I’m happy — happy with a joy and a delight that I hadn’t felt in a long time.
I’m scared. I’m excited, and impatient to start.
I hardly slept last night from the lingering jumble of emotions from yesterday.
I thought I knew how much this meant to me but maybe I wasn’t really aware of its importance until twenty-four hours ago, as I sat tight and tried to get some work done — any work done — counting the minutes until noon, until the moment it would make sense for me to check my personal email for a response from the gay men’s chorus.
I knew I was nervous, I knew I had to self-regulate or, at least, do some auto-regulation, so I did one of my 10-minute guided meditations before checking my email. But even while sitting on the cushion I could barely get my breathing to calm down and I was literally trembling when I finally logged into my email. It was all I could to read the subject line — that fortunately said “Welcome to DGMC!” — and open the email to read the confirmation: “Congratulations, A.! You’ve been accepted to join our chorus and you will be singing baritone.”
OK, I had my answer and that was all I could handle then and there. I couldn’t believe it. I had almost brainwashed myself over the weekend that I hadn’t passed the audition this time but that it would be fine, I would take advantage of the extra free time this autumn to get outdoors more and try again for the December auditions. I was protecting myself from what could have been a huge disappointment — probably even bigger than I had realized.
Once I got the confirmation of the wonderful news in the email, though, the joy and disbelief were too big to hold and all my intentions of self-regulations or even just auto-regulation went out the window. I had to share this wonderful, amazing news with someone who could understand, who could listen and partake of my enthusiasm. Fortunately, my nonbinary European friend who was visiting me here three weeks ago and who had helped me kick-start my musical preparation for this audition, was available to chat and we had a lovely phone call for almost an hour.
I still cannot believe that I will be singing in a big and talented chorus of mostly gay men. My disbelief comes both from my impostor syndrome around my voice (“Am I really good enough to sing here???”) and from my self-doubts around gender (”Am I really enough of a guy??” — although this latter factor is irrelevant to the choir members since they are open to anyone who can sing tenor, baritone or bass regardless of their gender).
I feel like I’m standing on a threshold. I actually am standing on a threshold. The threshold to a world I’ve been looking at and longing, at least explicitly, for five years. When I walk into our first rehearsal in ten days, I will be walking into that world — or a possible expression of that world — both literally and figuratively. I will be walking into a room filled with about a hundred gay men. But I will also be walking into a new phase of my personal journey, of my gender journey; because even though this choir doesn’t require people to identify as “gay men” in order to join it, I am making this statement to myself and to the persons who are closest to me. I am stating that, despite being an AFAB person, despite the lack of a penis, despite being nonbinary and aro and ace, I am a gay boy. And not only am I a gay boy, I also want to do something visibly in that specific identity of mine, sharing a passion with others who share my passion and also share my identity (or, at least, parts of it).
I’ll be walking through a threshold (yet another!) also because I will be walking into something new and pretty much unknown to me. Which is one of the reasons I’m so scared. What is it really going to be like? What if I don’t like it? What if I misunderstood my own identity? And, from the other side: What if they don’t like me? Or what if people start hitting on me?
Regardless, despite all these questions and doubts and fears, I know I need to do this. I both need and want to do this. It’s one of those thresholds, like my gender-affirming top-surgery, that I cannot not cross despite the fear. I need to do this to come into myself more wholly. And regardless of how it turns out in the end, I will know more about myself (& possibly the world around me) after stepping through that threshold and into that room, into that world.
The Little Prince and the Fox 