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?
No comments:
Post a Comment