I do a lot of journaling when I’m at work. While tutoring, during team meetings, while preparing for sessions, and reflecting after sessions are through. I started doing this because I may be feeling something completely unrelated to what I’m doing at that moment. But if I haven’t acknowledged where the feeling is coming from, in the moment I’ll think I arrived in the present — as a tutor, as a coworker — completely uncouth and unable to get a handle on myself. Writing down my thoughts when I’m able to — my insecurities, what I notice about the people around me, enjoying someone’s facial expressions, taking note of the environment and what it’s bringing out in me — has helped me bring myself, emptied of some emotional complication, back to the present. Yesterday, I wrote this:
“I felt so diminutive talking to [OE]. She’s really pretty and gorgeous and nice — not in a way where I’m attracted to her, just out of admiration. I don’t know. A lot of acknowledging these feelings is bittersweet. Like, it’s nice and calm to just know what I’m feeling, but it still makes me uncomfortable with myself. What can I do to be more comfortable with myself right now?”
OE and I are both new hires. We learned during training that although we hadn’t formally met before, we actually have run in the same martial art circles for at least a couple years. I feel like I can remember seeing her, standing next to her before this.
I haven’t gone back to martial arts training for a couple years now. And the feeling I had when talking to her before my session that day compounded feelings I used to have all the time back when I was training regularly. The community I was a part of was very dense. Each person is emanating dedication in their own way. A silent competition is the subtext of so many conversations during training. But there’s also a lot of encouragement. And a responsibility each person wears to ensure that this martial art form doesn’t die out. Everyone is carrying the weight.
I always felt like less when I would talk to someone in this community. They didn’t make me feel that way, but I always felt like I was always saying the wrong thing, or the way-too-obvious thing, or that I was going about communicating in a way that I assumed I would one day “get over” once I was in the community long enough, say for a few years. I felt like I was always chasing something I didn’t know the shape of. I wasn’t looking to become a master, though almost every new student becomes fascinated with the idea when they learn the ceremony of the hierarchy. Starting to train came at a time when I needed something to dedicate myself to, or else I’d unravel.
I felt that way again when talking to OE. Her father is an instructor, which means given the culture of this martial art, her participation would be all or nothing — there’s distaste for people who half-ass it.
This was also my first time having a conversation with her in person. We had done training over video chat, but now we wore masks. As we talked, part of me was present, listening and responding, catching up. Another part of me was in awe of her. I noticed her subtly winged pink eye shadow; her medium cropped haircut, her black hair soft but standing up firm; the thin figure that her shoulders hinted at; the way her collarbone spoke of her self-assurance; and the dark peach dress she wore that lay flat around her torso and stiffly billowed out from the waist down.
Sometimes when I take the time to admire, it comes with ache. As in, what do I do with all this admiration? I can’t take what I’ve seen and transform it for myself. I can’t apply any part of the details that are striking to me. I’d forgotten how less-than I felt when talking to a fellow martial art practitioner. Now that feeling joined with this aching appreciation to make me feel…like I wasn’t worthy of talking to her. As though catching up with her, talking about the news of our shared world outside of work, was a favor she was bestowing on me. A favor I was too foolish to know how to receive or what to do with it.
This may be the first time I’ve consciously acknowledged in the moment a feeling I had as dysphoria. I didn’t want to. Sometimes I still speculate that I don’t feel dysphoria. Others do and they’re valid, but not me. I want to tell myself that I’m just feeling the pangs of lifelong depression; but believing that would only make me feel sadder.
When I’ve felt reassurance about my gender, I feel like a full person. This is a new feeling that I’ve only experienced maybe a couple times, a handful at most. It fades after a few minutes to an hour and then what has always been my ‘normal’ returns, that sense of self that isn’t. After work yesterday I was able to see this ‘normal’ in a different way; at least, I found a new way to articulate it. It’s as though I feel like I’m not actually a human being. Even though people interact with me, see me, greet me, care about me, the sensation I have says that they don’t realize I’m not as human as they are. That I’m some nondescript anomaly who can only at most spend its time reading other people’s body language and spirits to respond in the most agreeable way. I’m one of a needless gaseous living species, feeling as though my lifespan is that of a housefly.
Last thought:
When I’m not feeling like a full-person, when I’m feeling like a non-entity, I feel like I’m a child who’s never grown up. Like someone stuck in their formative years never forming. I’m closer to death than I ever have been, yet I’m still in awe of the massive blank space of the question my life before me.
