Author Archives: adventurerliberated

Today’s eight months after my gender-affirming top-surgery, a.k.a. masculinizing mastectomy.  Today’s also four weeks after hitting rock bottom at the end of August, like sinking to the bottom of the ocean, and then starting to come back up.  The coming back up hasn’t been easy or rosy, and in many ways I still feel disheartenedContinue reading “The importance of dates & rituals for me”

In the past months I’ve been feeling like a failure, over and over, day in and day out: I feel that I’ve failed in every aspect of my life, professional as well as personal.  I still feel that way. And this sense of failure is sometimes so overwhelming that it is paralyzing.  I truly doContinue reading “True Love vs. Failure”

I’m feeling frustrated, maybe even a mix of sad and angry.  I have this beautiful body and cannot share it with anyone, because of heartbreak & trauma.  It isn’t the first time that I’ve felt this way. For several years now I’ve often felt that I’m wasting my “golden years”, wasting the best years ofContinue reading “Trigger points”

One of my closest transmasc/non-binary friends here in Colorado just shared with me the song “Man of my dreams” by transmasculine artist Ezra Michel and it instantly became a favorite of mine — I resonate with it completely, every single line of the song feels like it’s my story, how I feel now…  I amContinue reading ““Man of my dreams””

It’s weird, this feeling of naming and asking for what I want.  It’s also confusing, dizzying, and terrifying in many ways — it puts so much responsibility, so much pressure, on one, on oneself, on me.  If I name, ask for, actually go for, what I want, then I’m (more) responsible for the outcome, forContinue reading “Naming more of “what I want””

My counselor is also encouraging me to start thinking about, and actually naming, what I want within relationships, especially romantic ones.  It’s not the first time that a therapist, after listening to me repeat dozens of times “I should…”, “I could…”, “I can…”, “I cannot…” with respect to some relationship or other, has bluntly askedContinue reading “What I want (in this moment)”

In our session last week, my therapist suggested I write a love letter to myself, i.e. what I would like or need to hear from a lover / loved one, what it means to me to be loved (especially in the context of romantic relationships, but not only).  Here’s what came out of me yesterday,Continue reading “Love letter to me”

Yesterday I spent my whole Friday evening with a relatively new but also already very good friend — a friendship that started within the queer/trans community, spurred mostly/initially by our both being climbers (& very much outdoors, trad climbers), and that seems to be turning into a nice, well-rounded friendship that includes meals/drinks and aContinue reading “From object to subject?”

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 postdocContinue reading “Finding the meaning of my summer of 2023”

I’m taking back my power.  I still do have a choice.  And maybe it hasn’t really been “one step forward, two steps back” for me — maybe I’ve learned and grown more than expected from all this.  This anger I’m feeling is the “good type of anger”, it’s my friend. It’s that anger that tellsContinue reading “Taking back my power”