2 years on from the great plot twist

Hello all

Firstly, a song.....

Sunday marks the anniversary of a date that will always stick with me. On March 16th it will  be two years since my friendship with Jodi fell apart. Jodi has asked me to not write about her in this blog, so just to prevent her annoyance before it actually starts, if she ever reads this, don't worry Jodi, this blog isn't about you or what happened towards the end our friendship as we have covered that ground far too many times.

For those who knew me back in early 2012, I was a very different person, or rather, scratch that, those who knew me in mid 2011 knew that I was a very different person back then to who I am now. Let's just ignore the fact that back then I was still Nathan and although I wanted to do it, I never actually imagined myself actually going through the gender change I had wanted since before I can remember.

At the time I was generally quite happy. I was 26 years old and had a strong group of friends. I was in a job that I was very good at and things were looking up for my career. I was settled in life but something always seemed missing, something never seemed complete. I have grown restless, I was 26 but had done precisely fuck all in my life that was noteworthy and something needed to change, I needed to do something meaningful, but I didn't at that point know what it was.

In the height of a very hot summer, me and three friends went to Scotland. One is a Leeds supporter and they were playing away at Falkirk, so we went up as a group and explored the various outposts of Scottish football before the game. It was the first time that I had ever visited Scotland and I loved it, I loved going to a new place and in the middle of a flurry with conversations with Jodi, I knew what I was missing, I wanted to see the world.

Throughout the next few months I change as I planned to move over to either America or Canada, I suddenly went from someone who was a generally quite happy person to being really quiet and reserved. I cut a lot of people out of my life, including a Facebook friend list that contained 558 people being dwindled down to just 136 in the space of 3 days. I was planning to leave my previous life behind and start fresh in America or Canada, and everything in my head kept telling me to just go. I remember travelling to Colwyn Bay (North Wales) to watch City play in the trophy and as you're going along, you drive right next to the sea and you can see just seemingly endless ocean. What possibilities lay beyond those waters?

Time goes on and my desire to move abroad grows and grows, whilst my friendship with Jodi falls apart very quickly, and at the time she was one of the few people holding my sanity together. On March 16th our friendship finally ended when I called her a less than favourable word, and looking back on it, it, and a lot of things said with it, weren't necessary and I am not proud of myself for that.

At first it didn't really effect me, but by the end of that day I was a wreck. I didn't know what to do with myself. It's a horrible feeling losing someone who you considered to be a close friend, especially when it was all my fault. I felt dead inside for weeks and the previous few months and the falling apart of the friendship kept playing over and over in my mind, and whilst I have no doubt that Jodi moved on pretty quickly, for me it was different.

I know I am not a nice person to be around or to talk to a lot of the time. I can be moody as fuck and am very opinionated. I am aware that sometimes I can come off as being very self-involved and when things aren't going my way, I tend not to react well. I have no doubt that when one of my friendships ends, the other person is quite relieved to be rid of me, and I have no doubt that is what Jodi thought at the time, and probably still does.

Anyway, I digress. By this time I was 27 and reaching a point in my life where I needed to change something and so I left Lincoln, moving to nearby Newark (to be fair mainly to be closer to work), got a job working in a pub part time, started reconnecting with friends I hadn't been overly close to and to finally started planning to change gender.

Looking back, I think that my life needed a big event like losing someone who I considered to be a good friend to finally move on. Whilst it wasn't ideally on a lot of levels, it allowed me to grow as a person and whilst on some days I still can be a moody fuck, or be nice as fuck to you one day and barely acknowledge your existence the next, I like to think that this experience has allowed me to become a better person.

Certainly since that day I have changed many things about myself, but the thing I am most proud of is that I now feel free to experience things for the first time, or pursue life long ambitions. Since that day I have actively pursued things I would have done before and despite the initial depression about what happened, I now look back on that day favorably due to what happened afterwards.

I do still think about the end of the friendship occasionally and ultimately the conclusion is that maybe we were never supposed to be friends. We were just two completely different people and in reality had very little in common. We had very different values, ambitions and in reality, whilst we got on really well when things were going well, when things went badly, they went very badly. For what it's worth Jodi, if you ever find yourself reading this, I hope you find happiness in whatever you choose to do in life.