mourning

I am doing better! It was mostly just feeling depressed and suicidal from about Thursday to Tuesday including last weekend.

Consensus seems to be that I am finally starting the grieving process about my separation. Clearly, I avoided dealing with it until now. I obviously was hoping that it wasn't real; that we'd get back together. Now I see that's unlikely. :(

On Thursday I spent about eight hours with my dad. We went for a long drive - about 600 km round trip. We talked about most things. He asked lots of questions. Some of it was about my marriage breakup and some was about my GD. We aren't close in the sense that we rarely talk about anything personal. That experience didn't really make me feel any closer, it was more like an interrogation. I was a little shocked after I told him that I had just been more suicidal than I'd ever been in my life. He did not react to that at all, not even to say, "that's too bad." Talking about my GD, we didn't find any common ground on any point. He asked me about "aggressive homosexuals." I assumed he meant gays that are "out and proud," but he really seemed to believe in gay recruitment! He compared it to people who try to get other people to behave or think in a particular way in order to "normalise" their own behaviour or opinions. And he also said that as a society deteriorates that more things become acceptable. I tried to point out that that's not necessarily bad; mixed-race marriages were frowned upon very recently. He also claimed that repression wasn't harmful!

Then he asked why separation from my wife was when I felt I could start moving toward transition. This is where we reached an impass. I couldn't get the point across that you take your spouse in consideration when you make decisions in a bigger way than your family. He seemed to think I was saying that family love is somehow worth less than spouse love. But what I mean is that your spouse is indeed much more important when you make decisions. I would never have considered moving out of town away from my wife, for example. Yet right now, when I'm thinking about where I want to move to, my family plays a much smaller role in the decision. A married person would not always confer with family when buying a car, but would always make a joint decision involving the spouse. A person's decisions have a greater effect on their spouse than on their family. So we stopped talking about it before I could explain.

I went to therapy yesterday. It was useful. I don't think I should wait multiple months before the next visit.

I'm gonna be ok, it's just gonna take time.