This is a moment I experience very often: when I’m engaging with anything LGBTQ related, whether it’s more in-depth like the books I’ve gotten recently (“Genderqueer,” by Maia Kobabe and “Our Dreams at Dusk,” by Yuhki Kamatani) or on reddit or instagram, there comes a point where some part of me gets seriously engaged more than casually, and my mood changes. A part of me wants something very badly, but I don’t know what it is. As in, I wish it was obvious to me what I wanted to “achieve” physically. I want something badly but I don’t know what is. I don’t think I can even picture it. I feel a different disconnect from my body now when something about it is being pointed out.
What am I alive here and now to do? I understand the worth of reaching toward authenticity and the effect that can have. Is this dysphoria? Do I actually have no one to talk to, or am I afraid of taking the risk in talking to someone who might know how to help? I feel like I want to reach out and grab someone’s hand, but so is everyone else right now. It’s the kind of sadness where I can feel how much I don’t know anything at all. At least, that’s how my mind or emotions describes it. Should should should should. The key word of my angst. What should I do? Is there anything to do? I feel like I’m in a cave and ashamed that the sun is going up and down outside and I remain sitting, seeing the glimpses of it instead of the full experience of the warmth, the light, and the chilling when the sun sets. I’m in a cave, why? (What did I do in a past life that led me to this existence?) I feel tired of feeling terrible. Almost to where I get quickly exhausted thinking about gender. I can tell a part of me is wishing for the Big Easy Answer. And I tend to doubt that the solution is slowly manifesting. And maybe every once in a while I feel it. But I do still have a pretty powerful disconnect from my physical self. My face, my body, my characteristics. I’ve always instinctively phrased it as “I don’t know what I look like.” And in a way I do, but the image of my face in my mind feels like an object, an Other. It always has been. I think part of what’s painful when I think about gender and what it could look like for me down the road, is that I’ve imagined versions of myself more than I could ever count. And, for some reason, it feels cruel to imagine a future self that might have real implications. For example, I’ve imagined giving interviews, doing stand-up, singing, playing sports, etc. at the highest levels. And part of the, I don’t know, enjoyment? or safety? of doing it is because there’s a part of me that knows that’s not where I end up. It feels terrifying to be me. In the moments when I must, I feel like I’m putting my entire life on the table, all my chances of validity, wagered on a single moment. The reaction never feels as good as the non-selves I imagine receiving, but it’s never as terrible and utterly invalidating as I fear it will. It’s kind of like seeing and feeling the force of a tidal wave approaching me and I know that this is it, this is the last moment of my life, but the wave evaporates at its crest and disappears. And so I’m left with the massive acceptance and sudden preparedness for nonexistence, but left alive. The day goes on, but I still carry all that weight.
I always feel one step before this is all feeling like too much. A part of me wishes I could be whisked away by the narratives I’ve seen by so many others so that I’ll know the features of what lies ahead on this existential journey. But that’s a bad old habit of mine. I always remember right before I turned 13 and my mom would tell me how I would change at certain ages and I didn’t want to believe it when I was younger. I was always going to hold her hand at the supermarket from age 6 to adulthood (I thought then), but then as I approached 13 and some of the things she predicted turned out to be true, I asked her to tell me about the rest of my life. She laughed and told me, “That’s not how it works.” I still have that habit apparently. I guess that’s anxiety. We marvel at the story of God creating the world because the world seems so complex to be created so easily. But who’s to say it wasn’t still difficult? Creation of any kind seems to be difficult to some degree. I guess it also happens in its own time.
