I’m beginning to organize the immediate past in my mind – it becomes apparent that my remaining friends and family would do anything for me and that I’ve essentially achieved my life’s goal. Things should feel simpler, lighter. They should. I’m still lonely and broke, but this seems temporary and relatively insignificant.
I recap events every so often, ‘you underwent a medical gender transition, you’re a woman of effectively indeterminate age, you’re starting over.’
‘you need to finish your degree’
‘these people will catch you if you fall, if you really truly need them’
And so it goes. There’s a lot of waiting, of the sit-and-wait variety. I need to chill, because I’ve discovered that I have much less emotional self-control than I’d like, and that these emotions are highly transparent. It seems to go a long way toward winning people over, since I guess I’m a nice person and all, but I’m uniquely incapable of dating.
When I look in the mirror, I think that I am very beautiful and very ugly, sometimes simultaneously. I think others feel the same, and it’s mysterious. Just going out is like visiting a world in the distant future or distant past, where my features are unusual. Extreme height, wild hair, thin, wearing 21st century makeup and business casual like I’ve lived at a university all of my life. I feel confident and out of place.
I grapple with my hormones and with my place in the world. I see other women and I can’t match their affect, I move too quickly, storming around like I’m going to kick someone’s ass. I don’t know what to do with myself.
My body writes checks my mind can’t cash; tells me to think of children, and birth. Fifteen pounds of fat form a layer across my body from the tops of my eyebrows to the tips of my fingers to the circumference of my ankles, a conspicuous stockpile of energy seemingly intended to maintain fertility through a significant famine. Except I will never be fertile, I accept that. My body doesn’t accept it.
And I realize that I struggle for my soul, struggle for the things I cared about; people, science…
The process of petitioning for my vagina was a Kafka-esque nightmare, chased with the reality that only a handful of people give a shit whether I live or die. Now I need to figure out what I, myself care about; which in itself is important to me.