Here Today, Gone Tomorrow

From time to time, I read something here the impact of which goes well beyond just reading words on a page.  One such post was Kandi’s ‘Open Letter To Our Wives’ which, the first time I read it, succinctly dealt with everything I’d done wrong when confessing my CDing to Mrs A back in late 2013.  It was also the catalyst for me becoming a contributor here and, when I managed to accidentally out myself to Mrs A for a second time in January 2023, it gave me the strength to get through what was a challenging day and formed the basis of my conversation with her, the upshot of which was that she gave her blessing for a DADT arrangement.

And as I reflected on another post from Kandi – ‘Brain Dump’, again there was a personal impact.  In particular, she made the following point (which I have paraphrased):

‘Over the recent past, friends continue to fade away. A few well known here … have not been heard from … you hear from someone on occasion, and then at some time you realize that so and so hasn’t commented, hasn’t reached out or has decided she doesn’t value your friendship. … All of this is life.’

As I reflected on those words, it struck me that I, too have been on the receiving end of this sort of thing.  Online friends suddenly vanishing without trace and that naturally begs the question why?  Why can friendships seem so secure one minute and be gone without explanation the next?  The starting point is perhaps a difference in perspectives.

The online world is a strange place but ideal for us as we live strange lives.  Those we form friendships with are real and complete people in our minds because, with very few exceptions, we only know about the feminine side of their lives.  For many of us, the online world is the only place that we can truly flourish; I love my outings in the outside world where I can be seen (hopefully) as just an ordinary woman but it’s here that I can unleash my full feminine side.   But to take myself as an example, the physical manifestation of my feminine side only amounts to less than 0.5% of my life these days.  Or to put it another way, 99.5% of my life is lived in a guise that none of you would recognise.  So if, heaven forbid, I decided to have a full and final purge and sever all ties in the online world, you may notice the absence but I still have 99.5% of my life to be getting on with.  And perhaps in that context, it’s easy to overlook giving an explanation, especially if the whole thing was caused by a catastrophic event at home.

Needless to say, in our world, probably the most catastrophic event we encounter is our wives finding out.  It happened to me twice when a careless mistake caused me to accidentally ‘out’ myself.  The first time it happened, in late 2013, I was not active on social media but by the time of the second outing in January 2023, I was a regular contributor here and active on Flickr.  Whilst Mrs A had mellowed by the second time and gave her blessing for DADT, it was on the understanding that there was no photo sharing with others.  That was a bit of a problem given my Flickr account so as soon as I was alone in front of the computer, I deleted the account.  Fortunately, because Flickr was tightening up on concessions for free accounts, I’d already moved my photos to another platform but with a couple of clicks, I ceased to exist on Flickr.  Whether any of my 1000+ followers missed me, I doubt, but it just goes to show how precarious our online personas really are.

Fortunately, when I was in full damage limitation mode, I did not delete my email account so I was able to give a few people including Kandi a heads up about the predicament I had found myself in.  But suppose that the precursor to the whole business was Mrs A finding my email account, perhaps carelessly left open on the PC.  If she had demanded its removal as a condition of acceptance, would I have resisted?  No answer to that question is really necessary is it?

But even if an email account survives the fallout, that doesn’t mean it’s still going to be accessed.  Let’s face it, if the proverbial has hit the fan and things around us are falling apart, are we really going to prioritise checking emails every day?  Do we really want to know about the highs of our online friends’ feminine lives when our own life is disintegrating (and in our case, it’s our whole life not just our feminine one)?    But when we’re on the other side of the fence and don’t hear back when we reach out, we worry.

Illness can hit us like a bolt from the blue.  In recent times I have heard of two people, one a relative and the other a friend, who received cancer diagnoses.  In the case of the relative, the prognosis is unfortunately very poor and he’s probably got a year or less to live.  And having just seen another close friend lose his battle against cancer I’ve had some insight into how outlooks change.

The most obvious effect of progressive illness is that things become harder to do.  Strength is sapped and, for many things, the will to do non-essential tasks wanes.  As illnesses like cancer take hold tasks that were once easy such as bathing and cooking start to require help from others to achieve so it’s not hard to understand why CDing, or even just accessing emails, takes a hit.  But there’s another more pressing issue to attend to, something I witnessed first hand as my friend ‘C’ who I covered in my post ‘To Tell Or Not To Tell, That Is The Question‘ lost his battle.

Towards the end of his life, C had two priorities.  The first was to hang onto life as much as he could and the second was to prepare for death.  Consideration was given to who could continue to enjoy or make use of his possessions and things that defined his life were either given away immediately or earmarked for distribution after his death.  To my knowledge, C was not a CDer but I don’t doubt that if he had been, anything connected to his feminine side would have been dealt with long before his death.  If I’m ever in that position, I would certainly want to ensure that those who survived me were not faced with having to process all of this in addition to all of the other things required after death.  And that’s assuming that I get prior warning.  Death can be sudden and, as far as many CDers are concerned, unless either their male identity is known and an obituary somehow found, or their feminine identity and activities are known to those close to them, we may never find out and just be left wondering.

But what if the cutting of ties was not caused by a change of circumstances in our male life but a deliberate act from our feminine persona?

As I’ve already suggested, we’re a strange bunch of people.  I guess we have to be to do what we do which, for most people is seen as unusual at the very lease.  And, as a result we can be emotionally highly strung and that in itself can be a contributory factor.  A few years ago, things got on top of me and I had a minor breakdown.  I emailed a few online friends to tell them what had happened and a couple of them started emailing me every day to check I was OK.  Another, however, said that they wouldn’t trouble me and I heard nothing more from them for over a year – no ‘is everything OK?’ or ‘how are you doing?’, nothing.  And then, out of the blue, I received an email asking whether we were still friends to which I replied that we could be but that I’d felt that the silence during my time of need wasn’t helpful.  I also added that I had had a bit of a rethink and realised I’d overreacted for which I apologised.  The email that came back was not an apology or explanation for the silence but a diatribe that could be summarised in two words, one of which was ‘off’.  Of course, we all have a tendency towards self-obsession to at least some degree – we put a lot of effort into revealing our feminine side and it’s nice to get positive feedback from others.  Looking back at that episode now, we both had culpability in the breakdown of the friendship but, unfortunately, only one of us was prepared to admit it.

But at least we both then knew where we stood.  I have allowed other friendships to fizzle out where, despite our common interest in CDing, our opinions on wider trans issues were so divided that I found the others’ views unpalatable.  I’ve also been on the receiving end in similar situation where offence was taken at what I thought was supportive advice.  And is there anything more telling that someone withdrawing from a group of online friends, citing a change in personal circumstances as the reason for withdrawing, only to see them pop up elsewhere full of life?

The bottom line here is that we can simultaneously understand why someone could suddenly sever all ties and leave us wondering what happened whilst not understanding it at all.  When a seemingly strong bond is severed without warning, it’s human nature to ask ourselves ‘what did I do’ but it may only be a matter of time before we find ourselves in the same position.  We can declare that we’d never do that but then be placed in the position, whether voluntarily or involuntarily, where we feel we have no other option.

As I said above, the person we see as complete may in truth be only a tiny percentage of her male host’s life.  Whilst that percentage does improve when we take account of the activities we undertake in our female persona without physically bringing her to life – emails, forum posts and the like do not require us to be fully dressed and made up to undertake – but inevitably, these always play second fiddle to our other lives, fitted in when we can snatch a moment away from other pressures and prying eyes.  And against that background, whilst it’s sad that our friendships are so precarious, it goes with the territory and if things go wrong without notice or explanation, it’s rarely our fault.

It would be nice to finish this post with a call to action where we all solemnly promise never to do a runner without explanation or at least a final goodbye but circumstances may just conspire against us.  The best we can really hope for is that anyone we know who is MIA is flourishing wherever they may be, whether in this life or the next.  Perhaps one day they will reappear as quickly as they disappeared but if they don’t, I’m not going to dwell on things.  I have much to thank them for – even the one who told me to ‘eff off’ – in my evolution and that’s all that really matters.