Though it wasn’t just Richard; the whole idea of expressing my womanhood suddenly seemed both pointless and exhausting. I went back to work in women’s clothes and makeup the following Monday, thankful that Richard and I no longer worked in the same lab, while I tried to figure out if I could make it through the world as a woman, knowing I was probably giving up on love, especially the kind I had with Ralph. Richard’s rejection, and the need to evaluate my entire life it spurred on, allowed me to confront the real possibility that Ralph and I could not continue as a couple if my gender shift became in any way permanent, whether or not I started hormones or even had surgery, a move that would definitely end our relationship. Just like with Richard and his assertion that whoever he ended up with needed to beget children, I didn’t really challenge Ralph’s refusal to accept me as his lover when I presented myself as a woman. I couldn’t picture myself as a woman with him either, my twin spirit unable to perceive him as the person my male self held so dear.

Thankfully, I had work to distract me and keep me company, even if that work also reminded me of the previous weekend’s sorrow, as I went to the darkroom and began printing images from the opening after I left the lab the following Monday. Class wasn’t until the following night, but I wanted to print around people I didn’t know, and especially wanted to print away from Lenora.

My urge was to print an image from my studio after Richard had left, knowing it would probably be the most revealing. I looked through the contact sheet and passed over what I saw as insincere attempts to communicate my sadness—forced expressions, a hand on my face—and decided on the last image I shot that night, just me staring into the camera, my eyes wide and mouth slightly open, shoulders slumped, shocked and exhausted.

Unlike the black-and-white darkrooms bathed in red light from movies, color paper cannot be exposed to light at all, so color printing has to be done in total darkness. As I began the process of making the best print out of the negative that depicted my heartache, I found that lack of illumination soothing, the method of turning life into art a panacea for the disarray I was experiencing. The physical process of adjusting exposure and color knobs, of setting my easel and feeding my print into the giant processing machine, this all induced a meditative state that allowed me to contemplate my future, while the various imperfect versions of that print became my talisman.