow faster.
Everyone else's issues are easier to solve than your own.
Everyone else's lives are easier.

I don't mean all this in a "my life really sucks, is so hard" type of way. I just mean that when you're removed from the situation, it's easy to say what you'd do, how'd you react, etc.

When you're in the situation, it's often different. Very different.

Yesterday we went to pick up Hugh from residence.  Rob was edgy all the way there, snapping at everyone, yelling at me. We got there, texted Hugh, and he comes out from the dining hall building.

With his long hair in French braids.

My heart sunk.

He was not all packed and ready to go. That was so maddening. He had two days after his exams and the only thing packed was a few odd things in a box and his laundry hamper. Rob spent most of the time outside, "loading the trailer".

I noticed his butt was fuller. I noticed a folder on his bed "Patient Guide for Intensive Transitional Program". He and Lucy were having a great time. At one point he took off his jacket and I saw small breast development. It's really happening.

Many friends stopped by and hugged him (he never hugged us growing up). They seemed to genuinely like him. He said all his rez friends know.

It's so easy to say "I fully support LBQT people!". It's easy to be accepting at school, in the world. When it's someone else's kid. I do want to support him. It's just so hard to see my only boy slipping away. Bit by bit over the next four months, he will be disappearing. The sense of loss is immense.

The kids watched the hockey game together last night. Listening to them, from another room, nothing was different. They will probably have a much easier time of this than me.

Rob is so upset too. He says he's disappointed, embarrassed. He doesn't want to see him. Doesn't want to talk to him. Says he can't support this. I don't want to either, but I can't not, either.

I'm trying to view him as someone else's. It doesn't ease the pain though.


I KNOW if I really am being supportive, I wouldn't use "he/him". To me, right now, Hugh is still a "he". He hasn't said otherwise, either. He hasn't mentioned a different name either, and all his friends at rez were calling him Hugh. That is going to be the hardest thing probably. I try, in my real life, to use inclusion language as much as possible and to not speculate or assume anything about gender preferences.