Finding the meaning of my summer of 2023

These are not decisions I made, or am making, light-heartedly. 

I had envisioned my summer of 2023 very differently. I had imagined that after recovering from my gender-affirming top-surgery, I would get fully back to work in a very productive way, wrap up my textbook completely, publish the results from the past year of postdoc research, calmly find a new living situation, and then go on a 2-3 week vacation exploring new areas in- and/or out-of-State, before starting the Fall 2023 semester with a full & regular schedule. 

But March & April turned out to be much tougher than expected between my return to the “real world” & to work being much harder and slower than I had hoped and my housing situation precipitating and forcing me to find a new place from one day to the next. But the latter event also opened up a whole new world of opportunities and relationships, from a place to live where I feel comfortable & loved, to new “adoptive families”, the deepening of previous friendships, new running buddies in my neighborhood, psychedelic therapy, starting to go out dancing again — reconnecting to life in a more whole & happy way and even exploring life in new ways. 

It’s within this frame of a roller-coaster, surprising, and unexpected (for better or for worse) spring that the friendship with the genderqueer visiting scientist from Europe started again after the break from their (scientific) visit from last year. When they arrived at the end of March, I was at the height of my (housing) crisis; and during their first two months here I was going from being extremely stressed and anxious and still traumatized and almost afraid of the world to opening up to life again — my own wonderful, albeit complicated, springtime. One can view our (re)connection then as serendipitous. For me it was in many ways extremely unexpected, but when around mid-May I finally realized there might be something “more” than platonic friendship between us, I decided very consciously to go with it, to take the leap, to let it happen, to “go and explore”. I wasn’t going to explore new areas in- and/or out-of-State out in Nature on my own, as planned. I was going to explore new & old areas of my own inner world in close relation with someone else — something I hadn’t really done in a decade. 

There still is a part of me that feels/thinks that I wasn’t true to myself or my plans/dreams this summer because I didn’t go and explore new areas in- and/or out-of-State out in Nature on my own — probably it’s the wounded part of me, and maybe also the staunchly independent part of me. But it was my decision, my conscious decision. I chose to spend that time with them and to spend it with them in those particular ways — and we made many of those decisions together, like a couple, in a relationship — something I also hadn’t done in a decade. I postponed and shrunk my road trip vacation, I didn’t travel far geographically this summer; but I nevertheless did something very important and meaningful for myself and probably also for them — and definitely something new or unusual for me for years. 

So my decision that that experience be limited in time comes within this frame, or reality, for me: I willingly and consciously went into an experience for 2-3 months between May and July that was in many ways new to me, in many ways difficult because I was out of practice, in some ways also scary or not completely aligned to what I would do on a long-term basis. I explored, I experimented, opening up to and compromising with another person, very closely. Maybe too closely or too fast too close because I couldn’t have maintained those patterns for long, they would have been unsustainable for me in the long run. I did it willingly & consciously then because I knew that was the only moment, the only time, I would have with them. 

In many ways my summer plans were turned upside down by them, by their presence, by the relationship with them: I embraced that, I went with the flow, I even jumped for it, because I felt that it was worth it. 

And I still believe it was worth it, deep down inside me. But in order to be able to really tap into that sense of it “having been worth it”, now I need to find some closure to shed the anger and the pain. 

To be able to say — and to truly feel deep down inside me — “that was my summer of 2023, how I chose to spend that one summer together with someone I loved”.