Heaviness

I’m feeling sad. It’s a heavy sadness, a dark heaviness that has been weighing on me since Sunday. 

I’m feeling sad and exhausted, and almost everything in my life now feels heavy and joyless.

On Sunday, I had signed up to race in a local 10k run that has had a nonbinary category for a few years now — a race I did last February, too. But then, Friday afternoon, I got an email from the organizers to “remind” us of their “prize policy”, i.e., that “rewards are given only to the first three finishers in categories with at least three participants”, which the nonbinary category in which I was racing did not have as of Friday. While ostensibly being a general policy applied to “all gender categories”, de facto this really affects only the nonbinary category because there are always hundreds of participants in the women’s & men’s categories. So, of course, this shifted the whole mood of the event for me: it suddenly went from being a “safe space” for me — a race where I could show up and compete and be recognized and awarded as my authentic self with no effort (other than the athletic effort) — to being yet another place where I had to fight, or at least advocate loudly for myself & those like me, in order to have my rights recognized, in order to be treated fairly and equitably. I did eventually get them to change their policy, if not officially, at least for Sunday, but it was at the cost of several emails, a lot of frustration & extra effort on my part and also thanks to the help of a couple of (cis-het) buddies of mine who chipped in as allies. 

It shouldn’t have to be this way: all I want to do is to be able to show up and run, like anyone else. If I were a cis-man or cis-woman, I could do that. But given that I am nonbinary/trans, I cannot. So I either don’t race altogether or I put up a fight every f***ing time. It’s exhausting. 

On Monday, I participated my first Lobby Day at our Colorado Capitol! It was quite overwhelming, especially at the beginning, but I eventually got my bearings and found my grounding, and finally I even went to the office of my District Representative and spoke directly to his Aid, voicing some of the issues that adult trans/nonbinary athletes have (& that are often disregarded, or forgotten, even within our own LGBTQIA+ community). It felt empowering and liberating to actually voice my concerns, to see/feel them being listened to and taken somewhat seriously, and it made my day. But it was also, again, exhausting. It was a long day (I got up at 5 AM to go there) that was physically, mentally, and emotionally very trying. 

On top of all this, I’m having to advocate for myself, for my own needs and boundaries, even at home, in the place where I live, in a space that should be safe & comfortable for me. My housemate just got a cat (they also already had a dog) and it is peeing everywhere, including in one of my two rooms. This would be annoying in and as of itself, but what makes it even worse is that my housemate has behaved very irresponsibly about it, putting off the cleaning of the cat-pee for a few days. Apart from causing the cat-pee smell to set it more, and thus be harder to remove, this has caused me to be uncomfortable in my own space, to not even be able to access all of my own spaces — the spaces for which I pay rent. 

So I’m tired. I’m exhausted. Everything this week has been feeling heavy and hard and joyless.