WARNING: SERIOUS FEELS AHEAD.

Please enjoy this picture before delving

into the FEELS

Just over a month ago, my first girlfriend dumped me. It seems like it's been half a year. I guess it was one sided, because I learned more about myself than she ever did. I ended up confronting a lot of big questions that you, ladies and gentlemen and variations thereof and none of the above, might profit from.I can't tell you how we met or where. None of that is important anyway. I will tell you, even though it hopefully won't be important in the future, that she was MtF transgender. She had begun hormone therapy a few months before. Her face alone was already beginning to feminize so much that a daub of makeup and a dress would let her pass all but the most careful inspection. She was slowly coming out to her classmates and professors as female although she wasn't yet living as a woman full time.There are those, reading this article, that will want to commend me, a lesbian, for dating a trans woman, for keeping an open mind. For these people, I have a quick remark:Shut. The. Fuck. Up.Some of my friends who knew her before she came out were quick to shower me in praise for my understanding. Why should they? Since when is a little basic humanity a laudable thing? God, it was disgusting the way they made it sound like I was graciously gifting the town leper with my affections. It was well meaning but deeply hurtful and offensive and not even to me, but to her.Others were worse. When it ended some of my friends tried to make me feel better with outright transphobia. "You'll get yourself a REAL GIRL next time," they assured me. "You were way out of her league", some said. Which sounds like a common comforting phrase, but there was a tone of trans-misogyny that even I picked up. Now, I was upset with my ex, even blindingly angry at times. But even in my emotional state I knew that was a low blow.Even then, I grappled with my own sexual identity. She got under my skin in a way no guy ever had. I did experiment with heterosexuality for a few months during my sophomore year, and everyone noticed that I was always a bit cool to him. The greatest pleasure I got out of that pairing was mostly "Christ, I can play this guy like a fiddle and get away with it". It was not a power I wanted to wield for evil, but damn did it feel good to know that I had it.Not this time. It was me that wanted to hang out, needed to text obsessively, had to hear from her constantly how pretty I was and how much she wanted me. I was the vulnerable one here, and that was something I could never have with a man.There were complications. I am sexually attracted to characteristics that overwhelmingly occur in cis women, and my time with my ex cemented that notion. Her smile was magnetic and entrancing, but her voice was jarring and distracted me from who she really was. I don't claim to be the world's best cis ally but I'm no transphobe. Still, no matter how much I cared for my ex or how pretty her big green eyes were, the feel of stubble on my cheek made me pull back on pure reflex. Still, I wanted to make this work. I had to make this work, dammit.It's hard to describe the guarded air with which we went out in public, the furtive hand-holding and coded smiles. Our dates in the city were marked with undertones of black humor. "Oh, let's cut across this sketchy looking alley! What could possibly happen to an interracial transgendered closeted lesbian couple in a sketchy alley in a large city in Texas?"I remember that quick squeeze of my hand when the guys in the gayborhood referred to us as "you girls" or "ladies". I remember the way she'd make me feel like a supermodel when I ran a new outfit by her. And of course I remember wondering if she had settled for me because I was the only person willing to look beyond a Y chromosome and embrace what I found, which wasn't the most uplifting of thoughts. She didn't deserve to settle because of what was between her legs, and I was haunted by the thought of being settled for.In the end, she left me. She was never comfortable with keeping us a secret from my parents, and she got progressively more uncomfortable as the relationship wore on. To her, my lighthearted "Haha my dad calls gay Scoutmasters 'child-molesting faggots' isn't that funny lol" was a sign of a deeply dysfunctional and unhealthy familial relationship. Which isn't true, my parents love me and I love them. But it's common knowledge that if something's fucked up in a paramour's family life, you get the fuck out of Dodge. You kick her to the curb. You cease the insertion of appendages into crazy. Nothing personal of course, but no one wants to be collateral damage in a morass of someone's daddy issues, so you leave. It's actually a good idea in most cases.So ended my first relationship. It was definitely an experience. We both got out unscathed and a lot wiser. I bear her no ill will although I can't bring myself to speak to her yet. Although I don't want her to live on in my mind as "my trans ex-girlfriend", as though she was nothing more, but the fact is that I saw trans issues weave their way through our relationship like a familiar motif in a slow song. I don't know if I'm penning this for you, ladies/gentlemen/variations thereof/none of the above, or for me. But I want some of the things here to maybe help people who desperately want to help our trans brethren without being overbearing, without drawing all of our knowledge from their voices. I'd probably do things differently if I had read this a few months ago.Or maybe, I would have done it all the same way, and emerged wiser still.