I am trans! Another new beginning

I’m so overwhelmed by emotions that I can hardly bear it — despite them being by far mostly positive. 

I want to cry from the relief and joy, and even exhaustion. 

I’m cat-sitting for friends until Monday and as I was walking down the main street in downtown, in a small city here in Colorado that is one of my top-three favorite places in the world, I felt so well that I could hardly believe it and couldn’t stop smiling to myself. Surrounded by rainbow flags and “Happy Pride” signs and by plenty of queer persons just walking around everywhere, and just soaking in the generally outdoorsy-hippie vibe that this place and the people here have always, it felt like paradise. I felt safe and comfortable, seen without sticking out and yet visible and accepted. 

I am trans. There’s no question about that and now it’s just so glaringly evident to me, and probably to most of the outside world as well, that I wonder how it could have taken me so long to realize this… And then I remember, and remind myself, that I have felt like this, somehow, my hole life but just didn’t have the vocabulary, concepts, or support to express it. 

I see my reflection in shop windows and mirrors, and it’s a non-binary body that could really be trans-masculine or trans-feminine at this point — either way, it’s so clearly non-binary and trans, and I LOVE IT!!! 

My voice is also deepening, and I love this process and can’t wait to have a non-binary voice that doesn’t gender me as female anymore. 

Astronomically, it isn’t quite summer yet — it’s close but not quite there, yet. But for me, today, a new season of my life has begun. Or maybe it really began a while ago but now it has exploded, and it’s this explosion that I’m overwhelmed by, albeit in a mostly positive way. 

Yesterday I finally completed my textbook and submitted it to the publisher. I feel immensely relieved and proud and joyful, and even in disbelief, from this. But especially, I keenly feel the closing and closure of a phase of my life and the beginning of a new one. Therefore, although it’s not quite summer yet, for me it’s summertime already and a new season has begun for me today. 

I’ve been in Colorado for almost half a year now. I haven’t officially started my new job and I’m not even sure, yet, in which town I’ll end up living. I’m still afraid that changing to a new health insurance, because of a new job, I might have issues getting the medical gender-care that I’ve had in the past few months and have come to realize that I really, really want. So there are still several unknowns for me and some fear related to them. 

But I also know and feel deep inside of me that this fear is a good sign, it’s a healthy fear: it’s the healthy fear of a new beginning, the healthy fear of a rebirth, the healthy fear of losing things that I know I really want — which means that now I know what I really want!!! That is so great, so wonderful, and feels so good. There are hardly words to express how good that feels. 

I know who I am, I know what I want, and I’m not afraid to express it, to show it, and to reach as far as I can to achieve it. 

I’m leaving a whole phase of my life behind me. And it feels so good, so necessary, like such a relief. And the best thing about it is that I’m leaving that phase of my life behind me without rupture, without fleeing it or negating it or regretting it: I’m wrapping it up nicely, I capped it off with my textbook which I leave as a beautiful (at least to me) legacy, grateful, hopeful, and happy to move on. 

I’ll still be there for whoever needs me, including all those (ex-)students/mentees who might still need me as a professional figure. But I’m also looking forward to relinquishing some of those responsibilities in my next job, at least for a while. I need this break, this change, even from all those responsibilities — professional, almost public, responsibilities. And I’m realizing fully now how much the relinquishing of that role, of those “public” responsibilities, has allowed me and is continuing to allow me to find myself and liberate myself and express myself and be myself more fully. 

This is probably going to be a transitory phase, but nonetheless an extremely important one that I need deeply and that I’m really looking forward to right now. 

For a new beginning. My new beginning. Another rebirth.