Thoughts: Part five- Evolution of my sexuality

Where we left off: Devon and I almost broke up after he had been on testosterone for a year while trying to figure out where he felt comfortable on the gender identity/expression spectrum. I was honest with myself and him that his personality and physical changes were too drastic for me to stay in a romantic relationship with him. If he needed to continue on that path, I would support him and love him as a friend. But ultimately, after that conversation, he decided he wanted to stop taking the hormones. The testosterone try started in October of 2012 and went into 2013.

Once the hormones were no longer an issue, things were amazing between us again. We were stronger than ever and still dating others here and there although Ethical Non-Monogamy wasn't really understood or practiced much in LA at that time so we came up against a lot of people who weren't open to dating someone in a committed relationship. I was still able to be intimate with my high school sweetheart, and still didn't feel that altered my identity as a lesbian. It took Devon's journey of transition to have me start identifying predominantly as queer as I felt that was the most inclusive.

Like I had said in a previous post, we moved pretty quickly in our relationship. We started dating in February 2012. We got our Domestic Partnership in September 2012. This was more for me to be able to get on Devon's health insurance. This helped cut down on my monthly expenses despite me being seen as a dependent instead of a spouse.

It took a lot of convincing from Devon for me to agree to get our Domestic Partnership as at that point, I had no interest or intention of ever legally binding myself to someone again. But he agreed to view the DP as more of an engagement which could be broken if things didn't work out. It's funny the things I needed to do in order to feel ok about committing more deeply to Devon at that point.

In December of 2012, we actually got engaged with plans of having a ceremony with our friends and family in September 2014 even though it would not be a legally legitimate marriage. We loved the idea of having our wedding anniversary being sometime around our shared birthday so each year we could just take a trip to celebrate both occasions as we are not a gift giving couple.

In 2013 though, the laws changed on a federal and state level so we decided to do a tiny ceremony in the living room of our dear friends Kim and Sue. My best friend was our witness and Sue, who is the artist who inspired me to go back to art school, was the one who performed the ceremony. We all went out and got burritos afterwards. My favorite! :)

Here is a picture of us waiting for our burritos.

Now that we were legally married, I once again had to face the question of what to call him. He wasn't my husband, that didn't feel right to either of us and we were both so proud of our queerness and once it was legal for us to get married, we were so proud of that status of our relationship. Since at this point he was still ok with any pronoun, I was still using she/her so, "wife" it was for a long time.

In September of 2014, on our one year wedding anniversary, we celebrated with an incredible ceremony with 75 of our closest friends and family, including my HS sweetheart. It was so much fun! My parents and Devon's dad made the choice to not attend. Devon's mom, his brother and sister plus my brother and sister-in-law came out to support us though. It was hard to not have my parents and Devon's dad there but they have since come around to be fully supportive now. We wanted only people who could enjoy themselves fully surrounded by the queerest of queers to be there. It was our day to celebrate and be ourselves. And it was just the best! :)

Our three-week honeymoon took us to Oktoberfest in Munich and then a tiny cottage in a tiny town in a west county of Ireland. It was magical and we didn't want to leave!

In November of 2014, the two of us plus my bff who was on our second date (lol) traveled to Portland, OR to visit to see if it was a place we would be interested in moving to. I wanted to look at a grad program for my MFA as well. Devon's dad had been born and raised in Portland and Devon still has family here.

Although we all loved it, Devon still really loved his job and wasn't ready to leave and my bff had just started a new romantic relationship so Portland was kept on the back burner.

In early 2015, things started to change at Devon's job where he no longer enjoyed his job and so started to look in Portland for work. I had been accepted to the MFA program at the one and only school I wanted to go to which happened to be in Portland.

In March of 2015, he was hired and we were given three weeks to pack up and move for him to start his new job! I was ecstatic! Finally, we were moving out of LA and would still be in a super queer friendly city.

The time leading up to our move was bittersweet for my HS sweetheart and me. Soon we would no longer have easy access to each other though we were no stranger to long distances in our relationship. He was incredible during that time though and helped us get things packed up, moved out of our storage unit and into the moving truck. I soaked up every minute I could get with him.

I was hoping to get more into this post but there was too much backstory details that I felt needed to be explained in this one. Since it took me a bit to get this post out, I will make sure to get the next one out shortly to make up for it. :)

We will get into starting to date other people again while navigating a new city. And I'll start to explore whether my desires for an intimate relationship with my HS sweetheart was solely due to our history or is there more to it?

See you all soon in the next post!

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