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?
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