The Little Prince and the Fox

I honestly didn’t think this day would ever come: the day I would think of myself as a “man”. I still am, and feel, trans and nonbinary and gender-nonconforming. I always will be all that. But today I can pair those adjectives, or labels, together with the word “man” to describe myself: no longer just a “boy”, not only a “guy”, somehow a “man”. My own version of “man”: a trans, nonbinary, gender-nonconforming man.  

This feeling is bringing tears to my eyes — ironic, since “men” are not supposed, or allowed, to cry. I guess that’s one aspect of it being my own version of “man”, a nonbinary, gender-nonconforming man. 

I wonder from where this shift has come… 

I think it’s partly internal and partly external. 

The internal part is that I’ve grown. I’ve grown immensely. I’m solid (despite my feelings of falling apart, which are also real). I’m mature, I’m an adult. Part of me is still a boy — and hopefully always will be — but I’m an adult now: the boy has, mostly, grown up. And I haven’t grown up into a “human”: somehow, I have grown up more specifically into a “man”. My own version of “man”, with a nonbinary body and a nonbinary, gender-nonconforming history. 

Part of it is also external, though. The world perceives me as a “man”. Probably as a gay man more often than not. Sometimes as a transman. But I am walking in the world feeling perceived as an “adult human male” and feeling the weight, the pressure, of that along with the affirming beauty of it. 

At the outdoor swimming-pool on Sunday one of the young male life-guards said to me, “I like your tattoos, man”. Yesterday morning, climbing with a cis-man coach, after I shared my frustration about being two-thirds through my life already, he replied to me, “You’re not even half-way through your life, man!” Then, yesterday afternoon, while doing physical therapy for my right shoulder with my cis-male trainer, we were talking about having to be careful to not comment on people’s form at the gym, especially with persons who appear/present female, because of being afraid of coming across as “creepy guys” or “patronizing guys”. Both the climbing coach and the PT/trainer are nice guys, people I can definitely add to my list of “good men”. All of these three interactions were very validating to me and I really like how I feel around my climbing coach and my PT/trainer, I like the “guy-vibes” that are almost buddy-like between us. 

This is the beautiful part, for me, of being (perceived as) a man. 

But there are also burdens. Burdens that sometimes feel huge, really heavy. Burdens due to the patriarchal conditioning/brainwashing we all get, due to the polluted waters of patriarchy in which we all live. 

One of them is the risk (or reality) of being perceived as a “creepy guy”. At the outdoor swimming-pool this past weekend a young woman probably in her late twenties asked to share the lane with me. Once I was done with my workout, I stopped at the top of the lane and she starting chatting me up. We talked for about five minutes, she even asked me my name and whether I lived locally. It was all very pleasant and friendly — something I would have taken as totally “normal”, almost expected, when I presented female. What was shocking to me the other day was that all this was happening despite my masculine look. I kept thinking to myself, “Oh my gosh, I don’t look like a creepy guy!” and it felt so incredible but at the same time so fragile. Walking around the world looking like a guy I’m almost constantly concerned about coming across as “creepy”: with people presenting female, for fear of scaring them; with people presenting male, for fear of homophobia.

The other burden is the weight of hiding our deeper emotions. It’s less extreme than it used to be for men of older generations but it’s still there, it’s still real. Even when we do talk about emotions — and believe me, I do it a lot with my cis-men friends — we do it in a seemingly light, sometimes almost forcedly light-hearted, way. And always while doing something else (usually exercising, sometimes driving or having beers). 

Part of the solidity that I feel has grown and taken roots in myself over this summer comes from the outside. Part of it is certainly my own inner growth and maturity; but part of it is a solidity that comes from the sense of “having to look solid” to the outer world. And this is something I share with all men in our society: something we learned from patriarchal upbringing. I’m sure that to a certain extent my doubts about “looking enough like a man” are shared with all men in the fear of needing to look “tough enough” in the outer world. 

I know this tendency (I have been close to men my entire life) and I’m recognizing it even closer up now. And I’m feeling the weight of it. But I’m not going to succumb to it. I’m not going to embrace aspects of “masculinity” that are unhealthy and/or expected by an unhealthy system such as patriarchy. I’m going to continue being a “boy who can cry” and live as a nonbinary, gender-nonconforming man. I’m going to continue being brave by showing my vulnerabilities and expressing my emotions — like I did yesterday, both with the climbing coach and the PT/trainer when we were talking about accepting our aging bodies and I told them honestly that while I understand what they mean and appreciate their advice, I carry an additional burden of grief coming from the fact that I wasn’t allowed to live as my true self until my mid-thirties or early forties, a type of grief that they probably don’t experience. Saying that felt very vulnerable and I almost teared up while sharing with them, but it is my truth and I’m going to speak it. I’m going to continue voicing all my emotions, including my most tender ones, even while presenting male. 

Living authentically as the nonbinary, gender-nonconforming man that I am is going to be my contribution to fighting patriarchy and redefining “masculinity” in a healthier, more wholesome way, hopefully increasing the beauties and reducing the burdens (for all). 

[Trigger warning: grief; old age, end of life, death.]

I’m falling apart. Both literally and figuratively. My body is physically falling apart which is causing my spirit to break down and my mental health to go down the drain. 

I don’t know how much longer I can go on this way. If this is the “new normal” for me, then I don’t want to go on any longer. 

And once again, the solution is not psychotherapy or counseling or drugs/meds. 

Being an intense, outdoor athlete is part of my identity. Something that I was allowed & able to come fully into only very late in life — like the alignment between my body & gender-identity — and thus I feel a strong sense of grief as well as urge around the issue. Just as for my gender identity, I was also robbed of the fuller, truer aspects of my athlete identity for most of my life and for the best years of my life. So being able to live as an intense outdoor athlete through trail running and rock climbing means the world to me, just as much as being allowed to live in the world as the nonbinary transboy that I am. But I wasn’t able to get to the point of living out these fundamental identities of mine until I was 40 and that, apparently, was too late because now my body is falling apart. I got just over a year of joy in the body that truly aligned with my soul, just over a year of doing the activities that make me feel like I’m really alive and really me — and now it’s all over, all gone. 

A finger injury in my left hand that started bothering me during the winter holidays last year flared up on my ice-climbing trip in February so I hardly climbed at all in March; now, I haven’t been climbing at all since mid-April, for three & a half months, because of the torn UCL in my left thumb. Despite the surgery on my left thumb at the end of May and the gum surgery at the beginning of July that slowed down and reduced my physical activities a lot, I still kept running with the goal of completing my first full marathon (on trail) in October, to fulfill a long-held dream of doing a full marathon (~42 km) before turning 43. But four weeks ago I sprained my left ankle and I haven’t been able to run or hike (& hardly walk at all) for over three weeks now. So not only is one of my bigger dreams crushed, my whole summer is really ruined: when I found out I wouldn’t be able to climb all summer, I consoled myself with the thoughts and plans of trail running and hiking to keep my body moving outdoors, to go exploring, to be out in nature. But now that I’ve sprained my ankle I can’t even do that. On top of it all, an old pain in my right shoulder, that I had been able to ignore for a year, has flared up again to the point that I can’t even swim — the only activity I had left that gave me some kind of reprieve, at least as long as the outdoor pool is open. So now I really have nothing left. 

All my time is spent running between doctors’ appointments and physical therapy. The only exercise I can do is stationary bike at the gym and core/strengthening as long as it’s on the floor so as not to aggravate my ankle. It’s all indoors and it’s boring as hell. It’s mental and emotional death, if not physical death. 

When I say I need intense, outdoor physical activities I mean it. I mean “need”, not “want”. I need it because it’s part of my identity, part of who I am, and a part that I found so late — maybe too late — in life. I need it because for me it’s like meditating. I need it because it clears my mind, literally decluttering my brain. I think it’s also partly my neurodivergence (I have autism & ADHD) that leads me to need (& not “just want”) these intense outdoor physical activities: the chemicals that get activated through these activities, specifically being outdoors (& intense), keep me and my brain regulated and off meds/drugs. The level of stress and mental clutter and ever-present compression/pressure that I’ve been feeling this summer comes from not having access to my main regulatory mechanism, to something that I need as much as eating and sleeping. 

I cannot live this way. This summer has felt — and is still feeling — like a never-ending list of homework assignments and chores to try to fix my body with hardly any results and hardly any joy or reprieve. If this is the “new normal” for me, then I’m going to have to find a way to pull the plug because this way of living is not sustainable for me.

[Trigger warning: death, loss, grief.]

[Spoiler alert: some details about the book “Under the whispering door”.]

Two nights ago, I finished reading TJ Klune’s book Under the whispering door. 

I had to take it real slow at the end, the last 50-60 pages being extremely sensitive and possibly triggering for me. I’m still unable to dwell on it for too long, despite the “happy ending”. 

It is a beautiful book. Definitely an adult book — I know of parents who read TJ Klune’s book The house in the cerulean sea to their teenage or pre-teen kids, and I think that’s appropriate, but I believe Under the whispering door is just for adults. It’s a book about grief: death and loss and grief. And also hope and love and life, which always prevail in the end. But grief is ever-present and pervasive in this book. 

In his Acknowledgements at the end of the book, TJ Klune writes: “Under the whispering door is a deeply personal story to me; therefore, it was very hard to write. It took a lot out of me to finish, as it forced me to explore my own grief over losing someone I loved very much, more than I ever had before […].There is a catharsis to grief, though we don’t usually see that in the midst of it. I won’t say writing this book helped heal me, because that would be a lie. Instead, I’ll say that it left me feeling a bit more hopeful than before, bittersweetly so. If you live long enough to learn to love someone, you’ll know grief at one point or another.” 

I feel the same about reading his book Under the whispering door. Substitute the word “write” with “read” in the sentence above, and it could have been my own words. 

I won’t be able to do what I’ve done with the other books I’ve read by TJ Klune, i.e. go back and reread some of my favorite pages or chapters immediately. I probably won’t be able to do it for a very long time, maybe never. But this book will have a very special place in my heart and in my soul as will the two people who gave me a copy of this book and the two persons that this book reminds me of. 

—————— 

[Spoiler alert: some details about the story and characters in “Under the whispering door”.]

Among the five books by TJ Klune that I’ve read, Under the whispering door is my favorite. Apart from it being a book that feels very personal to me because of its topics, I also like the fact that three of the four main human characters (the fifth main character is a dog) are people of color — something still unusual in many books, unfortunately, even in TJ Klune’s other books. I also like that most of the story has an “ace vibe” to me: I don’t know if it’s meant to be that way, given that it’s a ghost and a living man falling in love without being able to touch each other at all; but to me, it felt “very ace” and as such very comforting, comfortable, and affirming. 

The main critique I have to this book — and to all of TJ Klune’s books that I’ve read so far — is that cis-normativity and amatonormativity are still too blatant and pervasive. I love the feeling of “warm, gay blanket” I get from these books but it’s always a little ruined by that ever-present background of cis-normativity and amatonormativity.

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. 

I can hardly believe it yet, but I made it! I passed the audition and am now officially a baritone in a big “gay men’s” chorus! 

My heart is a jumble of emotions at the moment, the main one still being disbelief. 

Definitely there’s a lot of excitement but even some fear. 

What if I cannot keep up with the other singers? What if the group or atmosphere is disappointing and not all I’m hoping for? 

But this piece of news coming today, after the harmful incident in the “masculinity group” last night with the blanket statement about transmasculine people all being “ex-lesbians”, feels even more like a wonderful breath of fresh air for me. For the gay boy in me. 

I will be able to be surrounded by other gay boys or gay men, including lots of cis-men. And of course it’s not going to be all perfect or all easy, but maybe it will help counterbalance the sense of stigma I often get in many queer communities (that are not gay circles), where it seems that liking or enjoying the company of cis-men is, at best, a “weird” thing and often a “sin” or something one has to justify.

Last night I attended a “masculinity group” organized by one of the bigger local non-profits that supports the LGBTQ+ community (& I am specifically using the reduced/reductive acronym “LGBTQ+” here, rather than the more expansive/inclusive acronym “LGBTQIA+”, because I believe that this organization, despite all the good it does, still has great shortcomings towards “I” & “A+” people). 

Only half a dozen people attended the affinity group last night, all of us transmasculine. And the overall atmosphere was very welcoming and comfortable. It was the first time I had ever been in a space with only transmasc persons and it felt really nice. 

However, an incident occurred that irritated me and hurt me deeply. One of the people in the group said, “before coming out as transmasc I was, or thought I was, a lesbian, like I think all of us here”. 

While I know many transmasc people did indeed “live as lesbians” in their “life prior to transition”, the above blanket statement contains two assumptions which are very harmful to me. 

The first is the blatant, explicit assumption that every transmasc person in the room last night had been, or identified as, a lesbian before coming into their transmasculine identity — which is probably the expression of an even broader (& wrong) assumption that all transmasculine people lived or identified as lesbians before coming into their transmasc identity. 

The second, less explicit but equally painful, is that everyone in the room was allosexual — which is also part of a deeper and more wide-spread (& wrong) assumption that we are all allosexual & alloromatic. 

Both of these assumptions are wrong, and they hurt me and anger me very deeply. The moment those words came out of the other person’s mouth, I felt totally alienated last night — alienated, invalidated, and invisible within what should be “my own community”, what should be a safe and inclusive space for me. 

I am a non-binary transmasculine aro ace gay boy. I never in my life identified as a lesbian and hardly ever was in lesbian circles (except for the rare occasions in which I hung out with my oldest friend & her soccer-friends, who were mostly lesbians). And on top of not being, and never having been, a lesbian, I don’t even experience sexual or romantic attraction toward any gender. 

I like being around guys, including cis-guys (which also feels like a “sin” in most queer circles outside of the gay communities), and I enjoy different types of intimacy with them but I’m neither sexually or romantically attracted to them — nor to anyone else.

Moments like last night’s blanket statement dripping with assumptions are painful and infuriating, and they remind me of how much work still remains to be done even within “our own communities”… 

One of the big themes in the book “Under the whispering door” by TJ Klune is the distinction between what we need and what we want. The meeting and love between the two main characters brings them (& one of them in particular) to articulate this explicitly around their relationship: how it brought him to realize “not what he needed, because that would imply he was lacking in some way, but what he wanted. Which is something people often don’t recognize the difference between.” 

I feel that this lonely summer and my having found words for my sexual & relational orientations as ace aro have helped me to better understand what I need in/from my close relationships and also realize that I often should express or explain those needs more clearly to the other people involved in the relationships with me. 

But are those needs or wants for me? Are those things that I feel I’m nor getting in my relationships things I actually need or things I “just” want? I instinctively call them needs. And I would argue that they are, indeed, needs since connection is a real human need: it’s a proven fact that disconnect, isolation, and loneliness impact our health very negatively. 

So is it my relational needs or “just” my relational wants that aren’t getting met and therefore are leading me to feel so lonely? And if it’s my needs, then does it mean I’m somehow lacking? Or, if it’s my wants, then does it mean they’re less important and I should “just deal with it”?

This morning was one of those mornings that I was woken up by loneliness, i.e. the feeling of loneliness was so intense and unbearable once my sleep was light that I had to get up, despite the lingering tiredness, to get out of my head, out of my heart, and into my body, to move, to act, to do something to keep the pain and almost anxiety at bay. 

The loneliness of this summer exacerbated by the lack of exercise and travel due to my injuries is taking a toll on me. 

Or maybe this specific difficulty today is the effect of the book “Under the whispering door” by TJ Klune. After blazing through most of the book, reading 50-60 pages per evening before bedtime this past week, now that I’ve gotten to the last 60 pages when reality hits, where “the end” is really near and incumbent, I cannot read more than a few pages at a time and even those are hardly bearable for me. The last few days before the ultimate separation of two people whose souls met, who love each other deeply but cannot be together, are probably still too much for me to read. They still remind me too closely of the two huge losses I endured last summer. 

And being so lonely here, now, makes it even harder. 

I do believe that this summer I have found, or rediscovered, and mastered some deep tools of self-regulation and capacity to just be with myself even without intense exercise or travel. Having been forced into loneliness and forced to inaction by external factors this summer, I think I have been able to cope with it and handle things much better that I thought I could. In that sense it’s been a growth spurt or a rediscovery of inner resources similar to the worst times of the pandemic in 2020-2021. It’s good to see I have these resources within me, this capacity. But it hurts nonetheless. 

It’s terribly painful and lonely. 

Sometimes the solitude is good. But overall this loneliness is really hard on me.

Yesterday I auditioned for a big chorus that was originally for gay men, and whose majority of singers still identify as such, but that is open to whoever can sing in the low vocal ranges (tenors, baritone, bass) regardless of sexual orientation, gender identity or gender expression. 

The layers of meanings that this audition had — and still has — for me is hard to put into words, hard to even parse. 

The three strongest emotions I can feel battling within me are a burning desire, a craving to join this chorus, to be part of this group, part of this community; the fear of what that might actually entail if I do get in; and the fear of not getting in which would lead not only to disappointment and sadness around not being able to join a community that I so much want to be part of but also a blow to my gender identity. 

That’s a lot. And as I write this here, now, I’m realizing that I might not be the only auditionee feeling this way, there may be others who also want to be accepted by this chorus because they need a sense of belonging and/or validation. I definitely do. And that’s why I put some much work (& hope) into this over the past couple months. 

I’m trying to brace myself for Tuesday, when we’ll get the results, for the most probable outcome that I did not make it. Because realistically that is the most probable outcome for me. My nerves still get too much in the way when I sing in public, actually tensing and constricting my throat and thus reducing my singing range. So my range sounds narrower than it really is, I can do less than what I could really do when I’m relaxed, at ease, like singing by myself or surrounded by other people/voices in a choir. I don’t mean this as an excuse for myself, to let myself off the hook, but as a reality of my situation as a transguy: because part of the restriction of my singing range, the one involving higher notes, comes from a deep fear I still have of being misgendered. I’m still afraid that if I allow myself to sing higher notes (even if they are “high” only in a relative sense), I’ll sound like a woman. I’m still afraid that if I allow myself to sing higher notes, I’ll hear my old voice again and I don’t want that. 

I said all this to the artistic director: I told him in our very first phone conversation in June and then again in a last-minute check-in call on Wednesday. On the one hand, I felt instinctively comfortable, at ease, and safe with him even in that first phone call; on the other, I figured I had nothing to lose by telling him. But still, I guess it took a good amount of faith in someone who’s basically a stranger and a willingness to be vulnerable on my part, which maybe is courage or maybe is just the only way I know how to be: “this is me, what you see is what you get”. 

I was terrified yesterday. I was nervous like I hadn’t been maybe since major exams in college. I literally panicked at lunch time, at home, as I was practicing again and suddenly felt I couldn’t do it, just couldn’t do it, and for a minute or two really considered not auditioning as I felt the terror of showing up and not being able to get a sound out of me or getting the notes wrong— or, even worse, of sounding like a “woman”. 

But I had to try, I couldn’t let this goal slide away, too. If nothing else, I’d learn. I told myself that even if I did get the notes wrong and make a mess of it, at least I would experience the first musical audition of my life and feel more relaxed the next time; I’d see what a musical audition is actually like (at least with this chorus); I’d get some feedback from a professional, who is also a very nice person with whom I feel safe and comfortable; and I could get confirmation of where my voice actually is in the musical range. 

I calmed myself down enough to go and I sang in my car almost the whole way there. I was still a nervous wreck when I got there and didn’t bother too much to hide it — I couldn’t have anyway even if I tried. I don’t know if I passed the audition, I don’t even know if it was considered a “good audition” from the outside. All I can say is what actually happened and how it felt for me. 

Once again, just as on the phone, the artistic director put me at ease, and quite wonderfully so. I was the first auditionee and in the general mess no one thought to bring up that I had prepared the part for bass voice; the artistic director began to play the song we had been given to prepare on the piano, humming some of the notes to me, and I just couldn’t do it, the notes were simply — physically — too high for me. And then, he realized he was paying the part for tenor voices! That little mishap at the beginning of my audition was a blessing for me and maybe one of the main things that actually allowed me to find my voice: I had the concrete proof that my voice was — is — in the bass range. And then I was able to sing. The artistic director played on the piano and hummed the part for bass, and I sang. I just sang. It started barely more than a whisper, but it shifted as I went along. Something in my brain, in my body, shifted. Most of the anxiety fell away, I forgot the details of where I was, I didn’t really see the third person in the room with us or even the artistic director anymore. I don’t even know if he stopped humming at a certain point and just played the piano as I sang. All I remember is that I found my voice and sang. I messed up a few notes a couple times, but I kept going, hearing my own voice clearly and faintly, in the background, the piano, registering it only as much as I needed to in order to keep time but not enough to distract me from my notes. It was only a couple minutes but it was like going through a little portal to another dimension for a short while. Then, I was asked if I had a song of my own that I wanted to sing, so I sang the first part of “Monsters” by CoCo & The Butterfields a cappella. And there again, it was like going into my own little world for a minute or two: eyes closed, keeping time by tapping my fingers on my stomach as I always do, just me and my voice. 

As I said before, I don’t know if I passed the audition yesterday. Part of it doesn’t even depend on how well, or not, I did personally but rather on who else shows up and how they do, and the musical needs of the chorus in terms of voices & ranges. But I passed an “inner exam”, an exam for and with my own self. First of all, I got confirmation that I can sing. I guess I had already got this confirmation when I sang in different choirs and groups back in Europe, but that was a decade ago at this point and I had a different voice then, and I guess the impostor syndrome coming from being told as a child that I couldn’t sing (“your sister is the one with the singing voice”) is still there. But no, I can sing, I can hold a tune, I can get notes and tempo right, I can recognize and reproduce notes. Secondly, and maybe even more importantly, I got confirmation of really being a baritone: a confirmation that is more of an affirmation, a validation, that despite all my doubts and impostor syndrome around my gender identity and voice, I actually, technically do have a low voice, a voice that is typically a “male voice” and that is lower than many of my cis-guys’. 

As much as I would be disappointed and sad if I did not get accepted into this chorus now, I want to try to focus on these facts, on these confirmations, affirmations, and validations that ultimately are little victories in my own journey.

Another step toward finding my own voice. 

I’m trying to make sense of this summer. 

It’s been — and still is — a very lonely summer. 

Three months ago I was terrified of what this summer might bring — all the loneliness, the grief, the sense of loss, especially given that I wouldn’t be able to do many of my favorite activities because of my UCL injury and gum surgery. 

It’s hasn’t been as bad as I feared. 

But it also hasn’t been as good as I hoped, as good as I tried to make it. 

When I learned, and finally accepted, that I wouldn’t be able to climb or ride my motorcycle (two of my favorite activities) for three months because of my UCL injury, I set out to give myself other goals, to make alternatives plans, including a half-marathon this weekend, my first full-marathon in October, and bagging fourteeners over the summer. But logistic obstacles have kept me from bagging fourteeners; another, recent, injury is preventing me from doing the half-marathon this weekend (one of the few with non-binary category and awards) and has actually kept me from running or hiking at all for two weeks now; and if this injury doesn’t get resolved soon, I won’t be able to do my first full marathon in October (a goal that means a lot to me since I’d like to do it while I’m still 42, before I turn 43 in November). 

The surgeries on my left thumb and gums, with their recoveries, and all the other old injuries flaring up now that I’m tackling with physical therapy have also kept me from traveling or exploring much. 

So many of the things for which I enjoy the summer, that make me feel so alive — the outdoor activities in the heat and sunshine and with long days of sunlight; the traveling; the exploring; the hanging out with friends outdoors and socializing — have been barred for me this summer. 

I’ve been spending most of the time by myself. Running between doctor’s appointments, doing physical therapy to try and get my body to not fall apart, making plans that then get ruined and fail. And I’ve been reading a lot. Reading tons. Reading like I hadn’t in years, devouring books, partly living vicariously through them (is that healthy?), partly finding myself reflected in them, finally understanding new or old parts of myself, finding words to define myself and describe the world more clearly. In that sense, this summer has been a summer of self-therapy for me. 

Maybe that’s what this summer is supposed to be for me, or what I can make of it? A summer of healing? Healing both physically from a multitude of injuries and mentally/emotionally from inner wounds? A summer of self-discovery, even while sitting still in this house, in this town? 

“Life is made of moments”, says the climbing buddy to whom I feel the closest. 

This summer has definitely had “moments” for me: like the ones in Salt Lake City visiting my Ragnar buddy; like the week when my European friend from grad school visited me here in Colorado; like the evenings out with my non-binary friend listening to local musicians play live; or the dip in the creek and walk&talks along the creek with my non-binary transmasc friend; or the dip in the creek and photo-shoot with my friend visiting from California; or the hikes in new places with my climbing buddies temporarily turned “hiking buddies” because of my UCL injury; or the solid presence of my neighboring running buddy. These were all beautiful, meaningful moments.

And there’s been healing. A lot of healing. I know it, I can feel it, some of it is still happening even now, I can feel it unfold within me.

But were those moments enough? Is this healing enough? 

Why is it bugging me, why does it hurt, that this is all I’m getting this summer?