To 21 Years

June 21, 2026June 21, 2026 Kara Jorgensen5 Comments

My relationship with my partner is officially old enough to drink. While I’m not amazed that we’ve been together this long as I always thought we would stay together, I am amazed that our lives have managed to change so much yet stay the same this past year.

Early last year my partner started to transition. By our anniversary, she had only been on estrogen for about three months and hadn’t come out to anyone beyond close friends. Since our last anniversary, she’s come out to my family and started using her new name. We’ve even looked into getting her name changed in the near future to make it official. More importantly, she has blossomed into herself even more fully. Being the first person to see the parts of herself that she had suppressed for so long has been one of the great honors of my life. Fifteen months of HRT has allowed her to more fully express who she is and become more confident in her personality and body. It’s striking to see her joy juxtaposed against the US’s current government. In our relationship, I tend to find myself as the more resolute one, but it’s her steadfast resolve to be who she is that has kept me going. Supporting her has given me a purpose and something to build toward. I want her to have the best life she can and be herself.

This year I find myself often thinking about relationships. How there are generally two types of relationships: collectors and naturalists.

Collectors want the person they picked and get upset when things change. They have an idea in mind of who their partner is and deviations are met with distrust or anxiety. Other times collectors are the kinds who rip the wings off butterflies. They pick someone because they are vibrant and alive, and once they have them, they make sure no one else can and that they will never be as alive as they once were.

I aim to make my relationship one of a naturalist. Naturalists observe and try not to interfere with whatever is going on. Watching my partner change and grow has been half the beauty of our relationship. Being with her for so long means that I have seen her grow from a teenager to a college graduate to a competent adult and now to her true self on the outside. Those changes have only been positive, and I can’t imagine mourning who she was. She isn’t dead or gone. The opposite: she’s more herself. It’s like polishing away the tarnish to see the real sparkle. When hyping up my partner, I sound like Steve Irwin talking about a crocodile.

We’ve talked about my own on-going tussle with dysphoria and gender weirdness, and she has been so supportive and more willing to push even when I back off from my own feelings. I keep wondering what the next year will bring, but I know it will be good as long as we’re going through it together.

Here’s to another year with my best friend and many, many more.

Personal Life

To My Partner

June 15, 2025June 15, 2025 Kara Jorgensen3 Comments

This Friday will be my twentieth anniversary with my partner. Yes, you heard that right, 20 years. My partner and I have been together since we were fourteen. We went to high school and college together and have gone through our own respective gender journeys together. I finally figured out the words for my gender back around 2017 or so. I have always felt like being a woman didn’t fit me, and once I heard the term “nonbinary,” I realized that I had been feeling dysphoria for years and started to do things to make myself happier and more in line with my feelings regarding my gender. None of these were huge changes because I’m incredibly stubborn and refused to dress femme for years before that. Now, I am just more aware my dysphoria and less willing to please others while making it worse.

My partner, on the other hand, ignored the fact that she was dealing with dysphoria for years. She tried to double down on dressing masculine while in college, but it didn’t make her feel better. Last year, she thought she might be nonbinary because our discussions of gender made her more comfortable to explore her feminine side. And this year, she realized she was actually a trans woman, and we figured out how to get her gender affirming care. She is close to the three month mark on hormone-replacement therapy, and she is the happiest she has ever been. More than anything this year, I am so glad to have my partner feel more like herself and be on her way to being the person she truly is. Twenty years and two gender discoveries later, we’re still together.

I love my partner more than anything or anyone. She is my best friend, my biggest supporter, the best pet co-parent, the one I turn to when times are tough, and the one I want to see flourish more than anything. If you’ve never seen someone you love transition, it is a beautiful thing. Every day I see my partner become more herself. She is so much happier, even after a few months. She has new pronouns and a new name, but she’s still the person I have loved for twenty years. I look around at everything that’s going on with trans rights being under attack in the US and UK, and I cannot understand how people can see others transition and not think it is something beautiful. It is a righting of a biological wrong, and the mental health results speak for themselves. My partner has battled depression for as long as I have known her. She still has depression, but it is night and day since she started on estrogen and t-blockers. Her mood is better, she’s more emotionally even, and when she is sad, it isn’t the same level as past depressive sadness.

As if to spite the transphobes (and because I love her deeply), I have thrown myself into being as supportive as possible. What’s funny is so much of what I’m doing to affirm her has been dysphoria-inducing to me. I have sat here racking my brain about what she could need or what people tried to give me that I hated when I was hitting puberty. My partner has been collecting more feminine clothes for a while now, many of which came from my wardrobe because they were too feminine for me, but I have added to the pile. She now has a purse or two, bras, and my favorite surprise for her was a Kaboodle with some starter make-up. My partner will probably never come out to her family because she doesn’t think they’ll accept her, and I want her to feel as loved and accepted as possible.

When I first realized I was nonbinary, I was afraid my partner would be upset or confused that I wasn’t a woman. She was fine with it, unconcerned, and she has supported me in my weird little guy-ness ever since. That sort of acceptance paved the way for her own journey of self-discovery, and I am honored that I get to be on that journey with her to smooth the way and support her in every way I can. Being a t4t couple has only made us closer and stronger, and I will do anything to make sure my partner has the best life she can possibly have no matter the political climate and no matter what people who don’t know her say.

To my partner, may you have the best life and the life you have always wanted. Here’s to twenty years, and many, many more!

Personal Life

Ten Years

June 16, 2015June 16, 2015 Kara Jorgensen2 Comments

This is coming a little early, but I wanted to write an appreciation post for my best friend and one of my greatest supporters, my boyfriend. Javier and I have been together for ten years. Yes, ten years as of June 20th. We met through a mutual friend when we were thirteen. We both went to the same middle school, and after speaking on instant messenger day in and day out for probably six months, we started going out. Being an only child without a hoard of friends, he was probably the first person I ever really opened up to. He’s the quiet sort. If he doesn’t know you, he tends to be reserved, but once he’s comfortable, he never shuts up. Of the two of us, he’s the social one, the one who enjoys a night out but is still content to sit and watch Adventure Time with me and the dogs. What I love about him is his unwavering support. No matter what event I’m doing or where I want to drag him, he’s there. If I need a second set of hands or someone to vent with, he’s there. If I need someone to bounce ideas off of, he’s ready to listen even if he has no idea what I’m talking about (which happens quite often). Both of us are creative people. Javier is an artist while I’m a writer. If you’ve ever been to his Facebook page, he’s a cosplayer, which means he creates costumes after video game or anime characters and wears them to conventions. Recently, he’s won a few convention contests, and I couldn’t be prouder of him. No one I know works as hard on their projects. We act as a second set of eyes for the other, figuring out if a piece is out of scale or if a character’s motives make sense. Even if he sometimes gets down about his work and believes he sucks, I know he is amazing and will go far in the future. It’s the little things that make me love him. The way he is willing me makes me a cup of coffee just the way I like it whenever we’re home together or how he let’s me hug him like a koala when he gets home from work. Other times he drives me crazy. He leaves messes around, forgets to take the dogs out, and likes to hug me after working on his projects and thus coats me in black dremel dust, but he’s my favorite distraction. I know he’d do anything and go anywhere for me, and for that, I am eternally grateful. Here’s to ten more.