There’s another extremely important thing I want to register & put on record today.
On Tuesday, I was a wreck. Partly, I was probably just feeling the exhaustion from the weekend’s efforts. But also, I had a conversation with my boss in which he confirmed that he cannot renew my contract past this July and the professional advice he gave me was pretty much useless. I felt overwhelmed and panicked and also full of grief from this phase of my (at least professional) life coming to an end.
But then, between Tuesday afternoon and last night I had several conversations that have helped (re)kindle my own sense of hope and almost relief and/or liberation as the other side of this coin of losses. Between Tuesday and yesterday afternoon, I talked about my current professional situation with one of my closest friends from grad school in Europe, my running buddy who supported me on the race, a dear non-binary transmasc friend here, and a colleague who’s older and more experienced while also having a similar “non-orthodox” (in academia) path as mine. And in all these conversations, the main feeling that transpired, that got rekindled, underneath or beyond my fear of being unemployed in a few months and my confusion about what to do next, was the liberating & empowering sense that now I can redefine myself, both professionally and personally. As scary and unwelcome as it is to be facing unemployment in just a couple months, this could also be an opportunity for me to (re)decide what I want to do next, especially now that I know myself better and that I have more confidence in who I am & how I (want to) present to the world.
Something similar happened last night on my date with the gay man. We eventually spoke about physical/sexual intimacy and I shared with him how I’m struggling with the recent realization that all physically/sexually intimate connections from now on for me will be with people who know only this “new version” of me: persons who will never have seen me pre-testosterone or with breasts. And that to me has been feeling like a painful loss, in the sense that I’m afraid they might never really get the “whole me”. They’ll only get this “new me”. But as I put it into words with him last night, all of a sudden the loss turned into a sense of liberation: from now on all my physical/sexual intimacy will be in “my new self” but this “new self” that feels so much more confident & aligned with itself. And, also, it means that all my relationships entailing physical/sexual intimacy from now on will be in some way totally new for me and incomparable to any of my previous ones in a wonderfully liberating way. Of course, all relationships are fundamentally unique and cannot really be compared, but all my sexual relationships from now will be “more different”; and if I can find the right persons with whom to connect sexually and/or romantically, these future physical/sexual relationships will probably feel more fulfilling or healthier to me because I’m more aligned with myself. I will finally be going into sexual and/or romantic relationships as a transmasc gay guy, unburdened by having previously lived (& having been seen) as a “woman”.
This could turn into a wonderfully powerful liberation.
The Little Prince and the Fox 