The Little Prince and the Fox

In the healing process that I have been undergoing over the past two or three months since this summer’s losses, I have often, albeit intermittently, been feeling a greater sense of “distance”, sometimes even “detachment”: from my deeper, most vulnerable feelings; from troubling memories; from some close friends. 

Can I really, in only a couple of months, have gotten over the grief of my father’s death and the pain of the separation from one of the greatest loves of my life? 

And why, when I talk to some close friends, do I feel such difficulty in expressing my emotions, a chasm, not between me & the friends — I’m aware that the friendships are still there, intact, solid, deeper and healthier than ever — but between me & my emotions, between me & the feelings I’m trying to recollect and recount to my friends? 

Is it the crazy busyness of extra work this semester? Is it a defense or survival mechanism in my own self to get back into the world, to function in this world without being overwhelmed or paralyzed by the grief? Is it my neurodivergence getting worse (can ADHD and/or ASD get worse?)? Is it the effect of HRT? 

I’ve heard from other transmasc people that testosterone can make one lose some connection to one’s emotions and/or make it harder to cry. I’m always extremely wary of any idea that “biological differences” (such as hormones or other bodily attributes) between “men and women” are the unavoidable cause for “men and women” being irreversibly “different” because it can easily lead to dangerous and toxic theories, like the “men are from Mars, women are from Venus” crap, that underlie a lot of discrimination and stigmatization. Some differences are real and can be scientifically proven by rigorous measurement, but many differences are socially/culturally induced. I do, generally, feel more “grounded” on testosterone: there might be a “chemical” component to this, due to the hormones, but I’m sure it’s also, and probably mainly, due to the fact that I’m more aligned with my inner self now thanks to HRT. What I’m wondering now is whether this current “groundedness”, after the emotional turmoil I felt during the summer, is “real”, i.e. the result of having processed and overcome things effectively, or rather an effect or symptom of losing touch with my deepest emotions? 

For the past couple months, I have been feeling able to connect fully only with people whom I see or talk to very regularly or with my cis-male climbing buddies or with some old cis-male friends. With the former, we are aware of each other’s almost daily emotions and/or ongoings due to circumstances; with the latter, there’s a baseline intimacy coming from climbing camaraderie and/or “bro-type” dynamics, which feel partly new to me, partly familiar to me from when I was younger, and generally comfortable. 

Why am I unable to feel fully connected in other circumstances/interactions/relationships? Is some part of me keeping an instinctive distance to protect myself/itself from further pain? Or is so much going on, so much changing and evolving in me super rapidly, that it’s hard to convey all this when catching up every two or three weeks (or even more rarely)? 

While I do feel the need to stay grounded and function in my daily life, I don’t want to lose touch, neither with my own deepest emotions, nor with dear friends… How do I keep a balance?

Today’s ten months since getting my gender-affirming top-surgery… YAY!!!

Four months ago, at the half-year mark from my gender-affirming top-surgery, I celebrated it with my European queer ex-lover. It was our last long weekend together before their return home, to Europe. We went out for dinner to one of the places that had become one of our “usuals” for our Friday nights together, a sort of hippie, queer place that makes only vegan food. At the end of the dinner, my ex-lover surprised me with a gift consisting of one of my favorite, rare, dark chocolate bars and a little candle in the shape of the number “6” lighted as if on a birthday cake. And then we went to get ice-cream before finally heading back home (to their place). 

One month later, at the seven-month mark, I was in the deepest of grief and sorrow from their departure (& my dad’s death). 

And now, ten months after my gender-affirming top-surgery, it still feels weird sometimes, this new chest of mine… It’s almost a “Dr. Jekyll – Mr. Hyde” type of sensation: on the one hand, feeling that this was the chest that always belonged to me, the torso that I’ve always had; while on the other, still seeming incredible, almost unreal, that I actually have a boy’s chest now, and also having some “ghost limb” sensations sometimes. 

It’s not the first time that I’ve had deep, intense emotions related to my gender identity — feeling a deeper & broader sense of exploration, discovery, and understanding of my gender — through singing or having sex (both with other people, not just myself). But I hadn’t had either in a while and I’ve experienced both again just recently, so the feelings are fresh in my mind, in my body, in my soul. 

After the sexual intimacy with two non-binary friends this past spring & summer, the grief and pain from the loss of my father and the separation from my European queer ex-lover left no room in me for the desire of sexual intimacy with anyone. Throughout August & September I actually went through a phase where I could feel my body & soul rejecting the very idea of sexual intimacy with anybody at all. So when a couple months ago I asked my non-binary climber/skater friend if they wanted to come visit me for a few days in November, my invitation was coming from a place of mostly platonic feelings. Yes, this friend & I had already been romantically involved in the spring of 2022 and had slept together (in all senses of the word “slept”) during my visit to California this past June 2023; but we were both clear about not wanting to be in a “standard relationship” with each other, both on the same page about the platonic aspect of our connection being the most important & lasting one, and both in a phase of getting closer to each other, rebuilding the trust & emotional intimacy that we had had in our friendship prior to our breakup in May 2022. When we were planning their visit to Colorado this autumn, I still felt uncertain about my readiness for sex. But over the past couple months I have healed immensely, healed so much that it’s hard even for me to believe. And indeed, when my non-binary climber/skater friend arrived in Colorado, I was more than ready for sex. And being able to explore physical intimacy with a transfem person was/is not only a whole new experience for me but also a wonderful way for me to continue discovering my own gender identity. The masculinity that has always been there inside me and that had already started coming out slowly, tentatively, in previous instances of sexual intimacy with this friend and others, is now almost bursting forth, gently and consensually but with a spontaneity, conviction, and confidence that is still new for me (& for the boy in me). 

Something similar is happening with singing. I sing in a trans choir and this has been one of the most important ways in which I have been able to explore and gain confidence around my gender identity, specifically through the use of my voice — this part of our bodies, this instrument, that so often leads people to (mis)gender us and thus is one of the ways in which we can experience our own gender both within ourselves and in relation to the world. When I sing, my voice goes very low, lower or more easily deep than when I speak, and I love it. I love to hear that bass timbre that comes out of my throat, my chest. I love to feel the vibrations in my throat, my chest. And when I sing with other people, this is enhanced, it feels even better: apart from the wonderful sense of connection that comes from doing music with other people, which has always been there, for me now there’s also the additional aspect of hearing my “new” voice, this voice that is still changing, still developing, in relation, in comparison, to other voices, which are often higher than mine and thus enhance a sense of gender-affirmation for me. 

Throughout my life there have been, and there still are, many instances of gender exploration, gender expression, and gender affirmation for me through clothing/dressing and, more deeply, through exercise & physical activity. Indeed, activities like motorcycle riding, sailing, and, especially, rock climbing have been for years a vital way for me to explore, express, and affirm my masculine side even before I had the words for it. (And I know that having had these outlets, and the validation coming from these activities, helped me survive during all those years when I wasn’t allowed to be myself wholly.) Rock climbing is definitely the most consistent source of wellness/happiness to me, not only because I enjoy it so much as a type of exercise but also because of the gender-validation I get both from the physical aspects and from the “bro-connections” or “bromances” with my climbing buddies. But while this type, or source, of beautiful gender-affirmation for me is now quite regular (fortunately!) and also in some way familiar from previous experiences in my life, the kind of gender exploration & validation that I get from having sex/physical intimacy and singing with other people is relatively new and still somewhat bewildering to me in a wonderful way.

In one of my dreams last night I had a beard. Still in its infancy and very fair, a light blond beard, but clearly a beard. It’s not the first time that I’ve dreamt of suddenly having — or suddenly noticing that I have — a beard. And I’m always a little upset, or troubled, by the discovery. Having a beard isn’t really — or maybe “yet” — one of my goals. I don’t know if it ever will be. 

In my dream last night, though, I can remember myself thinking distinctly, when discovering the beard on my cheeks, “Well, I can shave it off if I don’t want people to see it”. It was more of a discomfort with respect to the external world than with my own self. I didn’t want to be perceived wholly as a man, as a cis-man. 

For brief, superficial interactions, like traveling, going through the airport, or out for dinner with my cis-male buddies, I don’t mind, I actually enjoy, being perceived as a man. But on the whole, in my life, in the connections and interactions that count and/or that last, it is important to me that my queerness, my “non-binary-ness”, my “transness” doesn’t get lost. In fact, in my dream last night, I thought or said explicitly to myself, “I can still wear feminine clothes for fun, if I ever want to, even with a beard, that’s precisely what queer is, what genderbending means and what I want to do. But it will feel uncomfortable, at least at first, out in the world.” [Probably these feelings and thoughts were, at least partly, spurred by my recent reading of the book “Queer Theories” by Donald E. Hall.] 

But regardless of the shyness or awkwardness that I might (eventually) feel when presenting (even) more queer and/or when genderbending, the certainty of NOT being a woman, NOT feeling that I am a woman or feeling that I am NOT a woman is stronger than ever. It hit me again last night, after my shower, as I was preparing for bed: I saw myself in the mirror and saw him, saw the boy. Yes, I was socialized as a woman because of the genitals I was born with and I can sympathize, even empathize, with cis-women on many points, especially in the STEM world. But I am NOT a woman, I am actually a beautiful, beautiful boy and this seems so evident, so clear, so blatant to me, that I cannot understand how anyone could see anything else, ever. This thought, this feeling, I realized, is always there for me, but last night after my shower, as I saw my reflection in the mirror, it was there stronger and more clear than ever. It was almost as if the reflection in the mirror had taken on a life of its own to say, to tell me, “I am a boy — here’s the boy that you are — how could the world ever have seen a woman or anything else here?!”

I’m at a work event at a National Lab for the annual meeting of the big scientific collaboration that funds my advisor’s grant that pays my research, i.e. pays my bills. I arrived Sunday evening, the meeting started yesterday morning, very early, and finished late yesterday evening, and again another long, tour-de-force day today. 

I’ve been feeling horribly uncomfortable the whole time. 

For many reasons, both personal and professional, I’m new to this meeting and hardly know anyone. Moreover, I’m one of the few people wearing a face-mask and I still feeling uncomfortable/unsafe in closed spaces with lots of persons so I often sneak outside during the breaks and other times meant to “socialize” around food (& thus unmasked). But it’s not just the fear of getting sick and the unsafe feeling around crowds that leads me to sneak out and seek solitude as often as possible. It’s also, and mostly, deeper and more complicated feelings, like the returning impostor syndrome, a feeling of not belonging here, of being “too different” and/or out of place. The fact that one academic acquaintance recognized me from a couple other interactions/events, remembered me and said “Yes, you asked tons of good questions”; or the fact that my poster, the poster presenting my research work done over the past year with my advisor and our student, almost won the best-poster award last night (the judges told me) — these facts don’t sink in. These facts that somehow prove that I am good at my job, that I am smart, that I do know science and am also able to communicate/present it well — all these positive facts don’t register for me, I don’t believe them, they roll off me as if they had never happened or had never been said to me. What sticks with me is all the things I don’t know, all the people I don’t know and all the barriers I feel in going up to them to start a conversation. What sticks with me is that feeling — that assumption which might even be wrong — of being the only or one of the very few queer person(s) here, of being the only non-cis person, the only person struggling to find a restroom where I can feel comfortable, the only person who feels alienated or othered. What sticks with me is the feeling of not being wholly American — or not being seen as such — but also of not being wholly European — there are so many Italians at this meeting and yet they don’t recognize that in me anymore, in half of my name, and I cannot speak to them in Italian because I wouldn’t know what gender to use for myself (Italian, as many other Indo-european languages, has a much more “gender-heavy” grammar than English). What sticks with me is how old I am to still be a postdoc or to be a postdoc again, over a decade after the failure of my first postdoc. What sticks with me is that the wonderful results I presented in my nearly-award-winning poster still remain unpublished — and are still unpublished because I cannot harness enough respect from our student running the simulations to prioritize this work and my advisor somehow blames me for the delay while not really putting pressure on the student. Where did I go wrong? How can I be unable to have enough authority both with our student and with my advisor? 

And then there’s all this toxic (male?) STEM attitude, this toxic dick-measuring between the “big guys” (including some of the women who’ve made it to the “top”). It’s awful. 

At the lunch break yesterday I was inadvertently rude to one of the (female) organizers. I had been struggling all morning with this sense of not belonging, of otherness & alienation, of impostor syndrome, of isolation. From the practical viewpoint, I had had my usual lack of pronouns on badges and bathroom struggle of not having an all-gender restroom to use. Then, at lunch I got to the food bar when all the vegan food was gone and there was only meat and salad (the latter with cheese) left. That was the last drop. I went to this organizer and asked, exasperated, if there was no vegan options. She said more food, including rice&beans, was on its way. I also vented with her about the restrooms. I truly didn’t mean to be rude, I was just exasperated. But somehow word got around to my advisor that I had been rude to her so he came and talked to me and I then went to apologize to her. This caused a deluge of difficult emotions for me. I felt awful for having been rude at her — at anyone. But I also felt attacked/threatened and misjudged for having been considered rude. And I felt humiliated for having been told off (& talked about negatively at the meeting). I apologized sincerely to the organizer and also tried to explain to her where my frustration was coming from; but while she seemed to accept my apology, she seemed to not be open to hearing my “human side” of things. So I dropped it and apologized one last time, thanking her for hearing me out. While I feel awful for venting with her and coming across as rude in the first place, which was simply wrong on my side, I also believe it would be important to understand where my frustration was coming from — not because it was mine, per se, but because I think it’s an example of how people who are othered/marginalized have a harder time to navigate the world and thus might “flare up” more easily (or shut down and hide to try and disappear). Her brushing off the reasons of my feeling uncomfortable felt like gaslighting. And while I know I shouldn’t have vented to her and I truly did not mean to be rude and I meant my apologies sincerely, I find it unfair that my venting for not having a restroom to use is not OK while a famous male or “macho-acting” scientist can have his know-it-all, dick-measuring, condescending attitude towards everyone around him without anyone criticizing him or asking him to apologize. On the contrary, everyone is looking up to him, considering him a “big shot” and trying to get within his graces. And by the way, didn’t anybody notice all these “big shots” going overtime with their talks and that the few women or non-macho-acting-persons presenting were also the few people meekly staying within the (short) time allotted them for their presentations? What the fuck?!

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.  

I decide. 

I choose.

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. 

Like than line from Ezra Michel’s song “Man of my dreams”: 

“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… 

1. “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. 

I almost feel like I’ve finally grown up.