“I am me, Hear me roar!”

There are several verses of the song “I am woman (hear me roar)” that I relate to deeply, and the title/refrain has often resonated with me, albeit it changing it slightly, sometimes. 

Sometimes, due to my upbringing & past experiences, I’ve resonated with the original, “I am woman, Hear me roar”. 

At other times, I’ve felt like, “I am human, Hear me roar”. 

Yesterday what rang in my head was, “I am boy, Hear me roar”; and this morning it’s simply, powerfully, “I am lion, Hear me roar”. 

I’ve just come back from my first foray into the “outside world”: I had to attend a huge scientific conference which was held at a convention center on the Strip in Las Vegas, NV. So it was a very extreme, a horribly extreme, first foray “back in the outside world”. It wasn’t just tipping my toe into the water of a small, quiet lake; it was being plunged into an ocean during a hurricane. The biggest yearly conference in my scientific field with thousands of participants held in a place that is already teeming with people and a continuous, overwhelming deluge of sensorial stimulation; and both at the conference and in Las Vegas itself, mostly people who are totally unawares of (at best) the non-binary/trans realities. So my brain collapsed under the overload of negative/threatening/difficult triggers: my impostor syndrome was back at its worst, given that this was my first scientific conference in years and I haven’t been able to do my work as well as I’d wanted to recently because of health issues; my autistic brain was completely overwhelmed by the sensorial overload that couldn’t be escaped anywhere else that my hotel room (and even there only barely); my COVID-related PTSD was re-triggered almost uncontrollably by the swarming crowds of people (hardly anyone wearing facial coverings) everywhere; I got constantly misgendered (I guess the world now sees me as a flat-chested woman despite the all-masculine clothes I was wearing) and the conference was very non-inclusive towards gender issues, so I felt invisible and/or not represented there, too.

Each one of those triggers or levels of difficulty would have been hard enough — and, in fact, I have already experienced them before. But having to deal with all four levels, all four triggers at once, and in such a delicate moment, too, still recovering from a surgery that feels life-changing to me — that was just too much. 

I had one major and one smaller meltdown. Full-blown meltdowns that, although I remained wholly aware of what was going on with me, were really scary: I was scared of the monster I saw. Sunday & Monday were the worst two days I had had in ages. They were dark and scary, and I don’t know how I would have made it through without some friends and my therapist. I was so bereaved that I wasn’t able to finish the work necessary to prepare and then present my talk at the conference, so I had to withdraw it — which felt (and still feels) like a huge failure. 

But I was also able to self-soothe and self-regulate, which is a good sign.  

I was able, in the end, to pull myself together and get myself home (earlier than originally planned) to feel safer. I was able to help and save myself. To get myself out of that hellhole. 

And I’m feeling stronger, more motivated, on the other side of it. The “fight” part of the “flight/freeze/fight” PTSD reaction has now simmered down to the healthy aspect of anger that motivates me to do and to be: to be myself unapologetically (for example, not asking people to not call me “M’am” but rather to use some phrases I’m finding that make people actually stop and think and apologize for misgendering one); to do my work so that I can show my supervisor (as well as myself) that I am actually capable of it; to do my work so that I can present it at some other conference; to get back out there in the world, on smaller, safer, more reasonable scales, like going to the gym and out for dinner with friends, to get myself used to a relatively safe and/or manageable, and hopefully pleasant, social life again; to start exercising again, now that I can, and get “buff” again. To be the boy that I am, whether the world sees it or not. To be the lion that I am and fight not only for my right to be myself, authentically & apologetically as I am, but also for the rights of others by engaging more in forms of activism. To make all these f***ing flaws in the system evident and to help change them.  

I went deep down to the bottom a few days ago, plunging (or being plunged) into scary, dark waters; but now I’m back up again and somehow I feel stronger than before… 

Heck yeah — “I am a lion, Hear me roar” — “I am me, Hear me roar”!