Sorry for the long post.
I was committed to a trans man for 30 years (we got together in 1989). We couldn’t get married for most of that time because it was illegal, but we represented ourselves as married since about 1991, which tbh in some cases meant breaking the law on legal documents to try to get fair representation, so I wouldn’t be excluded from ‘married’ benefits in healthcare, housing, etc. Once he was able to ‘pass’ and we lived in a new state where people wouldn’t out him, he stayed in the closet, and almost nobody knew he was trans since the early 90s. We just wanted to live a normal life. The only people who really knew were our healthcare providers, because that was the only place it was an issue.
We had a mostly happy marriage and raised a wonderful son – he’s 27 now – until about 15 years ago when my disability started getting really bad. I was born with Ehlers Danlos and an autoimmune disorder, which I was mostly able to compensate for until it started getting really bad in about 2010. I had built a career in software development and UX design, but I developed Dysautonomia and started having seizures, major heart issues, and GI intolerance to the point I couldn’t process food. I worked for a couple of years after that, but it became impossible and I had to give up the career I loved and go on disability. We were pretty well off – not rich, but comfortable – and my inability to work didn’t jeopardise our financial stability that much. Between the benefits of my career and his (he was a regional director in university housing), we had been doing okay.
It took several years for me to be diagnosed, since what I have is extremely rare. It’s also degenerative, and there’s no treatment or cure. It only gets progressively worse. I’ve never liked sex, but I did it because he liked it. But the sicker I got, the more I just didn’t want it. It’s very hard to force yourself to have sex when you feel like you have the stomach flu 24 hours per day, 7 days per week, 365 days per year.
He started getting annoyed with that, and angrier at the sex situation the sicker I got. At first, he’d leave pamphlets and books around the house with titles like ‘How to enjoy sex when you’re disabled’. It felt very passive-aggressive, and I started feeling resentful. Eventually it turned into him shouting at me in public, and I couldn’t take it anymore. Between my progressive disability, the constant pressure, and feeling increasingly alone and worthless, I became suicidal. I found myself holing up in the toilet, crying for hours, and just wishing it would end. I asked for a divorce. He was clearly deeply unhappy with me, and I loved him too much to do that to him. I still do.
Partly because we’d only been legally married 4 years before that when it finally became legal (still not in my state; we travelled to a legal state to do it), even though we’d been representing ourselves as married for 30 years, and partly because my divorce lawyer basically snubbed me after he got my husband’s legal records – clearly because he didn’t approve of the relationship (he didn’t even show up for court and stopped returning my calls, but I couldn’t afford the retainer for a new lawyer), I was left with nothing. No alimony, no savings, no retirement because we’d cashed out mine in favour of his (yes, I was stupid, but he controlled the finances and I never thought our relationship would end), I was left with literally nothing but half the debt.
My ex-husband was married again within a year of our divorce (to his high school sweetheart who he had kept contact with – their friendship never bothered me, because I am not a jealous type) and they make 6 figures. I now live on nothing but disability, am overdrawn every month, and have to choose between medicine and basic necessities. I’m supposed to drink ensure and pedialyte because of my digestive issues, but I can’t afford it.
I’m homebound and completely alone now, and I have no social network because all of my friends and most of my family have died in the last few years. I’d kept my son away from my ex-husband’s family for his entire life because they are abusive, narcissistic sociopaths and I valued my son too much to expose him to that, but since the divorce, my son moved to be near his father and connected with them. They always hated me, partly because they blamed me for ‘enabling him to become trans’. They literally had said that. After a few months’ exposure to them, he visited me to have a short conversation in which he told me I’d always be his mother, but he didn’t want to be around me anymore. We’d always been very close with a great relationship, and this broke my heart. I don’t think I can recover from that.
I don’t know what to do. I can no longer afford to live, and Medicare is wholly inadequate for my healthcare needs, but I can’t afford the gap insurance. My teeth all need pulled now since I can’t afford dental care, and all of them hurt (sjogrens syndrome rots my teeth). I can’t afford even Medicare’s copays. Every month, I am staring down homelessness, and the stress only makes my dysautonomia worse.
I no longer have good days. A few years ago, I wrote a scifi novel, but I don’t feel well enough to promote it. I have no energy for social media, and that’s needed to sell books. I’m pretty good at writing and am working on another novel, but I’m so consumed with stress over finances that I can’t focus. I honestly feel that all of society right now just wants me to die.
What’s worse, I feel like my inability to just conform and have sex is what led to this. If I had just been able to suck it up and do the deed, I’d not have lost my marriage, my husband, my son, and everything.
e: 15 yrs, not 10 – I’m bad at numbers
