While my Julie has been my rock since my gender dysphoria knocked me to my knees, my only sister, Susan Eilers Poynter, has been my almost daily go-to gal for support. Three years older than me, I don’t know why she would want anything to do with me as I was quite the pesky younger brother. (Note to Mom: I’d rethink the money saved re-purposing Sue’s hand-me-downs for me.)
In today’s post, Sue’s lovely combination of zeal, zest, and zaniness (>snork<) comes through. Not bad for a lady who, herself, has been beset by extreme health problems and known tremendously terrible pain since she was a young woman.
Thank you, Swis, for being there for me. I’ll now shut up and let you talk.
April Fools?
It was April Fools Day, 2014, when my brother, Greg, came over to talk to Cara and me. He was back home in Montague, talking to our brothers and said he was coming over. What on earth would he have to have a talk with us when we have phones, texts, email, etc? No, this was something he wanted to tell us in person.
Surely this is an April Fools joke, but Greg didn’t sound like he was kidding and, besides, it was quite the expensive joke and who has that kind of money? He slowly began to tell us about his gender dysphoria, I began crying almost immediately. To think my brother, my sibling, is in such turmoil and pain. He was at our apartment for about three hours, and yes, I cried almost the whole time. I had to let this absorb—make sure and take my time sorting my feelings and educate myself.
The next day, Greg and I chatted online and I asked him for various pieces of info and Googed the Quest (our family phrase for doing an Internet search) like there was no tomorrow. I Googed this and that and you name it; I so desired to know as much as I could so that I could be a loving Swis (Greg’s nickname for me) with patience and understanding. I asked for a pic of Gina if he had one and so he emailed me that. I cried every time I looked at it, but made myself keep looking so as I get used to the idea sooner. He told me about a book he was writing (“diabook,” as I call it, as it mostly is written in diary form)—ooo ooo, I said, can you email me what you have so far? I so enjoyed the chapters of his book that I read which lead to me Googin’ the Quest even more.
Greg did all he could to deny his dysphoria and did as society asked of him back in our day. The older he got, the worse it got. I wish I had known way back then so I could have eased some of the pain, but I understand why he had to go through this basically alone.
Here’s how I feel. Greg/Gina (I call GG) is my sibling no matter what the outer package is and my love is an unconditional love. It took me a while to sort out my feelings and go through the grieving process for the loss of a brother—trade-off, I have a younger sister to boss around. Ya, maybe this
could work. We are siblings forever. No matter what our outer packages are. It has been a very hard adjustment, but I’ll be beside GG’s side—no matter how we look.
What horrid pain GG has gone through and is going through. I wish and pray I could take it all away—take GG’s pain away.
One thing will always be for certain, I love GG forever (and still play a mean game of Canasta). >snork<
Eilers Pizza 