The Little Prince and the Fox

Today’s my eighth “anniversary of liberation”, i.e. eight years since I moved from Europe to California. 

And yesterday, for the first time, I used a big spade and dug in the ground. Fortunately, it wasn’t frozen as the temperatures & snowfalls of the past week could have made it — or I was able to find a spot that wasn’t frozen like the rest. 

It was a very precise spot, the very spot I wanted: the spot between two trees near a stream where last summer my European queer ex-lover & I had our important conversation about “the future”, i.e. the future of our relationship. That future that never came to be — I buried it under the trees next to the stream yesterday afternoon. 

For the past couple weeks I’d been feeling a strong need, an urge almost, to do a physical ritual like some kind of funeral for my European queer ex-lover, or for the relationship we had, as they feel dead to me. And last weekend the details of what I wanted & needed to do in this ritual became crystal clear to me as did the fact that I was ready to do it, despite the extremely cold weather and heavy snowfalls that could freeze the ground: I was ready to risk having to dig into frozen ground because I was ready to dig & bury. To physically bury the physical remains of that relationship — two books (one of which with a lovely dedication), a mug painted especially for me, the map of the park where we went for so many lovely walks and even difficult conversations together, and the paper wraps of two particular chocolate bars bought for me to celebrate the 6-month “anniversary” of my gender-affirming top-surgery together. All inside a cardboard box, buried into the ground, covered with the soil and dry leaves and fallen branches. May the love that nourished the summer romance between me & my European queer ex-partner nourish the earth and whatever might grow there next spring. 

Now, maybe for the first time in my life, I really understand why burials & graves can be so important to people. Both the action of digging this grave & burying those objects and the fact of having that grave feel profoundly therapeutic and healing to me. On the one hand, it feels empowering, because I actually did something practical and concrete — I was the empowered “actor” instead of being the powerless “spectator” waiting for an email that will never come. On the other hand, it felt final to me and expressing it through bodily action made it feel more “real” to me. And last but not least, it felt compassionate towards myself, because I will always have that grave, that spot, to go back to and mourn or pay homage or say “Hi” or “talk to”, if I want/need to. And in this sense, also, I finally think I understand why humans want or need tombstones, regardless of what may be underneath them. I had contemplated throwing those objects off a cliff, at least the mug, imagining it smashing into hundreds of pieces. I had also contemplated putting them all in a vessel and letting them float away on the creek. But in either case, I would have lost them forever. In this way, I can go back to them, if I ever need/want to, but they’re also out of the way, removed from me now — now that I feel the need for that remoteness as an additional, more concrete & external expression of my inner emotional state, i.e. of the fact that I now feel ready to look ahead, instead of back, and I really feel like that was a phase of my life that is now over, that now belongs only to the past. To a lovely but limited phase of my past that now belongs in a box in the ground.

And to come full circle, maybe having that burial ritual precisely yesterday was serendipitous for my eighth “anniversary of liberation” today… Maybe yet another (form of) liberation, another (form of) renewal, another (form of) looking towards & moving into the future.

I’m not sure whether it’s the new year’s energy or the new moon energy finally coming upon/into me a week or two late, or whether it’s the positive effects of going out dancing again at last with a friend on Saturday night. Something has shifted for me, and has shifted positively, with a new opening since this past weekend. 

Something has opened up in me again. 

During the first two weeks of this new year I’ve been feeling quite sad and weighed down, feeling a lack of hope toward the oncoming months and finding myself looking back so often, instead of forward, or looking forward but only with a negative sense of comparison to this same time of year from the past — like all the hope I was feeling then was now not only gone but also impossible to find or feel again. But now, for the past few days, I’ve been feeling open and quite full of that universal, all-encompassing love and joy again. I’m looking forward again — both in the sense of feeling happy about the things that I have to do, that lay ahead of me, and also in the sense of literally looking at the days & weeks & months to come, and what they might bring, rather than think about the past too much. 

The month of January has been an important month of renewal, liberation, big changes, and even leaps of faith for me for several years now. In January 2016, I moved from Europe to California to start my life anew, leaving a lot behind, and fulfilling a dream I had had for years, maybe decades. The following January of 2017, in California, I got my motorcycle license and my own first motorcycle, thus concretizing a wish and expressing a part of myself that had been suffocated for a long time, probably starting the long journey of self-discovery and self-affirmation that eventually led to my gender journey as well. In January of 2018 I started teaching at university, effectively going back to academia after a break of almost a decade and thus also fulfilling another dream or, at least, giving myself another chance. The following January of 2019, I taught my first upper-division elective class: a wonderful experience that changed me both on the professional and on the personal level very much. Two years ago, in January of 2022, I left California setting out for Colorado, once again starting anew, following my heart, with a lot of fear and trepidation but also a lot of hope. And finally, last January 2023, I had my gender-affirming top-surgery! And since for me big changes like my moves from Europe to California and then from California to Colorado or like my gender-affirming surgery entail a lot of emotional preparation and rituals, this time of year for me is full of anniversaries. 

Some of these anniversaries from past events, e.g. those of Jan. 19th & Jan. 26th, I am celebrating — and really looking forward to commemorate — this year. 

But I’m also creating new memories and rituals and celebrations that belong to my present, to renewal here & now. I’m feeling the power and energy that come from past anniversaries to fuel my new rituals and celebrations here & now. 

I’m feeling ready to start anew with a conviction and lightness of heart and sense of hope that I hadn’t been feeling in months. 

I believe that I truly shed something huge while dancing on Saturday night: that physical sense of the pain flowing out of me and the grief peeling off of me, of the pain and grief physically leaving my body & mind & soul like water flowing out of me or layers of old skin peeling off of me, has really brought me liberation. I believe something of paramount importance really happened on Saturday night, almost at the level of my KAPT sessions last May, transforming me — or my view of things — in a profound and liberating way. 

I am truly ready to start anew, leaving behind everything that doesn’t need to come any further with me. 

I am moving on into this new year, or new phase.

I now officially sing bass. Or maybe baritone, but still on the males’ deeper voice spectrum. 

My voice has been gradually dropping for over a year and a half with some discontinuous, almost sudden, changes, like bumps downwards every now and then. For months I have been aware of how deep my voice is when I sing, of the low notes I can hit — and, conversely, of the notes and songs/singers that I cannot sing (along with) anymore. And the people around me have noticed it, too: a couple times I’ve done a fun music session with a cis-male friend or two and they commented, almost astonished, that I was singing the lower parts and they the higher ones; a few times I’ve done music with my housemate, singing with her while she played her guitar, and she has made validating, appreciative comments like, “You’ve got quite a bass going there”; and my friend from Iowa who joined me on part of my trip this past summer and who’s a musician with a beautiful soprano voice told me just a few days ago when I called her that I startled her on the phone because my voice has dropped since we last saw each other in the summer, and she literally said, “I think your voice has dropped another octave?!”.

Also, I’ve been singing in a trans choir for over a year now and I’m aware that I sing among the lowest parts. But still, in our small trans choir, we adapt songs and parts to our changing voices and things are relaxed and easy-going, with many of us often changing roles/voices depending on the moment and/or the song — which is why it’s so wonderful to be able to sing in a choir where almost everybody is trans!

And, most annoyingly, in everyday life I often still get misgendered because of my voice, probably because when I speak in public I’m often tense and switch back to a voice that is closer to my old, higher voice, which is frustrating.

But today I sang in a bigger choir of almost solely cis people — lovely queer elders with whom my trans choir is preparing a performance. This is a numerous chorus with clearly divided sections for the different voices so I was asked in what section I would sing. And knowing, by comparison or exclusion, that at this point both alto and tenor are too high for me, I picked the bass section. For the first time. For the first time ever I was sitting & singing with the deepest male voices. And as the only non-cis-man (apart from two trans people from my own choir). 

It’s hard to convey with words how meaningful, how impactful this is to me. 

Maybe because my body hair isn’t thick, yet, and it’s still very far from the way it would be if I were an “adult man”; or maybe because the deepening of my voice was one of my most desired outcomes of HRT. Either way, singing officially in the section of the deepest male voices of a choir, and being totally able to sing along and hit all those low notes (& struggling with the high ones), was incredibly, almost mind-boggingly, affirming to me today. 

I’m still reeling from it now. 

Last night I went out dancing. I went out dancing again at last. 

There’s a live music & dancing venue in the town where I live where a band was playing songs by The Eagles last night and since one of my neighbors & I both really like The Eagles and had been trying to go to one of these “Eagles cover shows” since last summer, we finally went last night, last minute. 

And I had a blast. 

I hadn’t felt such complete, pure, untainted joy in months. Months. Probably eight months. And I really don’t feel this type of complete, pure joy often. Which is probably sad and definitely one of the main reasons I often feel profoundly sad, like a shadow in my heart, because I’m not getting life-nourishment that I need. 

I need fun dancing like plants need water and sunlight. 

To me, there’s something about dancing to music I enjoy that is like a force of life. It wakes me up and enlivens me and energizes me like nothing else does while also allowing me to let go completely, wholly, like I never otherwise do. 

I never really let go. I find ways of getting myself distracted, of relaxing, of decompressing, but there’s always a degree of control: be it yoga or meditation or intense exercise or extreme/risky adventures or hanging out with friends or reading or listening to music or singing: there’s always an aspect of control and self-consciousness. I’m always inside myself. 

I don’t use mind-altering substances, I’ve only gotten high on weed a couple times with a trusted friend and when I have a beer I don’t even have a whole one so as not to feel any loss of control. So I’ve felt a complete loss of control and an opening of my self only rarely: the couple times I got high on weed with my trusted friend; during my KAPT sessions last May; on some “runner’s highs” on beautiful trails; a few times of wonderful sex. And the occasions when I dance like last night.  

One of the therapists with whom I worked in Europe, a decade ago, followed a school of thought that maintains there are only four real emotions, or groups/families of emotions, which are innate to us and have physiological & evolutionary reasons to exist, namely: joy, anger, fear, and sadness. Each of these “major real emotions” or “emotional families” includes various others, as sadness would include grief, for instance. The “joy” category includes not only the various forms of happiness but also love: the “joy” category is considered, or represents, the category of emotions that “drive life” (and in such a way are physiologically/evolutionarily innate). 

What I experienced dancing last night and the other times I felt pure, untainted joy, for me confirm this interpretation of the “joy” emotional category: because in those moments the joy I feel is also love: pure, untainted, unconditional, unselfconscious love. In those moments, I feel like I’m just a drop in the ocean, but powerfully a part of the whole. In those moments, I perceive myself differently, I feel physically & mentally looser, and more profoundly well in my body. Those are the only few moments when I truly let go.

Last night on the dance floor I could feel myself let go, I could physically feel all the gripping and burdens leave my body, leave my mind, leave my soul. I was shedding, truly shedding, as I could physically feel the pain flow out of me and the grief peel off of me. The pain and grief were physically leaving my body & mind & soul last night, like water flowing out of me or layers of old skin peeling off of me. 

So wonderful. And liberating. 

But it wouldn’t have happened if I had been dancing alone in my room, even assuming I could get high volume music and special lighting. The presence of other people and my awareness of many of them watching me and enjoying my dancing or empathizing with my enjoyment made a whole difference. I need to be seen, physically seen. Now that I feel so well & aligned with my body, now that my body is so beautiful but also so aligned to how I feel within and how I see myself, I want & need the outer world to see me. 

I need moments of pure, untainted joy like out dancing last night. It’s the lack of moments like these, and of sharing moment like these with other people, that brings on that dark sadness within me that feels like a shadow in my heart & soul. If you want to call that darkness “depression”, call it “depression”: but it’s not going to be cured by a pill. Only joy, in the deeper or broader sense of “joy” as the set of emotions connected to life-driving experiences, and in the sharing of these moments with other human beings — that’s the only real, and lasting, cure.

“

This is how it is with love. 

Once invited,

it steps in gently, 

circles twice, 

and takes up as much space

as you will give it. 

“

[Joyce Sidman]

The love I got again for a couple months last spring & summer was of a type that I hadn’t had for a long time, almost decades. I’m not sure that I invited it, but it definitely knocked at my door last spring, stepped in gently, and took up as much space as I would give it. 

And I gave it an ocean of space. As much space as my heart and soul could contain, could offer. 

And now that ocean of empty space is filling up with grief like dark waters from a flood filling an underground cave.

Grief is hitting me like a truck. Or maybe like a tsunami — because a simple wave I could ride, or swim through, or sail over. 

It woke me up early this morning, maybe around 3 or 4 am. I’m not sure, I didn’t look at the time, I just let myself feel. I let the emotions wash over me, the memories pour over me. That’s what they needed, maybe what I needed, too. 

The memories of the relationship with my European queer ex-lover, from our first interaction almost two years ago in the spring of 2022 to this past summer of 2023. 

Yesterday I rehoused Frederick den Farn, the fern that my European queer ex-lover left (with) me this past summer of 2023 when they returned to Europe. I tend to have quite a black thumb so it’s almost a miracle that this plant survived until now, over five months. But finally, this past week, I felt I needed to let go of it. I needed this plant to be out of my sight — as are the two books that my European queer ex-lover gave me and the mug they painted for me. I’ve been feeling the need for a more tangible ritual, getting rid of these objects. Somehow, just being out of my sight in a box in the garage isn’t sufficient anymore — it’s insufficient for my pain and insufficient for the need of leaving behind & starting over that I feel now. So I’ll have to figure out what to do with those objects. In the meantime, though, I could get rid of the fern that was almost constantly in my sight in the living-room: so I decided to rehouse it and yesterday I gave it to another queer person with whom I think there’s a budding friendship. And who I know is willing to hold space not only for my fern but also to listen to my story and feelings re. my European queer ex-lover. 

I think rehousing Frederick den Farn yesterday spurred the renewed grief tsunami that woke me up, full of memories washing over me early this morning. Or maybe rehousing Frederick den Farn was just the last, tangible reason for the renewed tsunami of grief. 

With the start of the New Year and getting closer to my double anniversary coming up on January 26th, I have been feeling a mix of nostalgia and also wariness around what I am feeling now and, especially, will be feeling in the upcoming weeks & months. Because as the weeks and months roll on, as dates come & go again, I will be reminded of dates, events, and emotions from the same period one & two years ago. Both two years ago and last year, the first six months of the year and, especially as the winter slowly turned into the spring and then spring blossomed, I too blossomed and slowly bloomed, opening up to what the world, my new home in Colorado and then my new body, brought to me. And one of the things that came to me was the European queer visiting researcher who eventually became my friend and then lover. 

Both in 2022 and in 2023 the first six months of the year brought me a succession of openings, of (good) surprises, of new starts, of love and other wonderful things (despite some difficulties, too). What will 2024 bring me? I can’t imagine any beautiful surprises heading my way now or in the next few months: all I can see for now is those dates, those recurrences and anniversaries coming around as reminders of the beauties of last year and/or the previous year, reminding me ever more starkly of what I’ve lost.

[Trigger warning: vivid dream of a car crash with some injuries but no casualties; darkness.]

A couple weeks ago my French climbing buddy left me a very sweet voicemail to say Hi and explain his recent silence — and he said, literally, “Sorry, dude, but life has been hitting me like a truck”. 

Apart from feeling for my buddy because I care about him and know him really well and could hear the sincerity in his voice, the expression he used (in English instead of the usual French) felt very vivid and appropriate to how I’ve been feeling, too, so I could really empathize. 

And I wonder if that expression spurred at least part of an extremely vivid dream I had early this morning.

Dream: 

I was in a vehicle, a small car, with three other people I knew, driving at night, when we were suddenly crunched up by a huge truck. Initially, it looked like the truck was rear-ending us, so we passengers yelled to the driver to slow down. But then, as our driver friend brought to our attention, we saw that the same truck was also closing us in from the front. We eventually came to a halt with our small car partly smashed up & crushed between different sections of the truck. Before this halt, I vividly remember seeing our car getting crushed, with the rear doors, especially the one on the side of the other passenger, being smashed in and myself thinking lucidly about rolling or jumping out of my own rear-door which was still accessible and relatively safe. Which, in fact, I eventually did, saving myself. 

Finally, the crash came to a halt and the other rear passenger & I came out relatively unscathed, although shaken. The front of our car was more beaten up and our other two friends (or parents?) in the front were injured and trapped. As I/we worried & busied ourselves to help them, they reassured us that they would be alright and encouraged us, almost commanded us, to continue our journey, to move on and go ahead without them. All they requested us to do was to leave them there safely, i.e. call medical aid for them and make the wrecked car visible in the dark night road (the big truck was gone by now) so it/they wouldn’t get hit by other vehicles. 

So that’s what I did with my other friend from the rear passenger seat and, albeit with concern & mixed emotions, we set out and moved on along the dark night road, walking against the oncoming (sparse) traffic.  

Afterthoughts / interpretation: 

The two people in the front were definitely older/more mature, parent or care-giver figures. The other passenger sitting in the back seat with me was like a friend but only partly, or vaguely, there. 

If I follow the school of dream interpretation according to which I (i.e. the dreamer) am each & all parts/entities in the dream, then I am the person who got saved & moved on, but I’m also the wiser, caring persons who saved me or encouraged to save myself by continuing my journey leaving them behind; and I’m also my “shadow friend” from the back seat, my own companion continuing the journey with me — maybe another (older?) part of me that can still be helpful to me on this voyage. And I’m also the small car in which I was traveling, which got smashed up and had to be left behind; as well as the big truck that crushed the small car (& then disappeared). And I might even be the (sparse) night traffic, those few cars driving in the opposite direction in the dark, while I walk forward (or, at least, have the intention to do so). 

I find this dream incredibly powerful. And clear. I’m sure it’s telling me to move on from the current wreck of my life — or to move on and make a change, leave something (that seems) important behind, before my life gets wrecked too severely & I get totally crushed. 

Time to move one, even if only on foot, with no vehicle; even if in the dark, walking against oncoming traffic? 

Leave the wreck behind — it will be taken care of, somehow — and walk on, before it’s too late. Continue my journey — whatever that may be, wherever it may lead, despite the current darkness.

This has been the first good Christmas for me in years. But it’s also been very melancholic and full of different, even opposite, intense emotions. 

This month of December has been rough, a roller-coaster of feelings, often difficult ones, with a lot of loneliness and fear of the holidays. 

The end of the semester with its more than usual extreme/dichotomic reactions from the students was rough, almost too intense to be bearable. 

The extra loneliness and sadness I felt as the holidays were approaching was also unbearable, but then fortunately things turned around as I was (& am being) showered with & wrapped up in love and support from friends — (geographically) near & far — as well as neighbors, climbing buddies, and acquaintances from the queer community. I can feel the warm love, and it feels wonderful. Compared to last year’s holidays and several recent holidays or holidays as an adult back in Europe, this Christmastime has been so much better, so much lovelier. And yet also so much more melancholic and even sad, mainly because of my losses from this summer feeling sharper again now. 

This is the first Christmas without my father — not just for me — I hadn’t really had Christmas with my dad in years — but especially for my mother (& sister). The last time I saw my dad alive, in person, was during the Christmas holidays eight years ago, three weeks before I left Europe and moved to California. That memory has been coming back to me very sharply now. And with it the memories of my father’s final hospitalization and death this summer, and of my European queer ex-lover’s support to me, a partner’s support, in those days. And thus also a renewed longing for my European queer ex-lover again. 

All of this mixed with the sense of being at home here, of having finally found home in this corner of Colorado. A lovely, warm feeling but also somewhat confusing or concerning because of my professional uncertainty. Which is starting to haunt and worry me again. 

And then the memories of last year’s holidays, so lonely, so isolated, as all that I was waiting for was my gender-affirming top-surgery for which the one-year anniversary will be in precisely one month. So much has happened, so much has changed since then… 

So much, so much… 

So many deep, intense, even contradictory emotions for me to hold in this melancholic merry Christmas…  

I’m having nightmares. Nightmares from which I wake up screaming, or wanting to scream, wrenching myself awake with a huge, conscious effort, like a struggle for life.

Then I’m left feeling shaken, scarred, almost traumatized all day long. 

What’s happening? 

Something is stirring in the depths of my psyche… what is it? 

These nightmares seem to point to some male/female battle but also, maybe mostly, a terrible threat upon me, as if something, or someone, wanted to kill me, were trying to harm me. 

Who is it?