THE SWEET PAIN OF BEING ALIVE BY Ann Anderson Evans
THE SWEET PAIN OF BEING ALIVE BY Ann Anderson Evans
THE SWEET PAIN OF BEING ALIVE is a memoir chronicling the fourteen happiest years of my life, my marriage to Terry. Our marriage ended with his suicide and to find out why this happened, I scanned our relationship and wrote about what I discovered.
A little inspiration helps when writing a memoir—or anything else. Mine was Harold Kunitz’s poem, The Layers, “I see the milestones dwindling/toward the horizon/and the slow fires trailing/from the abandoned camp-sites,/over which scavenger angels/wheel on heavy wings.” Suicide is a slippery opponent that resists categorization, but the clues to Terry’s death might lay in those milestones, and I wanted to talk to the scavenger angels.
Of course, I don’t know what was in his head when he killed himself, but the first hint of trouble came three years into our marriage when I found a box of women’s clothes under the bed. “What is this?” I asked. He said “I like to wear women’s clothes sometimes.” I couldn’t hide my shock, and he back-tracked. “I just do it for fun.”
I needed more information, so he continued. “When I was ten my mother dressed me as a girl for Halloween, and something changed.” I was curious about that “something,” but he provided no further explanation.
Intellectually, I could accept that cross-dressing doesn’t hurt anyone. Shouldn’t men, too, be allowed to wear lovely silks and satins? But what about me? I don’t lust after women or men dressed as women. Would I be expected to change?
When I remained speechless, he said, “I’ll put them in the warehouse.”
Returning to the subject after that awkward moment, I suggested couples therapy. I wasn’t sure I could reshape myself, but it would be worth a try. Terry refused. I realize now he was terrified of being discovered, not only by me but also professionally. He enjoyed being a university professor and walking into his classroom in a dress might have marked the end of his career.
When I started writing this memoir, more than one person said, “That must be cathartic.” I took that to mean that they thought writing my story might relieve my sense of loss, or perhaps they were treating grief as a finite thing that can be gradually erased.
My meditation teachers suggest that the best way to deal with grief is to “sit with it.” The discipline of sitting quietly when I was overcome was healing. I could feel grief settling into a part of my body—I would say the solar plexus. So perhaps immersing myself daily in the story of our marriage did allow me to accept his loss.
But I felt more like a detective looking for the culprit. Clues that his life force was weakening were strewn throughout our relationship and thus throughout the book but are only comprehensible in retrospect. Did Terry’s delight in wearing women’s clothes mean he was gay? No. Did it mean that he had a quirky sense of fun? No sign of that. If I had known anything about transgenderism other than that it existed, I might have asked more perceptive questions at the time.
I wanted to know if I was normal and devised a poll on Facebook after his death: “What would you do if three years into your marriage your husband said he liked to wear women’s clothes?” I was surprised how many women welcomed it. Half responded gaily “Just don’t touch my shoes” or “Let’s go shopping together!” The other half were in my camp: “No thank you.” The welcoming group seemed to think of cross-dressing as kinky foreplay, but Terry clearly didn’t view it that way.
After reading, SHE’S NOT THERE, by Jennifer Finney Boylan and MY HUSBAND’S A WOMAN NOW by Leslie Fabian, I realized that Terry was probably not a transvestite, but transgender. Even after that deepening of my knowledge, the idea of referring to Terry as “my wife,” was as alien to me as science fiction.
Writing the book became an intellectual crusade to come to terms with gender dysphoria. If I had been able to accept his authentic self (I still don’t know what that was) perhaps his suicide could have been prevented. Maybe not. Suicide has its own sneaky strategies.
Grief also has its own plan. It took over recently when I saw a man whose shape and manner resembled Terry’s ahead of me in a revolving door. I felt a sense of propriety, as if he would be obliged to accept an embrace. I had to stop myself from approaching him. Lacking control over grief, I try to let it in. It will only harm me if I fight it.
Terry was the partner I had dreamed of all my life: devoted, tender, competent, intelligent, affectionate, and reasonable. As a bonus, he was several inches taller than me. We lived in harmony, declaring our mutual love again and again for all of our fourteen years together.
The woman inside him peeked through from time to time, demanding attention, but I didn’t know what I was looking at. Perhaps my book will encourage other people faced with the same situation to test whether greater knowledge than I had could save the life of their loved one.
In a logical world, it would, but turning to logic when parsing suicide and transgenderism is not enough. I’m still not sure what is.
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Ann Evans is a writer, linguist, and professor. Twice a wife and once a widow, she’s a mother and grandmother. She has traveled and lived in many countries and speaks six languages.
Her first book, DARING TO DATE AGAIN (SheWrites Press, 2014) won multiple prizes for memoir. Her story, Precious Love was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Other short stories have been published in Entropy, The Opiate, Pulse, Phantasmagoria, Forge, Under the Sun, Ozone Park Journal, Phoebe, The Raven’s Perch, Words & Images, Pedagogy, and Better Than Starbucks. Ann has appeared on television, radio, and podcasts, with appearances on The Discovery Channel’s Sex in America special, NPR’s Author’s Corner, The Author’s Show, ArtistFirst, KGUA, Gualala, California, JenningsWire, Beyond Fifty Radio: Daniel Davis, Kim Power Stilson, Donna Seebo Show, and The Michael Dresser Show.
She shares her experiences and insights using a well-traveled lifetime and a sense of humor and joy. She lives in Vermont.
Ann can be found at www.annandersonevans.com.
THE SWEET PAIN OF BEING ALIVE
In the highly anticipated sequel to her award-winning memoir, Daring to Date Again (She Writes Press, 2014), The Sweet Pain of Being Alive is the second in Ann Anderson Evans’s memoir trilogy. It follows her heartbreaking journey as she seeks to uncover why her beloved husband killed himself. As her agonizing search deepens, her views on gender, sex, marriage, right, wrong, good, and bad start to shift.
“Ann Anderson Evans is a fearless, fierce, divine, and wise woman who has dared to take a huge bite from Eve’s apple and has the guts to share the insights, fights, and delights she has met head-on.” – M.J. McDermott, Emmy award-winning broadcaster.
“This book reveals a widow’s gut-wrenching process of scrutiny. In the aftermath of her beloved’s suicide, Ann Anderson Evans asks the questions all suicide survivors must ask: Why? Was his life really so bad? How could I have saved him? Futilely searching for answers to this inexplicable tragedy, Ann has beautifully, painfully dissected her relationship, her husband’s life, and his enduring struggles with depression and transgenderism. Ann is left to find acceptance and peace on her own. This is compelling reading.” – Leslie Hilburn Fabian, Author of My Husband’s a Woman Now: A Shared Journey of Transition and Love.
“‘People are not always, maybe not ever, what they seem,’ writes Ann Anderson Evans. She thought she knew her husband Terry. What she didn’t know – the secret he only partially shared and his anguish about not claiming his authentic self – led him to suicide. ‘This book is stark, unflinching, intensely personal, and powerfully written. I loved the book, and I’m grateful to Ann Anderson Evans for having the courage to write it.'” – Joan Price, author of Sex After Grief: Navigating Your Sexuality After Losing Your Beloved.
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Category: On Writing
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