The Little Prince and the Fox

[Trigger warnings: unemployment, big changes, loss, grief.]

I think I’m in shock. 

I’m feeling similarly to when my father was hospitalized and when he died. And in some ways similarly to when my European genderqueer ex-lover left last summer. 

Even when one is mentally or rationally prepared for the loss, the shock is always real when the loss actually occurs. 

I needed one more year at my current job so badly. Not so much from the professional viewpoint, really: I needed it emotionally, mentally; I needed a year of “coasting”, a year of relative stability, a year without (too many or too big) changes after all the changes & challenges I’ve been through, non-stop, in the past 2-3 years. I needed a break. I needed to be somewhat in autopilot with at least one part of my life feeling like it didn’t need to be “thought about” or “rethought”. 

At this time two years ago I had been in Colorado for just over a month. I was taking a break and considering rebuilding my life, or restarting, and was quickly realizing that I wanted to stay here and not go back to California. So I started job hunting here — two years ago, almost exactly to the day. 

Here I am now, two years later, having to start job hunting again. But in the meantime so much has happened: especially, I have changed so much. 

Two years ago, I was still using my (female) given name; I was still relatively new & gradually getting used to using gender-neutral “they” pronouns for myself after decades of feminine pronouns used for me; I still had breasts; I hadn’t started testosterone/GAHT, yet, and had very little body-hair; and I hardly had any idea of the trans world, which I actually started exploring then. In many ways, I still knew myself much less and was a very different person. 

When I left California for Colorado a little over two years ago, I was a gender-nonconforming non-binary wanderer feeling very confused. Now, I am a genderqueer trans-boy trying to find his way in this place that mostly feels like home. I have a different name, a different body, a different voice, and in some ways different dreams, or needs, than two years ago. But I’m still just a toddler, I feel like I can only barely stand on these new legs of mine. And as I’m trying to learn to walk on these shaky new legs, I feel like the rug has been pulled from under my feet and I might topple over any moment. 

How can I know what job I want, or can, do next if I hardly even know my “new self”?

From the practical viewpoint, the job I had these past 18 months allowed me to discover and come into myself or, at least, start coming into myself fully. But I really would have needed an extra year, a little more professional continuity for another year. Rocking the boat, rocking what to me still feels like a shaky raft, is a huge blow for me now. And it feels like a big loss. 

There is also, mixed among all these difficult emotions of shock and loss and grief and failure and fear, a sense of relief, of sense of liberation & freedom almost. A sense that this current job ending in 5-6 months will allow me to catch my break, to pause for a moment, and to reinvent myself even professionally, if I want/need to. There is a sense of hope and excitement even. I know that is part of me, part of who/how I am: the adventurer in me, the curious person always seeking growth. It’s the other side of the same coin: uncertainty or loss, on one side, and freedom & discovery, on the other. 

But in this moment, the shock, the sense of loss and the fear and confusion are greater and hard to bear.

…and if there’s one thing, even only one thing, that I’ve learned in life, it’s that the body knows. 

At least, my body knows. 

My body knows.

[Trigger warnings: unemployment, loss, grief.]

For the first time in my life since finishing grad school, I’m finding myself in the position of being (almost) unemployed but unwilling to move. 

For the past fourteen years it’s often been the opposite: I’ve quit many jobs because I wanted to move, or to move on, or both. 

Actually, a similar situation happened to me a decade ago, when I was living in Barcelona: in the spring of 2014 the start-up where I was working had financial difficulties and had to fire almost all its employees, me included. At the time, I was happy in Barcelona and unwilling to leave just then (I was ready to leave a year later), and the several months being unemployed there turned out to be one of the nicest periods of my life then. 

So many difficult and intense emotions have been activated by the news I received from my advisor this morning that my research contract can most likely not be renewed past this summer that I don’t even know where to start to process them all. 

I guess a good point to start would be my body. 

My body is telling me to stay. My body is crying — I am physically crying, tears are falling from my eyes (despite the testosterone from GAHT). 

I don’t want to leave. I don’t want to uproot myself again, not yet, maybe not ever. Definitely not now. 

My advisor is encouraging me to take the academic job in California, if I get an offer (which is not at all to be taken for granted). But my whole body & soul balk at the idea. 

I don’t want to leave this area of Colorado, and definitely not to go back to California, especially not that area of California. 

This is home, here. I want to stay here. I need to stay here for now. 

The sadness and grief I feel at the idea of not working at this institute anymore in six months time is huge. I’ve been part of this institute, part of this town, for two years now. I don’t want to leave, I don’t want to change again, not now. There are so many memories, so many people, many of them so important to me, connected to these places. 

And I’ve built a life here over these past two years. I’m still building it and it has started to really look up and feel really good only in the past couple months — really good as in like pre-pandemic, even better than pre-pandemic because I’m happier here than I ever was in California because I was so lonely there. 

If I can avoid it, if I can do anything about it, I don’t ever want to be so lonely again in my life. It would kill me. 

I recognize part of what I’m feeling now: it’s similar to what I felt last summer when the losses connected to my father’s death in Europe and the departure of my European genderqueer ex-lover really brought it home to me, made it clear to me at a physical level, that this is home for me here in Colorado. That I don’t want to leave here, not even to “follow the love(s) of my life”. 

I don’t know what job I’ll do. I’m too sad and hurt and confused and scared to really know now even what type of job I’d like. But I know I’ll start looking with all the motivation and intentionality that I have. And with all the hope that I’ve felt reborn in me, truly & deeply, in the past couple months. 

This might yet turn out to be a blessing in disguise: yet another challenge, yet another big change, and as such maybe yet another opportunity to grow and shape my life in ways that could be even more aligned with me & my dreams. 

As one door closes, another might — or must — open. I’ll start looking for that door.

I’m still reeling from the flood of emotions from this ice-climbing trip. 

I’m feeling like a bucket of water full to the brim, so full of different emotions that I cannot take one single more drop in. I’m going to overflow, I’m going to explode. 

What got activated on my group ice-climbing trip this past week is a baffling mix of old and new: situations and emotions similar to what I experienced in high school & grad school when I had similar situations/dynamics with groups of cis-guys; but also very different dynamics in that now I am “actually one of the boys” instead of being “the boyish girl” who can be partly (but never wholly) integrated into the boys’ group/clan.

This is one of the things I had been yearning for years, throughout my childhood & teens & young adulthood, until I eventually gave it up at the end of grad school when life situations left me without a supportive/inclusive group of cis-male buddies who would take me as (almost) one of them. 

Moving to California eight years ago and, especially, getting out of & never getting back into a (monogamous) cis-hetero-normative romantic (& sexual) partnership was key to my liberation really opening up my path of self-discovery & gender-affirmation. But although I have been connecting closely with several cis-men who’ve been very affirming of my “special masculinity” since moving to the U.S. and especially during the past two years here in Colorado, until this past week of group ice-climbing I hadn’t experienced & been included into that “male group dynamics” for decades — and never wholly. I had it, partially, in high school. Then, it’s as if the world split in two and I was forced into the “girls’ lane”, despite (or maybe especially because of) being in the cis-male-dominated STEM world. Then somehow in grad school I again found a welcoming & inclusive group of cis-guys to which I belonged: for a few years, I was “allowed to switch lanes” again. But there was always (both in high school and in grad school) the underlying inescapable “truth” that I was a “girl”, a somewhat “special or different girl” but still a “female”, and now & then there would be the inevitable crush or fling with one of the cis-guys. 

So the experience I had with this ice-climbing group was baffling and powerful in several different ways: on the one hand, I was reliving experiences & dynamics similar to those I had with groups of cis-guys in high school & grad school, from 15 or 25 years ago, stirring & bringing up deep, old memories and feelings, which was baffling per se; on the other hand, this time there was the additional & new fact that I was actually being treated (if not “seen”) as “one of the guys” rather than as a “special, masculine girl”, with all the typical “hey, man”, fist-bumping and “he” pronouns just as among the cis-guys themselves. And there was absolutely no sexual interest towards me nor any flirting or hitting on me (such a liberation!). I was “just one of the guys”. 

At least on the surface. 

This is so baffling and in many ways still confusing and overwhelming for me that I’m not even going to attempt going to all the other, deeper, layers & facets of this situation — the entrenched binary vision/dynamics; the irritating cis stereotypes; the heteronormativities; the washing out of gender nuances. 

For now, with this group of people I’m “one of the guys”: I’ll do the fist-bumping and let them “hey, man” & “he/him” me. 

They probably realized I’m trans when we finally went to the hot spring all together at the end of the week, but it changed nothing (at least on the surface of things) and for now I’ll leave it at that. I’ll just put that aspect aside with this specific group of people for now. Or maybe I’ll always just be “my boy/guy self” with this group of people, let the boy in me just be & express himself with them while letting the other parts/sides of me come out and/or express themselves in other situations or with other persons. 

One step at a time.

Just take this in for now, soak it all in — baffling and in some ways irritating (e.g. the binary cis vision) and wonderful and confusing and scary (I’m always afraid of “being discovered” as trans) and affirming.  

Soak it all in — including the fact that at the hot spring I wasn’t just “one of the guys”: I was “the hottest guy” there!

Song by Grace Petrie with excellent lyrics, “Black Tie”:

“ 

Well, it’s a jungle out there

The year 2018, I didn’t think

We’d still be sorting babies into blue and pink

And all our progress

Well, I wonder what it means

That the only girls’ clothes that work for me

Turn out to be boyfriend jeans

Well, that’s fine

‘Cause I decline

A narrow set of rules that just don’t work

‘Cause these red lines

They’re not mine

And if you need me you can find me ironing my shirt

‘Cause I’m in black tie tonight

Get a postcard to my

Year 11 self

In a Year 11 hell

Saying everything’s gonna be alright

No, you won’t grow out of it

You will find clothes that fit

And the images that fucked ya

Were a patriarchal structure

And you never will surrender

To a narrow view of gender

And I swear there’ll come a day

When you won’t worry what they say

On the labels, on the doors

You will figure out what’s yours

And it’s a bloody nightmare

Trying to fight the spread of bigotry and fear

That’s uniting Piers Morgan and Germaine Greer

And all our progress

Yeah, I wonder who it’s for

When I dared to utter that trans lives matter, yeah

And all I got was a TERF war

Well, that’s fine

‘Cause I decline

Your narrow set of rules, they just don’t work

These red lines

They’re not mine

And if you need me you can find me ironing my shirt

‘Cause I’m in black tie tonight

Get a postcard to my

Year 11 self

In a Year 11 hell

Saying everything’s gonna be alright

No, you won’t grow out of it

You will find clothes that fit

And the images that fucked ya

Were a patriarchal structure

And you never will surrender

To a narrow view of gender

And I swear there’ll come a day

When you won’t worry what they say

On the labels, on the doors

You will figure out what’s yours

You will figure out what’s yours

And that it’s got

Nothing to do with fitting neatly in a box

That was constructed to make it seem

Like people come in just two teams

And anything that’s in between ain’t good enough

And you will love

And you’ll be loved

And you’re in black tie tonight

Get a postcard to my

Year 11 self

In a Year 11 hell

Darling, everything’s gonna be alright

No, you won’t grow out of it

You will find clothes that fit

And the images that fucked ya

Were a patriarchal structure

No, you never will surrender

To that narrow view of gender

And there’s folks you’ve yet to meet

But you’re exactly up their street

And they’ve been waiting just as long

To hear someone sing this song

And better days are one their way

When it won’t matter what they say

On the labels, on the doors

You will figure out what’s yours

And girl, you’re gonna be so happy

And girl, you’re gonna be just fine

And girl, you’re gonna be so happy

Down the line, down the line

“

For now, within the group of people on this ice-climbing trip I’ve been treated & referred to as “one of the guys”, with explicit references made to me as a “guy” and lumped into the “men” when a comment was made about bathrooms at the crag. 

In many ways, I am “one of the guys” and these comments and general dynamics are affirming and somewhat reassuring. But they’re also baffling and quite confusing, I’m continuously asking myself, “Do they really think I’m a cis guy?!?” 

I find it impossible that they can think of me, or see me, as a cis guy. 

Because I’m not a cis guy. And I’m sure that if they looked a little closer, if they paid a little more attention, they’d realize that. There’s so many clues — and many go beyond, and are more important or deeper than, the physical aspects. If they saw me in leggings or if/when we go to the hot springs together and I show up in my Speedo, that will leave no doubt to the details of my lower-body, to the fact that I don’t have a penis — something I’m very happy about & proud of. But there’s so much else that I think could be noticed already, mainly in how I behave. Yes, I have a very masculine vibe, as my climbing buddy (who’s my main connection to/on this trip) said and definitely in these groups dynamics I’m tapping into & showing those masculine vibes in a pronounced manner. But there are inevitable moments when some group dynamics lead to female/male gendered roles and I — sometimes instinctively, sometimes intentionally — behave differently from “the guys” while also not quite adhering to the female role. I fill some gap in between, almost like an “extra kind or gentle man”; some action or phrase on my side is definitely something that a cis man would not say or do. And it’s not that a cis man wouldn’t do it because he’s incapable or “naturally unable” to do it or say that: he wouldn’t because he wouldn’t have been socialized to do it or say that. 

But I was socialized as a woman. So I know how “the other side” feels. I know what it feels like to be the only person, or one of the few people, in the room without a penis, without testosterone flowing through their body. I know what it feels like to be surrounded by guys talking all their bravado — no matter how kindly or friendly, but still taking up all the air in the room, often not even realizing it (like these guys here, who are truly “nice guys”). 

These past couple days climbing and sharing dinners with this group of people have been interesting (once I finally got the courage to face whatever might happen), affirming, baffling, confusing. It’s as if I were living a new life, or living life as a new, or different, person: almost as if I had lived the first half of my life as a woman and now I were starting to live life as a man… 

I can understand both sides — which is one of the beautiful, and hard & challenging, gifts of being trans.

But I don’t belong to either side wholly and I so wish there weren’t sides at all. Because saying that I lived the first half of my life as a woman and now I’m starting to live life as a man is so reductive and not a truthful, or complete, representation of my experience nor of my identity.

On Friday, I went to get a haircut, to get my hair cut even shorter with the hope of ensuring I would look as male (not just “masculine”) as possible for this trip. A group ice-climbing trip that I joined with one of my climbing buddies and several close buddies of his, most of them with their girlfriends or wives. 

The fact that after having been sick and stayed at home for most of last week I made the specific effort on Friday to go get a haircut to look “more male” is not a small thing. It’s actually a big thing, and quite sad, if you think about it. Something that I know only my trans/non-binary friends (& other trans/non-binary people) can fully understand. I felt the need to get a haircut to try and feel safer, more comfortable — not for myself or with my circle of close friends, but safer & more comfortable out there in the world, in a group of new acquaintances and in a town of strangers. 

If you think about it, if you stop and think, it’s heartbreaking. Or infuriating. Or both. 

Once we got to our destination yesterday afternoon, the three guys with whom I traveled & I were early for our AirBnB check-in so went to the local brewery. The waitress who served us was super friendly with all three of the (cis) guys, calling them “sir” and “man” and almost flirting with one of them (despite the big age difference). She basically ignored me. Fortunately, she didn’t call me “m’am”, but that hardly makes it better. 

People stare at me but then ignore or don’t acknowledge me in public spaces. Part of the staring might be due to the fact that I still wear an N95-mask in public indoor spaces, but that cannot be the whole story. People stare like they’re trying to figure me out, they stare and scan me, but then there’s no attempt to address me or get to know me like it would have been when I was presenting female and looked like an attractive girl/woman. Nor are they friendly or flirtatious with me like they would be with a straight, cis guy. 

Gosh, am I learning what it means to live with the weight of being neither cis nor straight. 

Despite the daily frustrations I get at “home” (i.e. in that corner of Colorado where I have been living for the past couple years), I do live in a protected bubble and I’m never really prepared for the awful impact that these forays “out into the world” have on me. Yes, even in that “progressive bubble” where I live hardly a day passes that I don’t get misgendered or don’t have to put up with some other frustration or discrimination due to my being trans/non-binary. But I have built a sort of “layer of protection” around me there that helps buffer the frustration and pain and fear. I have a safe group of friends and some climbing buddies, who are all either queer or cis-male guys who take & treat me as one of them. The “outside world” with which I have to interact and that might still misgender me or force me into some uncomfortable binary choice (like only gendered changing rooms) is known to me so at least I have the “safety” or “protection” of familiarity. And somehow for all the uncomfortable or frustrating or painful interactions that I have to deal with almost daily, there are also as many safe, comfortable, affirming ones to counterbalance. 

But that’s not the case now, here on this trip. Partly, having been at home sick last week I didn’t get my usual dose of affirmations because I wasn’t able to exercise nor to go to the gym and see familiar faces nor spend quality time in person with any of my close friends: so my own bucket of outer validations & inner self-confidence is empty. But even if it weren’t empty, even if it were full, I’d be struggling now. 

As it is now, I’m feeling the crushing weight of the cis world and don’t want to interact with anyone from the ice-climbing group. I admit I’m probably coming in with my own assumptions, which also come from the fucked up patriarchic conditioning I received. But in this moment, I just don’t have the strength to show up in a group of mostly strangers where pronouns are assumed (it seems) and I’m the only trans/non-binary person. I don’t have the strength or courage to show up and risk being misgendered. I am honestly terrified of showing up and someone referring to me with female pronouns or the wives/girlfriends in the party trying to include me in their circle, as often happens in these male-dominated environments/activities. 

As the behaviors at the brewery and many other small situations yesterday reminded me, we live in a binary world dominated by deeply ingrained cis dynamics which are exclusive and oppressive for whoever isn’t cis. It’s a constant trickle of microagressions (in the best cases). And I just don’t have the strength for it today. 

I’m not one who usually feels much fear. So if I’m feeling terrified of being misgendered by someone in a group of acquaintances with whom I then have to spend the rest of the week, and if this fear is keeping me away from ice-climbing with them today, that means a lot. 

If I had to describe, or label, myself on a personal level mostly around my gender identity & sexual orientation, I would say that I am, or feel like, a genderqueer/non-binary pansexual gay boy. Maybe I’d even say that I’m a genderqueer/non-binary pansexual gay guy, as in growing up from a trans boy into a trans man… 

But the part of this multifaceted, almost contradictory, identity that feels the strongest now is the gay guy. 

Maybe it’s the gradual but in some ways also sudden increase of body hair, mostly on my limbs and a bit on my cheeks. 

Maybe it’s the recent celebrations of the big anniversary of my gender-affirming top-surgery which included going out dancing at a queer (mostly “gay guy”) club with friends. Maybe it was all the validation I got from my cis-male friends even on that occasion, when they came to the queer club with me as well as and treated me just like a guy even in that context (as they do when we go climbing together). 

Maybe it’s been some recent comments from one of my closest (cis-male) climbing buddies who said he thinks people take us for a gay couple when we’re climbing or traveling together, him being read as the “twink” and me as the “butch” because I “have such a masculine vibe” (in his words).

I know the gay guy part of me isn’t the whole of me. I know there’s a genderqueer/non-binary part and a strong trans identity that I don’t want to lose, I don’t want to become invisible to the world; and I know that there’s a bisexual/pansexual component to my sexual orientation that has actually become stronger & more clear to me in the past 2-3 years. But somehow the gay guy part now feels like the one that needs the most attention and attending to in this moment or phase. I feel a yearning for being around guys, but being around them as another guy (not as the attractive and/or athletic girl as often happened in the past). I want them to take me as one of them. I want to hang out with them. I want to have sex with them (some of them, potentially, but none of my buddies). But I’m also scared. I’m scared of being “discovered” as a transmasculine person, i.e. “not a man”, when I use the men’s changing rooms or restrooms (internalized transphobia?). I’m worried that my cis-male friends might feel uncomfortable around/with me if they realize how much of a gay guy I am, i.e. that I mostly like boys rather than girls (internalized homophobia?). And I’m also partly scared when I go to a gay club, worried that the cis gay guys there might not like me or exclude me or, even worse, insult or attack me, if I’m “discovered” as a transmasculine person, i.e. “not a man” (internalized transphobia?). 

Sometimes I wish I were just a (cis) gay guy. I know life wouldn’t be completely easy (it would actually be very difficult in many places) but it seems like it would be easier than the tangle I have to deal with as genderqueer/non-binary pansexual transmasculine person.

I’m still feeling very emotional today and still wanting to cry. These tears, like last night’s tears, are not from regret or sadness. There’s no regret in my words or feelings when I say, “There’s no going back for me”. 

These tears and my feeling so emotional come from the intensity, from the breadth & depth & mix, of the emotions I am experiencing: it’s so much, it’s almost too much to hold. It’s mainly tears of gratitude and joy and almost disbelief for what this anniversary represents to me. And also tears of compassion towards myself.

And there’s awe, too. A sense of awe towards something that feels bigger than me and/or beyond myself. As if life, or the universe, were unfolding through me and somehow beyond me.

This is MY BIG DAY, MY BIG ANNIVERSARY. Something HUGE for me, something of paramount importance. But I also feel so small and delicate today. I feel the need to be super gentle with myself today, to show & give myself as much love & compassion as I can, to let myself be loved and held.

At last, the tears came. Just a trickle at first, while I was driving home. And now, at home, the dam finally gave way and the tears poured out flowing freely and abundantly. 

It’s really starting to hit me now, all that I’ve been through, all that I’ve put myself through, with the strength and conviction and determination, almost blind determination, of self-preservation and self-definition. 

Two years ago at this time I was spending the last of my three nights on the road on my way from California to Colorado. I was spending the night in Grand Junction before my last leg to reach my final Coloradan destination with only a very vague idea of what would come next for me — really, with a plan only for the following 4-5 months then. 

One year ago at this time I was at my French climbing buddy’s place, trying to relax before my gender-affirming top-surgery the next day. 

Both of these events were life-changing for me, really life-changing, just as my move from Europe to California had been in January 2016. 

From each of these three events there’s no going back. They’re irreversible. Even if I did go back to California, or Europe, or if somehow I got the “original, feminine chest” again, it wouldn’t be the same anyway, I wouldn’t be the same anyway. These three events have changed not only my life but also, and especially, transformed me so deeply that there’s no going back. 

And each of these events was a huge leap of faith, something I did almost blindly, with only a vague, or short-term, idea of what I was in for, of what could be in store for me, of what life would be like for me afterwards. Each time I was leaving so much behind, leaving behind almost everything I had or knew or had known. Upending my professional, relational, and geographic life in the case of my two major moves; overturning my gender identity with all that entails — A LOT — in our life, with my top-surgery last year.  

In each of my two big geographic moves, I basically packed my bags and left — crossing an ocean & a continent, in the first case; driving halfway across a continent through snow-storms, in the second.

As to my gender-affirming surgery, it’s hard to put into words how different life is for me now and how it’s still changing for me and how much emotional effort and how much energy/focus it’s taking to get used to this “new me”, despite it being “the me that feels more true” to me. Walking in this world as a male-presenting individual while still having the almost constant awareness of not being an AMAB person and sometimes even the fear of being “discovered” or “considered as an impostor” because of being AFAB. The constant doubt or worry of not knowing exactly how the world perceives me, what other people see. The desire and conscious effort to claim my place in male spaces such as men’s restrooms and men’s changing rooms or simply men’s clothes or my deeper, more masculine voice or “male attitudes”. I am very aware and self-conscious about how I do these things, use these spaces, and how it means to me that I am claiming male spaces that I’ve always felt belonged to me, or I belonged to, but were to some extent inaccessible to me before because of my “AFAB status”, because of my body. But now I have a masculine chest which gives me just enough confidence to enter and take up space in these male places, but still not enough confidence to feel wholly comfortable and/or safe in them. And maybe I never will. 

But even if I never feel fully safe or comfortable in male spaces, there is no going back to female spaces for me. And this is one of the things I didn’t wholly realize a year ago when I took the huge step, the leap of faith, of my gender-affirming surgery, i.e. of getting my breasts amputated and my chest redesigned. 

Just as I didn’t have a full or real or complete idea of what I was heading towards when I moved from Europe to California and then from California to Colorado. 

In each of these cases, I followed a sort of “life instinct”, almost “survival instinct”, along with a strong desire or dream. In each of these cases I knew I couldn’t continue to live where & how I was, I knew I needed that specific change although I didn’t really know all that that change would entail. This to me seems like some deeply-rooted, natural “life force”, some innate and almost primeval drive that is the expression of the strength, or conviction, that life can have. Not only a survival instinct, but also a drive of that innate core in every living being to find its true expression despite, or against, all odds.