The other night, I had a dream about her again. I didn’t write about it at the time because it may have been the following night after I had the dream about driving around with Matt and I just wanted to calm the fuck down. I try not to wander into the wrong places in life so often.

In my dream about her, she was doing something – presenting to a group. I can not even place it. We were all sitting in a circle on stools of some sort. She may have been painting. She may have been cooking. At the time I was aware of what we were watching. I sat like a stranger in the group. At the time, I knew that it had to be that way.

Mid – whatever we were learning, she smiled at me and I know that my life froze in the best way possible. I don’t remember much else from the dream. There were about 5 other people in the group besides us. They were all to my right.

Last that day I got in a conversation with a trans-man friend of mine. I suppose he is more than just a friend, he is my ex girlfriend from about 2004, so we go way back. He was expressing his struggles with finding decent people to date. He has usually found himself in very small towns, growing up in Southern Oklahoma – he has dealt with a lot.

The more he spoke, the more I realized I can empathize a lot. Lately, I have grown complacent to being misgendered, almost to the point that I am I unphased when my name is spelled wrong – I decide that is my fault and move on.

One reason that I think that I am so passionate about our friendship is that I truly believe she is one of the only people in my life that truly accepts me and when you have lived your entire life on the outside looking in, it is really nice to finally meet someone that accepts you and doesn’t just tolerate you. Up until this point in life, I was thrilled with people tolerating me and trying to understand – it was a lot better than the alternate.