Shock

[Trigger warnings: unemployment, big changes, loss, grief.]

I think I’m in shock. 

I’m feeling similarly to when my father was hospitalized and when he died. And in some ways similarly to when my European genderqueer ex-lover left last summer. 

Even when one is mentally or rationally prepared for the loss, the shock is always real when the loss actually occurs. 

I needed one more year at my current job so badly. Not so much from the professional viewpoint, really: I needed it emotionally, mentally; I needed a year of “coasting”, a year of relative stability, a year without (too many or too big) changes after all the changes & challenges I’ve been through, non-stop, in the past 2-3 years. I needed a break. I needed to be somewhat in autopilot with at least one part of my life feeling like it didn’t need to be “thought about” or “rethought”. 

At this time two years ago I had been in Colorado for just over a month. I was taking a break and considering rebuilding my life, or restarting, and was quickly realizing that I wanted to stay here and not go back to California. So I started job hunting here — two years ago, almost exactly to the day. 

Here I am now, two years later, having to start job hunting again. But in the meantime so much has happened: especially, I have changed so much. 

Two years ago, I was still using my (female) given name; I was still relatively new & gradually getting used to using gender-neutral “they” pronouns for myself after decades of feminine pronouns used for me; I still had breasts; I hadn’t started testosterone/GAHT, yet, and had very little body-hair; and I hardly had any idea of the trans world, which I actually started exploring then. In many ways, I still knew myself much less and was a very different person. 

When I left California for Colorado a little over two years ago, I was a gender-nonconforming non-binary wanderer feeling very confused. Now, I am a genderqueer trans-boy trying to find his way in this place that mostly feels like home. I have a different name, a different body, a different voice, and in some ways different dreams, or needs, than two years ago. But I’m still just a toddler, I feel like I can only barely stand on these new legs of mine. And as I’m trying to learn to walk on these shaky new legs, I feel like the rug has been pulled from under my feet and I might topple over any moment. 

How can I know what job I want, or can, do next if I hardly even know my “new self”?

From the practical viewpoint, the job I had these past 18 months allowed me to discover and come into myself or, at least, start coming into myself fully. But I really would have needed an extra year, a little more professional continuity for another year. Rocking the boat, rocking what to me still feels like a shaky raft, is a huge blow for me now. And it feels like a big loss. 

There is also, mixed among all these difficult emotions of shock and loss and grief and failure and fear, a sense of relief, of sense of liberation & freedom almost. A sense that this current job ending in 5-6 months will allow me to catch my break, to pause for a moment, and to reinvent myself even professionally, if I want/need to. There is a sense of hope and excitement even. I know that is part of me, part of who/how I am: the adventurer in me, the curious person always seeking growth. It’s the other side of the same coin: uncertainty or loss, on one side, and freedom & discovery, on the other. 

But in this moment, the shock, the sense of loss and the fear and confusion are greater and hard to bear.