When I was a little kid, I went through this phase where I thought that I wanted to become an astronaut. (It was 1995 or so, and my favorite show was Space Cases--had Star Trek entered my life around the same time period, my future might've coalesced into something entirely different.) I read books about NASA, watched space documentaries on television; I imagined what it might be like to take off in a rocket, to work on the International Space Station, to look down at the Earth from a capsule in space. It took me a few years to give up the ghost and let that dream die, pending a striking realization: I'd never really had any genuine interest in studying astrophysics or aeronautics, nor did I have any real desire to spend months working on the space station. My dreams, at the time, had hinged firmly on three concepts: being able to flip around weightless all the time, having an unrestricted supply of dehydrated ice cream, and being able to pee in my suit.
Nothing has changed.
I am the same naive child that stared up at the night sky and wondered whether sleeping in a space blanket was basically like being a burrito (I was a weird kid). I'm the same kid who pledged for nineteen years to become a pediatric neurologist, only to flunk out of my first college chem course and take up drama instead--and then, with a sudden raging ambition to work on Broadway, to summarily fail out of drama and flop into sociology as a last resort. I wanted to be a doctor SO BADLY for those nineteen years--I never doubted for an INSTANT that I would become one. I imagined myself in the coat, striding purposefully down hospital corridors, making life-or-death calls in the ER during my residency. I was fascinated by medicine--I read medical dictionaries, textbooks, and web pages incessantly, for years. I consumed everything I could about the medical profession. I got straight-A's in high school, took on extracurricular activities, everything I could think of to prepare myself for a high-quality college education and for my future in medical school.
And when I got into chemistry, I looked up at that blackboard, and I thought, "Eh, I never really wanted to do this anyway." And I left.
But I HAD wanted to do it. I'd wanted to do it DESPERATELY, for more than three quarters of my life to date. I was dying to do it.
Or so I'd thought. Had I? Had I really? How can I ever know? Clearly, I was unprepared for chemistry; clearly, I lacked a full understanding of what being a doctor actually entailed. If being a doctor meant I had to learn chemistry, I didn't want to be a doctor any more. How badly could I have wanted it in the first place? Maybe I just THOUGHT I wanted it--maybe I'd talked myself into it, kowtowed to parental influence, convinced myself to want it even though I didn't.
And my God--if I can talk myself into wanting something I don't really want, what CAN'T I talk myself into?
That's how I know that it's entirely possible I talked myself into thinking I'm a guy.
That's how I know that no matter how much I might think that I want to, I cannot and should not pursue surgery, hormone therapy, or any other form of medical transition.
If I can't trust my own mind, what the fuck can I trust?
How am I supposed to know what I want when I can make myself want anything?
Why, of all the ludicrous, impossible, unfathomable things, would I want to make myself want this?
Monday, July 29, 2013
EVERY NIGHT FROM NOW ON, DAMN IT
The first step in posting more frequently is to actually post more frequently.
It's not that I don't want to post--I do, I really do. I feel better when I do--more in control, better equipped to process whatever it is that I'm processing. And it's not like I don't want a record of this time--if anything, with Travis being sick and the possibility of transition looming, I feel like I need a record now more than I ever have. This time will never come again, and it will never be as fresh or sharp or present or urgent as it is right this very moment.
But maybe that's why I can't post. Sometimes I feel like sitting down and committing it all to paper makes it feel too...fast, somehow, like if I put the time to paper it leaves my hands entirely. I feel like keeping these moments in my head--forcing myself to remember them, to constantly rehearse them in my mind, to be as viscerally present as I can make myself be in any given interaction so I don't forget it--means they stay mine. That's silly, though. If anything, I'm losing them up there--memory is hazy, and it lies, and I have trouble remembering to begin with, the urgency aside.
I'm very scared, sometimes.
I'm scared that there will never be enough time.
I'm scared that time seems to pass me by so quickly.
I'm scared that it gets wasted--that every second idle is a second misspent.
Sometimes I worry that all of this time is just trickling through my fingers--that all these years I could have been happy, could have been present, and I threw them away because I didn't know how to want. Other times I think that I've already wasted so much time, what does it matter if I waste any more? We make our beds, and we lie in them.
Some times--times like these--I feel like transition is almost inevitable, like it's falling forward, without me, out of my hands. I feel like there is no other way--that to go back would be heinous, a fabrication, a death. But the feelings change so quickly that I can't reconcile them, can't decide, can't commit--sometimes I feel the opposite, and for that reason, I know that transition is impossible, know that I could never, should never, would never think to do such a thing.
I waste time thinking about all of this, instead of studying for prelims.
But there's such an incredible effervescence to it, a brilliance, an undeniable strength some times, so rich I can't turn away, my thoughts absolutely captivated by it--this confidence, so taken aback sometimes by my reflection in the window that the laugh comes before I can catch it. I'm building strength. I'm building presence. I'm building a self. I feel so earnest, some times--convicted, drawn forward, compelled by destiny. I feel like I'm almost there, even if I don't know what "there" is.
But I don't know what it means to be a man, and I'm ashamed, and I'm scared. And I spend all my time stoned on pot, trying to still the crackle, the electric flutter of my nerves and my neurons and my neuroses, too full of knowing to admit what I know. So high right now, even, that this entry doesn't even make any sense, and ashamed about that, too.
What will I look like when I'm forty? Will I have crawled my way back into lesbianism, a butch bi-dyke with a punk haircut and an attitude? Will I be a nerdy, effeminate academic--the older self that my ten-year-old self imagined growing up to be? Will I be a guy? (Spoiler alert: If I'm not now, I never will be, and I shouldn't be, whether I think I'd fancy being or not.) What kind of a man could I possibly be? A man without a boyhood? A man who never learned to talk to other men? A man, no doubt, who could never be taken seriously.
But that man--he gives a great speech. He gave one this afternoon, and it was well received--a little shaky on the introduction, but altogether mostly well-executed, and with good presentation. He's young, inexperienced--a little shy, awkward around people he doesn't know very well, but he's improving with time. Today, he was ready. Today, he was confident. Today, he got up, and put on a suit and tie, and went before his colleagues and spoke without fear. He found his footing, and he stood.
That man doesn't know how he's going to do it yet, but he's starting to think he's going places.
Who (and what) am I to tell him no?
It's not that I don't want to post--I do, I really do. I feel better when I do--more in control, better equipped to process whatever it is that I'm processing. And it's not like I don't want a record of this time--if anything, with Travis being sick and the possibility of transition looming, I feel like I need a record now more than I ever have. This time will never come again, and it will never be as fresh or sharp or present or urgent as it is right this very moment.
But maybe that's why I can't post. Sometimes I feel like sitting down and committing it all to paper makes it feel too...fast, somehow, like if I put the time to paper it leaves my hands entirely. I feel like keeping these moments in my head--forcing myself to remember them, to constantly rehearse them in my mind, to be as viscerally present as I can make myself be in any given interaction so I don't forget it--means they stay mine. That's silly, though. If anything, I'm losing them up there--memory is hazy, and it lies, and I have trouble remembering to begin with, the urgency aside.
I'm very scared, sometimes.
I'm scared that there will never be enough time.
I'm scared that time seems to pass me by so quickly.
I'm scared that it gets wasted--that every second idle is a second misspent.
Sometimes I worry that all of this time is just trickling through my fingers--that all these years I could have been happy, could have been present, and I threw them away because I didn't know how to want. Other times I think that I've already wasted so much time, what does it matter if I waste any more? We make our beds, and we lie in them.
Some times--times like these--I feel like transition is almost inevitable, like it's falling forward, without me, out of my hands. I feel like there is no other way--that to go back would be heinous, a fabrication, a death. But the feelings change so quickly that I can't reconcile them, can't decide, can't commit--sometimes I feel the opposite, and for that reason, I know that transition is impossible, know that I could never, should never, would never think to do such a thing.
I waste time thinking about all of this, instead of studying for prelims.
But there's such an incredible effervescence to it, a brilliance, an undeniable strength some times, so rich I can't turn away, my thoughts absolutely captivated by it--this confidence, so taken aback sometimes by my reflection in the window that the laugh comes before I can catch it. I'm building strength. I'm building presence. I'm building a self. I feel so earnest, some times--convicted, drawn forward, compelled by destiny. I feel like I'm almost there, even if I don't know what "there" is.
But I don't know what it means to be a man, and I'm ashamed, and I'm scared. And I spend all my time stoned on pot, trying to still the crackle, the electric flutter of my nerves and my neurons and my neuroses, too full of knowing to admit what I know. So high right now, even, that this entry doesn't even make any sense, and ashamed about that, too.
What will I look like when I'm forty? Will I have crawled my way back into lesbianism, a butch bi-dyke with a punk haircut and an attitude? Will I be a nerdy, effeminate academic--the older self that my ten-year-old self imagined growing up to be? Will I be a guy? (Spoiler alert: If I'm not now, I never will be, and I shouldn't be, whether I think I'd fancy being or not.) What kind of a man could I possibly be? A man without a boyhood? A man who never learned to talk to other men? A man, no doubt, who could never be taken seriously.
But that man--he gives a great speech. He gave one this afternoon, and it was well received--a little shaky on the introduction, but altogether mostly well-executed, and with good presentation. He's young, inexperienced--a little shy, awkward around people he doesn't know very well, but he's improving with time. Today, he was ready. Today, he was confident. Today, he got up, and put on a suit and tie, and went before his colleagues and spoke without fear. He found his footing, and he stood.
That man doesn't know how he's going to do it yet, but he's starting to think he's going places.
Who (and what) am I to tell him no?
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