I had to come all the way to the U.S.A., to the Western States, to California and then even more specifically to Colorado, in order to find myself.
Like Hesse’s Siddhartha: he had to go through all those experiences, all those “lives”, all those roles or “versions of himself”, to eventually, finally find himself (& also find peace within Unity).
I’m just like Hesse’s Siddhartha.
Just as Rainer Maria Rilke wrote:
“
Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror.
Just keep going.
No feeling lasts forever.
“
That’s so true.
But while feelings don’t last forever, their traces can, the memories of the experiences that caused or led to those feelings. And it’s those traces that remain with us that make us who we are.
Those traces come up — are coming up very often recently — in my dreams. But they’re “only” traces: while being fundamental/instrumental to having formed me up to now, and to keep shaping me in my growth, they’re not my present, they’re not present me.
I am the result of what I decide to do of/with those traces.
This last weekend of October, from Saturday through last night, I went on a trad climbing trip to Utah with my closest climbing buddy from Colorado. A three-day-two-overnight road trip together. Our first road trip together and a huge step up in our friendship, in our relationship.
Last December we spent nearly 14 hours together one day when he took me ice-climbing in RMNP — a big adventure and step up in our friendship, in the mutual trust & camaraderie between us, already then. But nearly three full days including two nights sharing the same sleeping quarters is a huge step up, especially when considering the circumstances of our trip — the sudden cold & snow that hit Colorado already this weekend, the snow storm warnings for our area & the mountainous region we had to cross on our trip, the issues with my car which forced us to troubleshoot an overheating engine in the snow together and stop overnight along the way.
In hindsight I see, rationally I know, that we had been building up to this kind of experience, this level of camaraderie, this type of friendship, almost since the day we met in the summer of 2022. And yet its unfolding and actually happening over this long weekend still feels like a wonderful surprise to me and something I’m still wrapping my head & heart around.
If love is (using bell hook’s words) a “[…] mix [of] various ingredients — care, affection, recognition, respect, commitment, knowledge, and trust, as well as honest and open communication […] Love is an act of will [… ] the will to extend one’s self for the purpose of nurturing one’s own or another’s spiritual growth”, then this thing between me & climbing buddy is love. As it is with one or two other climbing buddies; as it is with some of my old friends from Europe; as it is with a handful of queer friends; and as it is (even if intermittently) with a close friend in California. All of these relationships except two are, and have always been, platonic — no sex and no romance (except for a couple of cases). And yet, it truly is love: deep, sincere, committed, mutual love. These are people with whom there’s profound intimacy of some kind or other, of different kinds depending on the friendship/relationship, but still profound, trusting intimacy and support. And also, very importantly, a mutual clarity & respect of boundaries — whether implicit or explicit.
“All of a sudden I’m the man of my dreams — I can comfort my friends and respect boundaries”
With this climbing buddy from my Utah trip, we don’t need to say in so many words, “We’re not going to have sex with each other because that’s the best thing we can do for each other and our relationship”, but we both know it and openly admitting, putting it into words, this weekend that “climbing together is probably the only kind of relationship we can have because it gives us the closeness, trust, intimacy, and camaraderie we want while also giving us the space & time apart that we need” and saying that our friendship is an example of “platonic polyamory” is huge and lovely. I’ve found similar words or feelings or conclusions with my Italian climbing buddy, with two dear, close queer friends in California and at least one good old friend from grad school.
I love this. It feels so safe and so comforting and nourishing.
Maybe there’s only a certain amount, or level, or closeness/intimacy that I can take… “close” but not “too close”: if it gets close in some aspects (e.g. emotionally and/or through adventurous camaraderie), I/we need it to not be too close in other ways (e.g. physical/sexual intimacy).
I’ve been thinking about this a lot since the separation from my European gender-non-conforming ex-lover this past summer. And I’m coming to believe that there’s nothing “wrong”, nothing to “fix”, nothing even trauma-related for me in this. I’m coming to believe that it’s a “natural” or core part of me, of who I am and how I function, something that I can accept and embrace about myself rather than try to fight or “fix” it.
Today’s an important day — actually, both yesterday and today, two days marking important recurrences for me.
One year ago today I got the letter confirming the courthouse approval of my legal name change. Although the courthouse issued the approval on October 21st, 2022, I didn’t get the letter until October 26th, 2022, so in some way both dates mark the anniversary of the legalization of my chosen name and, as such, one of my “birthdays” (along with my “biological” birthday in November and my “gender-affirming” birthday in January). So today marks the first anniversary of the legal approval of my name change, of my chosen name becoming “real” not only to myself but also to the world — and that feels good!
Today’s also the nine-month mark from my masculinizing mastectomy.
And yesterday evening I went climbing with my French buddy who actually drove me to & back from my surgery nine months ago!
We hadn’t seen each other in nine months, since the day he drove me home, and sat with me for hours until my housemate’s return, after my surgery. Since he lived much closer to the clinic where I was going to get my surgery done early on the morning of January 26th, my French buddy came to pick me up at my place the evening before and drove me to his place, where I spent a relaxing evening coddled by him. The next day, he took care of me before & after my surgery. A few days later, he left for months of travels from which he just came back this past weekend. So it felt wonderfully serendipitous to go climbing with him again yesterday evening, exactly nine months from the last time we had seen each other around such an important event. We climbed together, we went out for dinner together, and we even changed in the men’s locker-room at the gym together! There we were, in the men’s locker-room, chatting away in French, like it was the most natural thing in the world — and really, it was! I didn’t even think about it until later that it was the first time I had been actually talking in a men’s changing-room: my voice still leads to my being misgendered quite often so for me to actually talk, to be heard, in a men’s changing room is extremely vulnerable. But I was in there with a buddy last night so I felt comfortable and safe(r). It also felt good, though, how my French buddy acknowledged my feelings when I said to him “Il faut du courage” (“It takes courage”) about being in that space.
I cannot say it enough, how validating and nourishing and profoundly important these interactions with my cis-male buddies are. And I do recognize that I am blessed by being surrounded by so many of these guys — straight, white, well-educated cis-males — people who have almost all the privileges and yet don’t abuse them, on the contrary, are among some of the most sensitive, emotionally connected, understanding, open-minded, and supportive persons I know. My interactions with them throughout my life have helped me be, and survive as, who I am even when I was being forced into a “feminine form” by society. And the in-person interactions with the ones who live here in Colorado have helped me, particularly in these past, very difficult, months, maintain and rediscover one of my main identities: the wild, bold boy in me, and the climber that I am.
Yesterday was important for me also from the professional viewpoint. For the first time in ages I once again gave a long talk, a proper seminar, about my current research work. I gave it at another university from where I work, so for a morning I was a “visiting researcher” there. My talk spurred huge interests in faculty and students at the other institution, I got many insightful questions. But maybe most importantly, giving that talk yesterday switched something back on inside me: it turned a professional side of me, one of my main identities, back on. The researcher, the scientist, the professor, the public speaker in me — all this came alive again yesterday with a force, an enthusiasm, a spontaneous & glowing passion, and even with a confidence, that I hadn’t known in ages. I found another part of myself again — another part of myself has come alive again.
The difficult emotions from the losses and grief from this summer aren’t gone, I can still feel them under the surface. But these buoyant emotions, these nourishing events are good and important — albeit overwhelming — for me now.
My closest climbing buddy (who’s also a badass mountaineer) lost one of his toes on Denali, in Alaska, a few years ago.
My European genderqueer ex-lover had to have a big chunk of their tongue cut off when they had cancer a little over a decade ago.
From these two people who are both AMAB (the former cis-man, the latter non-binary) I received a type of sympathy, or empathy, and even questions & comments around my masculinizing mastectomy that were different from what I got from other friends. It wasn’t the same kind of deep empathy and recognition that I got from my trans/non-binary friends who also got gender-affirming surgeries, of course. But there was a level of empathy that went beyond the loving support and validations that other friends who hadn’t had some surgery involving the amputation of a part of their body could offer.
I have a vivid memory of a hike that I did with my climbing buddy only about a month after my gender-affirming surgery and him asking me specifically if I could feel the amputation, if I could still feel the sensation of having — or having had — breasts, feel it physically in my body. And him sharing about his physical feelings when he lost his toe, how he could feel it, the “ghost toe”, even months later, intermittently, sometimes unexpectedly.
And another clear memory of a conversation with my European genderqueer ex-lover when they were asking me about my feelings of all of a sudden having an externally, visibly, different body, a body that suddenly looked different in the mirror because a piece of it was gone. And them sharing how they had felt when all of a sudden they could hardly recognize themself in the mirror because the amputation of a big chunk of their tongue had changed their face in ways for which they hadn’t been prepared.
It’s been almost nine months since I had my masculinizing mastectomy and back then, when I was having that conversation with my climbing buddy, I hadn’t really had the sensation of “ghost breasts”. I had had the feeling of hardly recognizing my chest, both when seeing it in the mirror and when feeling the flatness & hardness of my chest when resting my hand on it while falling asleep at night. But my feelings, once I got past the first week or two of almost constant panic for something going wrong post-op, were more of genuine surprise and trying to joyfully wrap my head around this new chest that I suddenly had.
This past week, instead, I’ve had the feeling of “ghost breasts” a couple times, mostly when falling asleep or snoozing in bed lying on my stomach, but sometimes even in the daytime. I don’t miss my breasts — I never cared for them, I always at best just ignored them, and I love my chest as it is now. But sometimes I can feel that “something” was there and now it’s gone — I can feel it physically. After all, I did have my breasts amputated (after having lived with them for a quarter of a century).
Last night or, rather, early this morning, I experienced the feeling of another type of amputation. The amputation of a part of my soul.
For the second time in the past 2-3 weeks, early this morning my European genderqueer ex-lover came to visit me in my dreams, and it woke me up. I could also just say that I had an incredibly vivid dream about them, but it it felt more intense than that. The physical and emotional sensation of their presence was so real it was incredible and almost intolerable — in fact, it woke me up at 4am and then I couldn’t get back to sleep anymore.
With their departure almost three months ago and the silence between us which has now been total for almost eight weeks, a part of my soul has been amputated.
When we had sex during their stay in Colorado, we truly “made love” (a phrase, the latter, that I rarely use because I find it a misleading or useless romanticization). What my European genderqueer ex-lover & I had was truly a “soul connection”, as John Welwood described it1. And having sex with them, “making love” with them, apart from being wonderfully pleasurable, almost ecstatically pleasant from the physical viewpoint, was also and maybe mainly one of the most spiritual experiences of my life that I have ever shared with someone else. The intimacy between our bodies truly was also a mutual compenetration of our souls. Our souls met, they united, they melted together into something bigger while somehow still maintaining some form of individuality.
So now that they’re gone, and that there’s total silence between us, a part of my soul has been amputated. And I can feel this amputation, this loss, physically as well as emotionally.
And after the visit of my European genderqueer ex-lover in my dream this morning I know, I can feel it deeply and clearly, that it’s over, it’s really, really over. That part of my soul, that part of my life has been amputated, it’s gone.
Maybe it’s serendipitous or meaningful or physiological even that I feel this amputation, this loss, so clearly and deeply now, in this specific season, in autumn, as leaves fall off from the trees and are thus severed, or amputated, from their “main body”, too…
“A soul connection is a resonance between two people who respond to the essential beauty of each other’s individual natures, behind their façades, and who connect on a deeper level. This type of mutual recognition provides the catalyst for a potent alchemy. It is a sacred alliance whose purpose is to help both partners discover and realize their deepest potentials. While a heart connection lets us appreciate those we love just as they are, a soul connection opens up a further dimension — seeing and loving them for who they could be, and for who we could become under their influence.” [John Welwood] ↩︎
One of the songs my friend from Iowa & I sang together when she joined me for a couple days on my trip in August was the ballad “This land is your land” — she with her beautiful soprano voice (& strumming the guitar) and me in my now very deep alto (or maybe already bass).
The tune is easy and I have sung this ballad to myself often since then. Recently, though, I have changed the words of the chorus and been singing the following refrain that feels more aligned to me & my life:
“This life is my life
This life is my choice
From California to Colorado
From redwood forests to cold creek waters
This life really is my own choice”
One of the clearest and strongest feelings or convictions that I have taken away from the loss of my father and the separation from my European genderqueer friend/ex-lover is the deep & clear realization that the life I am living is what I have chosen and made for myself. It’s been sinking in with great intensity lately: this is my life, this is the result of my choices.
This realization is a little scary — there’s no one else to blame. But it’s mostly empowering. I feel a profound and almost liberating sense of responsibility towards myself, towards my actions, my choices. I’ve always felt an instinctive sense of responsibility (partly also because it was taught to me, I was brought up that way), but somehow now it’s clearer, I’m more aware and cognisent of it. And while being scary, this feeling is also empowering. There are moments when I feel nervous, or even anxious, about the implications of this, the weight of my choices being my own responsibility; but I’ve also been embracing this realization in a way that feels motivating.
It’s a month away from my birthday, my 42nd birthday.
And my English grandmother, Grandmummy, died exactly a decade ago.
I can still remember that day: it was a weekend day (Saturday, I think). I was living in Barcelona with my ex-partner at the time and we went out for a long walk that afternoon; he took me, or went with me, walking around the Ciutat Vella to help try and soothe me. Among other things, we stopped at a cafe/bakery that I had been eyeing for a while because I was curious to taste one of their cakes. So we finally went there that afternoon and I got the cake I had wanted to try. I can remember the fact clearly, the location & atmosphere vaguely, the cake not at all.
Today I got my first postcard at my “new” place, at this place that has been increasingly my home since this past April, for six months now… It’s a postcard from New York City sent to me from a good, old German friend from my “Ulm days”, over a decade ago. Back then, she used to call me by my given name and use the feminine when referring to me in German (which has a very gendered/-ing grammar). But now she calls me by my chosen name and flexes the German grammar to use gender-neutral/non-binary forms that align with my gender identity.
I miss Europe (& my European friends).
On my way back from my recent work trip in Minneapolis I did a thought experiment (Gedankenexperiment, as a “good old” physicist!) imagining myself moving back to Europe, i.e. literally packing & shipping boxes of my belongings, flying back with suitcases of my stuff to stay there. And my whole body & soul balked at the idea, at the mere thought of it. So I know that my longing for, or missing, Europe is NOT in the sense or to the extent of actually moving back there (at least, not now as long as I’m still relatively young & healthy). But I am ready and eager to go back to visit as soon as possible — I can feel that. There are places and friends that I want to see again, and see them as soon as possible. Europe & being half European is a huge part of me, not only of my identity but of my soul. A German friend once said to me (in German, of course!): “You have a German soul”. And I believe she was right about that.
I have started re-reading Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse, a book I’ve read at least half a dozen times since the first time I read it while in Singapore, during my PhD, in August 2008. As my housemate put it, it’s become a “practice” for me, like meditation or yoga practice or some ritual. Yes, and now I need this specific book, this specific practice, this specific ritual, to help me reconnect with my deepest self, with the most authentic part of my core identity, as I navigate this phase of existential questions around my professional career, my geographic identity & longings, my needs & feelings & desires about relationships, my relationship to/with Love — maybe even my whole path & life overall.
In a month I’ll turn 42. In Douglas Adams’s hilarious & excellent sci-fi series of the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, 42 is the “ultimate answer” to the “ultimate question”…
Will I find then some answers about my own self, my path, my life?
I just walked into Caribou Coffee in Minneapolis and saw a trans flag & a non-binary flag at the cashier register and nearly started to cry. I literally had to take a moment to catch my breath before making my order.
I’m in Minneapolis for a one-day work event, the “Future Faculty Symposium” organized by the Society of Engineering Science. So I’ve been feeling a lot of alienation since the start of my trip yesterday: the “usual” uncomfortable feelings of having to pick a binary gendered bathroom most of the time at the airports and of being misgendered; the “usual” alienating or othering feelings at the scientific event with no all-gender bathrooms in the convention center, with no pronouns on the name badges, and with a binarily gendered panel of specialists — they did include some racial diversity on the panel as well as have nearly half of the scientist panelist be women, which are great improvements, but the panelists were all from R1 institutions and the very few times gender or equity issues were brought up they were always in terms of men/women or male/female, as usual forgetting or ignoring other gender underrepresentation.
I’m getting used to some of this at scientific/technical conferences & meetings but these uncomfortable feelings of being othered, alienated, or ignored add up and weigh on me, on us, even though sometimes they remain at the subconscious level — in fact, I am less strongly or openly upset by these situations, I’m getting used to ignoring them or letting them roll off me, trying to bring up the issues directly with the organizers and/or in surveys to hopefully make a difference for the future while not letting it affect my present too badly. But still it weighs heavy and causes a sense of alienation in me with respect to my surroundings.
There might also be a sense of alienation coming from the city itself: maybe I’m not used to “big cities” anymore; or maybe I’ve forgotten what it’s like to be in a place where the weather doesn’t allow for patios for outdoor dining (I still feel uncomfortable eating indoors in many places); or maybe I’m not used to cities/places where it’s hard to find a quiet green spot to sit & eat or rest.
With all of my experience living in different cities & countries, with all my moving, with all my work trips and leisure vacations abroad, I’ve learned to navigate different places and make myself at home easily and quickly almost anywhere. But I’m noticing some new difficulties within myself to navigate the world, even on days like today when I’m feeling generally confident & comfortable, difficulties that come from presenting or being openly genderqueer.
Maybe the last straw for me today didn’t have as much to do with my gender identity as much as with my (hyper)sensitivity: walking into a bakery/cafe/diner for lunch and finding myself bombarded by the awful news of yet another war in Israel, announced on Fox News. It’s partly on me: I struggle to keep up with the news and I always feel somewhat guilty about it, so I was surprised because I wasn’t aware of the recent events in the Mid-East; but seeing it on Fox News and realizing I had just ordered my lunch in a place that streamed Fox News just felt too horrible, too jarring, too alienating to me.
So maybe that’s why when I walked into Caribou Coffee and saw the trans & non-binary flags I felt like crying (with joy): because I finally felt like I belonged, that I was seen & accepted for the first time in 36 hours.
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 disheartened or disillusioned as well as tired.
Friends and community and rituals and nature helped me turn a corner somewhere, somehow, after hitting rock bottom four weeks ago.
The blue “supermoon”, or super blue moon, on August 30th & 31st, enjoying it on my own on that Wednesday and then admiring it together with my housemate on the Thursday night. And embracing the pagan ritual of setting an intention to shed things, feelings, behaviors we don’t want or need, setting the intention with the full moon and then shedding with the moon’s waning over the next two weeks until the New Moon and the ensuing possibilities of renewal.
So then I celebrated the New Moon in September, enhanced by Rosh Hashanah and its rituals that I shared with one of my closest non-binary friends here who is Jewish. Among other things, I went bathing in the creek, immersed my whole body (with its beautiful boyish chest) in the refreshing running waters and then basked in the sunshine. Meditated, relaxed, and then went out dancing, to celebrate the new moon, the summer ending and the new season approaching.
Then, this past weekend, it was the Autumn Equinox immediately followed by the Jewish High Holiday of Yom Kippur: a New Season starting not only with renewed intentions but also with a heightened understanding of myself, of my life, my patterns, my behaviors, my choices, and of Love. I asked for forgiveness where I felt I might need to, opened myself back up to the possibility of a relationship or, at least, dialogue, with someone important in my life, while also taking on my responsibilities with a new perspective that comes from a new awareness.
These four weeks feel like they’ve been a lot of work. It’s been very intentional work. I’m still feeling extremely disillusioned about it being really useful in the long run from the practical viewpoint of functioning in this materialistic world, but it has brought me some peace. Maybe a disheartened peace, but some peace nonetheless.
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 do believe I have failed at everything I have tried. But at least now I know that I have had true love. And in that sense I have been more fortunate than many people.
I had it three times, and eventually turned away from it all three times. As bell hooks wrote in her wonderful book All about love, “Not everyone can bear the weight of true love”. As she (& Erich Fromm & M. Scott Peck and many other insightful thinkers) wrote, love is not just a feeling: love is an action, a verb, a choice. In bell hooks’s (& Erich Fromm’s & M. Scott Peck’s) words: “To truly love we must learn to mix various ingredients — care, affection, recognition, respect, commitment, knowledge, and trust, as well as honest and open communication”; “Love is an act of will [… ] the will to extend one’s self for the purpose of nurturing one’s own or another’s spiritual growth”.
Using John Welwood’s distinction between a “heart connection”, which is a type of attraction that is familiar to most of us, and a “soul connection”: “A soul connection is a resonance between two people who respond to the essential beauty of each other’s individual natures, behind their façades, and who connect on a deeper level. This type of mutual recognition provides the catalyst for a potent alchemy. It is a sacred alliance whose purpose is to help both partners discover and realize their deepest potentials. While a heart connection lets us appreciate those we love just as they are, a soul connection opens up a further dimension — seeing and loving them for who they could be, and for who we could become under their influence.”
The first time I found true love I wasn’t even nineteen and I (& he) went into it with the instinctiveness of teenagers (he was sixteen). But despite our young ages all the ingredients of true love were there, they really were there — maybe they were there, and we were able to truly love each other, precisely because we were so young and “innocent”, still dreamers, not yet too hurt or wounded or disappointed or disillusioned by life.
The second time I was twenty-four. At that point my partner & I were a little more disillusioned but still had the hope, or will, to love.
The third time was just this year, at forty-one.
All three times I (we) knew it was true love and I (we) chose it. Yes, all those authors are right: the initial feeling of attraction/infatuation then transformed and led to active choices of loving.
But each time I eventually walked, or turned, away.
And now I don’t know what to think: should I add this to my list of failures? or should I see it as a blessing or as at least one thing that I have had, that I do know how to do despite all the trauma & brokenness in me?
[NOTE: when I say here that I found “true love” three times I am referring to a very specific type of love, namely romantic love; but I don’t believe that’s the only type of true love that is possible. In fact, if I consider close non-romantic relationships in my life, then I think I’ve encountered platonic true love more than three times and am still finding & maintaining it in several non-romantic relationships.]
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 of my life unable to share them intimately with someone because of my trauma and/or incapacity to get close or let go or let someone in. Since coming into my non-binary transmasculine self, though, I have on the one hand felt much better, happier, more aligned, more whole with & within myself; but on the other hand also more frustrated, more sad and angry, for this impossibility of sharing all this beauty — this gorgeous body, blossoming at last, that won’t be this beautiful for much longer, given my age — with someone intimate, in physical/sexual intimacy.
Today the frustration, sadness and anger are more intense.
Something triggered me in the physical therapy session for my hip yesterday. I’m not sure what it was exactly, but something triggered some delicate or vulnerable spot(s) in me. I felt it immediately yesterday and, in fact, I cried at the moment and felt a little discombobulated for a couple hours afterwards. Then, this morning, as I slowly woke up earlier than usual, I had two very intense and vivid but almost contradictory feelings, physical feelings: on the one hand, I longed for physical & sexual contact with my European genderqueer ex-lover, I physically yearned to feel their touch on my body; on the other, I realized I don’t want to be touched by anyone else for now. But that “not wanting to be touched” was a more intense & clear feeling than I ever remember having at a physical level: it was a physical “NO”.
In reality, I wouldn’t mind — I would actually like — to sleep again with my non-binary friend with whom I slept in California at the beginning of June, a dear friend with whom there was also some romance a year & a half ago and with whom there still is affection & love now. I would be happy to cuddle or snuggle with them, maybe have some gentle sex with them. And I enjoy and feel nurtured by the affectionate, tight hugs I exchange with half a dozen of very close & trusted friends here (queer friends or climbing buddies, or both).
But that’s the extent of what I want, of what I can take for now. The idea of dating, of letting anyone else close(r) in any way feels terrifying to me now, like a huge bodily “NO”.
But this also seems like such a waste, as I want to enjoy this gorgeous body and I long for it to be seen now that it feels “right” at last…
How do I solve this frustrating conundrum? And where are its roots?
What are these trigger points? And what do they mean, or where do they come from?
The Little Prince and the Fox 