An interesting revelation

Last week, I wrote about how my girlfriend had come out to the world as a trans woman, and we were adjusting to the new labelling of our relationship and adjusting to how our lives were going to change as she transitioned and we lost our heterosexual privilege and she lost her cis privilege and perceived male privilege.

I was bracing for everything, angry relatives, cynical friends, bigotry and confusion. I'm sure that we'll meet more of that as the process goes on and we start coming out to everyone. But there was one thing I didn't count on: I now love my girlfriend more than ever before. I find myself closer to her than I ever imagined, and her courage in going about life in the way she knows is best for her inspired me to throw aside previous fears.

Because of this, on Wednesday I submitted a transfer to a University she's doing her graduate work at, a University with an International Law program I have been dreaming of being accepted into for the longest time. A University in a town where my late father came from in order to travel to Hawaii, where I grew up.

Having the courage to live life on your own terms, with your desires and dreams firmly planted in your mind as you go forward is never easy. But my beautiful girlfriend and I are learning that it is worth every little heartache.

If I get accepted, the first thing I am going to do when I enter the city of this University is hug my girlfriend, because she will be the reason I'll be there. If there's one lesson of many I'm sure will come along from my girlfriend's transition, it's that you can't afford to spend life trapped in other people's ideas of who you are. Whether that's your birth-assigned gender or others' ideas on the limits of your intellectual and creative abilities.