Creating ourselves

Yesterday I saw two quotes I really liked: they both resonated very much with me and felt somehow related to each other. 

One was anonymous and read

“Life isn’t about finding ourselves 

Life is about creating ourselves”.

The other was a Chinese proverb: 

“Don’t let yesterday take up too much of today”.

For months now I’ve been trying to find a different word than “transitioning” to indicate the processes — mental and emotional as well as medical — that I’m undergoing in my “masculinization”. I don’t feel that I’m “transitioning”: I’m not “going anywhere” or “really changing”, but rather, I feel that I’m “becoming myself”, “coming into myself” or finally being allowed to be more wholly & truly myself. Sometimes the expression “sculpting myself” has even come into my mind, like an artist sculpts a statue, physically creating something that they already envision in their mind. 

I’ve always known that I was, and am, a boy. I’ve always known that I’m autistic. I’ve always known that I’d be an explorer and wanted to be a scientist. 

For me that first quote is real, or appropriate, in that I haven’t had to “find” myself but, rather, I’ve had to find the environments and situations and opportunities to actually “fully be & express” myself — i.e. to be able, in fact, to create myself. 

Part of what has allowed — and is now more consciously allowing — me to create myself is making space for myself — for my needs, my wishes, my dreams, the image and visions of myself. And that’s where the second quote, the Chinese proverb, connects and fits in for me: making space for me requires leaving “stuff” behind, including not letting yesterday be too much of a burden or a shadow today. 

I’m not saying that leaving behind is easy or even fun. It’s often hard and sad and painful, and I’m not always good at it — on the contrary! 

I know that a great part of the sadness and pain and even of the anger that I’ve been feeling lately comes from having to let go, to leave “stuff” behind, in order to be able to create myself by making space for myself. And this is why I don’t want to write off these intense, uncomfortable, painful emotions as “just chemical unbalance”: these emotions are telling me something extremely important, vital even. 

They are partly the spur and partly the consequence of not “letting yesterday take up too much of today” so that I can create myself by making the necessary space — and thus live.