Different and Yet the Same...

I had come across this a while back and it sort of hit home about a variety of different things:

"I was an average, everyday woman, I loved wearing dresses and styling my hair. I had complete confidence, even if I was not the most attractive model walking down the runway. I felt complete.

"I got married when I was 23 to a man I thought would fulfill my dreams. I sighed every moment we were apart and I moaned every moment we were together. I figured life was complete, we would have children and I would raise them, my husband would come home and make love to me after dinner and we would we...in essence one word... WHOLE.

"It wasn't to be. After a couple of years being what I thought as 'happily married', I found out we weren't. Then it got confusing.

"I first figured, like many women I am sure, I was the fault. I wasn't loving enough. I tried to please my husband and I found more and more often I was faking orgasms to get him to feel OK about himself. I found myself feeling empty doing this but I wanted to be a wife who made her husband feel complete.

"One day I couldn't fake it any longer and I started to seek avenues to feel complete. I was a woman with urges and my husband wasn't giving them to me. I tried to discuss it with him but he didn't seem to get it. I was a woman alone.

"I found a few sites to experiment and soon I found another man, a man who I figured could sate my desires while remaining a distant partner. A man who would love the interaction...the sex...we shared and let me return to my life. But the hollowness continued, compounded by the fact I had been unfaithful. Now it was a door slammed in my face when I had hoped it would open up and let me fly to freedom.

"Now, after months of having an illicit affair, I felt the cold rush of having to tell my husband. I swallowed a lot of emotional bile and one night I said I had been having sex with another man. I cried, cried, cried!! I was a wreck. My husband was angry and walked away when I wanted to cuddle him and tell him it would never, ever happen again! I was distraught!

"But these things come with a price and my husband told me that he would make an ultimatum with me. I could get my hair cut very short, in a style he picked; or I could get my nose pierced with a chain to my ear and a tattoo on my chest affirming him and I forever, or else he would seek divorce. He knew lawyers so I knew I would never get much, the thought of a piercing, while I initially thought it was exciting, started to fill me with dread. I wasn't big on the idea of the tattoo. I couldn't hide anything I picked. So I had only one option left.

"Having decided, my husband took me to a friend who of his who was a barber and told him to give me a boy's flattop. I was swallowing real bile as he ran the cutters over my long hair, shearing it away! I cried and sobbed, desperate to wake from this nightmare, but it was of my own doing. I sat alone and without a friend, a woman stripped of even her dignity. I was an object of ridicule and emotional despair.

"My husband told me I could keep it like this, having it trimmed every week, if I would not try to hide it. No hats, headscarves, or anything like that. Otherwise, it was to the tattoo parlor with me and a piercing as well. I meekly obeyed and nodded. I would keep myself this way, every week getting a trim to keep up appearances. Men looked at me oddly and women seemed aghast, seeing a mans haircut on a woman's frame. It was shocking for them, it SURE was shocking for me!

"Sooner or later the shock wore off and I was left standing on the shore of what was I to do? I wanted to keep my husband, but the weekly trims had me feeling so humiliated. So I sat, many times, crying and weeping away my unfortunate mistakes. But my husband never relented, I could grow my hair out if I got a piercing and tattoo. I had the choice. After all, I was the one screwed up.

"After almost a year of distance and little romance, my husband came home after I had a fresh haircut and said he was done with the charade. It turns out he was in love with another man and I had never satisfied him. I was shocked. I had followed his discipline to the letter and I gave up my dignity for the chance to make things right, then he returns home and tells me he can't do this... he has had another man and he likes it. I am not fulfilling his needs.

"I cried for a long time, figuring my unfaithfulness had something to do with this, my punishment was not enough. What could I do to repair this? Did I need to attend the academy of acting like a man and get a sex change? Did I need to walk and talk like one of the boys? Was I supposed to shed the outside and act like the gender my husband preferred?

"As I talked to my best friend Cherise, I came to see her side of things. Her husband had left her for another man as mine had, then she felt she needed a new man to satisfy her. She found a handsome black man who was 'well-endowed' but he started to get more distant to her too. The sex was less and less. They experimented for a little bit to try and get things going again, but it was short lived. So she cried, alone, not knowing why he spent so much time away from her and being with 'the boys'. He was growing apart from her as her husband had done. And for the same reasons, he liked other men too.

"So, Cherise and I spent more and more time talking and comforting one another, and one thing led to another. I still had that short boy's flattop, hoping my husband would change his mind, but it never happened. He was set in his ways and one day, in a fit of emotional despair, Cherise and I gave into our emotions. I felt like I had ruptured my soul and my body... but it felt SO GOOD!!

 "I had tried to walk a walk I was not really prepared for, so I went against my emotions and lifted myself to a different plane. But I was lying to myself, I was now in love with another woman and she with me. My husband had also been living a lie and Cherise's husband had as well. The circle was finally closing despite the tumultuous turbulence we had lived through. I was becoming whole and so was my (now ex) husband and Cherise's too.

"We finally settled on an amicable breakup, my husband moving in with the man he had always dreamed of being with; and me, I settled my external affairs and moved in with Cherise. We got everything in order and were married a few months later. I still kept my hair extremely short to remind me, although a human failing, I had once been unfaithful to the one I thought I loved. Now I knew who I loved and I was determined to keep it strong, so my hair remained extremely short and cut like a boy's. I smile when Cherise tells me how cute I look - she does that almost every day!

"The moral, I guess if you're looking for one, is to remain faithful to yourself and stop pretending to be someone you aren't. Affirm yourself and your own goals. Be complete for who else will tell you that you can't be? Every week I settle into the barber's chair for another trim, no longer afraid, no longer forced, but dedicated none the less. I smile as my hair is cut and the smile reaches into my very soul. And every night, when I get home, Cherise and I kiss and snuggle over a little wine and dinner and I imagine my ex-husband is doing the same with his man. We finally gave up the childish need to 'act the part' and were now just normal people. We gave up being fake and started being real. We gave up the toys and started acting like adults. We stopped being robots acting the way society expects us to, and started acting like people, madly in love and acting the way nature gave us!

"In short, now I have found happiness and so has my new wife, she and I share so much love and emotion. We share a bond that will not be destroyed. My infidelity is cured and her need for a loving partner is too. I willingly sit in the chair for my haircut to this day, and she never fails to compliment me. That is the true meaning of love!!"

Truly wonderful!! Be yourself, people, and let the world evolve around you!! :)