The Little Prince and the Fox

Today, exactly two months and one day after my masculinizing mastectomy, I finally went back to the swimming pool and trained bare-chested, wearing a man’s Speedo for the first time in my adult life! 

It felt great! 

It also felt weird — it’s still so unfamiliar to me… And I still feel vulnerable and exposed, or maybe a little uncomfortable, with a bare-chest around most people… That says a lot for social conditioning… 

But the overall feeling today was of joy, liberation, and empowerment — and bubbling love for this (partly new) body of mine. 

People looked a little but it wasn’t too bad, especially once I got into the rhythm of my swim workout and my athletic ego was feeling confident again. 

Today, another of my deepest dreams has come true: the boy’s swimming — heck, YEAH!

I’m very tired. Fortunately, a relaxed type of tired now, but tired nonetheless. The past two or three days have been particularly intense. 

For the first time in months, I am feeling really comfortable and safe and at home in the place where I am staying. 

After the climax of domestic abuse from my housemate on Thursday, I found refuge in the home of friends: a lovely family who has adopted me as both an adult friend and a teenage boy. I feel safe and welcome and seen here — such a huge difference, the opposite, from how I was feeling with my housemate. 

I am soaking in all these feelings of safety and love and validation. 

To have this kind of support during and after traumatic events is invaluable, life-saving. And I feel extremely fortunate to be able to get it from so many friends here, in so many different ways and forms and aspects. 

On top of finding refuge in this warm and loving and safe home environment, I’ve also been able to nurture my soul & heart and bring some solace to my hyperactivated nervous system by doing fun and relaxing things with some of my best buddies. 

For over 24 hours between yesterday & today I was immersed in that buddy/bro atmosphere that feels so comfortable and validating to me with a few of my closest cis-male friends here. One of my dearest climbing buddies came to visit me from out of town and I was able to let him actually stay at my friends’ place while they’re away for the Spring Break weekend — such a wonderful and welcome change from my ex-housemate’s controlling, territorial, and ungenerous behavior towards me (not allowing me to have guests). This climbing buddy had already visited me a few times when he could stay over at the previous house where I was living, and his visits are always lovely. When I’m with him, it feels like I’m in a different time or in a different dimension. Partly because he’s originally from the region of Europe where I went to grad school, very close to where I grew up, so there’s a cultural component that draws us instinctively close, that drew us immediately, spontaneously close from the beginning: when I interact with him, in many ways parts of me that are usually dormant come alive again, culturally, linguistically, and in body language. Partly it’s also his character or the dynamics between us that lead me to relax and go with the flow more than usual when we hang out together. We click, we resonate. And it’s beautiful and very affirming for me to see, to feel, how comfortable and encouraging and fascinated he is both by my non-binary gender-identity and by my gradual but steady masculinization. His spontaneous admiration for my flat chest or for my strong shoulders & back, his explicitly comparing my torso to his own, or his genuine enthusiasm to see my new men’s clothes and his sincere, well-meaning comments like, “I’m curious to see what men’s style you’ll have”, are some of the most heart-warming and validating reactions and messages I can receive. I revel in them. 

As I reveled in the company of the three guys with whom I went out for beers last night. One of them was this climbing buddy visiting me from out of town; the other was one of my closest climbing buddies with whom I go climbing very often here; and the third was one of the latter’s oldest friends, whom I hadn’t met, yet, but of whom I had already heard a lot. For me, it felt like when I was back in school, particularly in grad school, when my friends were almost entirely cis-males and with whom I felt totally comfortable and at ease in ways that I can hardly explain but that feel profoundly spontaneous and “natural” to me. All four of us are climbers so climbing and other risky activities were an easy topic of conversation. But beyond that, the conversation flowed easily all evening, for hours: climbing, risk-taking, religion, politics, work, sex — we spanned topics with an ease that I remember having with my guy friends in grad school and have often found hard to find afterwards (when in a group, or more-than-two-persons, setting). 

And as I often felt with my guy friends in grad school, again last night I felt just like “them”: these straight, cis guys were neither hitting on me nor treating me any differently from each other (nor moderating their language around sex nor was I mine). I felt like a boy among other boys — and even better, like with most of my close friends from grad school, a boy among boys who haven’t been ruined by the toxic masculinity that is often drilled into males. Which is probably why they accept me just as I am and why I can feel so comfortable with them. With these cis-men who are profoundly sensitive and not ashamed of showing their sensitivity, their fears, their pain; these white cis-men who go to Black Lives Matter protests, march in favor of abortion rights, and ask me for information about the Transforming Gender Conference so they “can learn more” and join me there next time; these straight cis-men who admire my flat boy’s chest and encourage me to become who I really am and want to be, probably seeing their own teenage selves in my reflection.  These guys who feel like brothers to me and whose “bro” feelings, whose homoeroticity, I believe to truly and profoundly understand: because somehow, somewhere deep down inside me, I am like them, I am one of them.

I know I keep writing about the importance, the incredibly profound importance, the life-changing importance my cis-male friends have had throughout my life and are having now. But these feelings are precisely the proof of my being trans(masculine) and I need to revel in the lovely, warm beauty of them as well as record them over and over. As I need to record every time any of my friends says to me sincerely, “I see the (teenage) boy that is you”, and revel in the lovely, warm beauty of such a validation.

I want to state this for the record. 

Two days ago, on Thursday, for the first (& hopefully last) time in my life I called the “domestic violence/abuse hotline”. 

After months of verbal, emotional, and psychological abuse, on Thursday morning my housemate actually became physically threatening and her transphobia mixed with general disrespect towards me went totally overboard. 

As soon as she had left for work and I had been able to calm down enough after yet another traumatic episode with her, albeit still shaken, I was able to pull myself together enough to get advice from the “domestic violence/abuse hotline” and help from friends. I packed up my most necessary/valuable/pressing belongings and left as soon as one of my friends could come pick me up — and I won’t go back to my place again except to pack up my stuff for good, during the weekdays, when my housemate is away. 

[Spoiler alert: details, including the ending, of the film “The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society” are mentioned quite explicitly.]

In the past week, I have been binge-watching the film “The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society”. 

I sometimes do this, with songs as well as with movies: I go through phases of days, weeks, sometimes even months, when I play the song or movie over and over because it somehow appeals to, reaches, and touches something profound and/or particularly sensitive in me at that particular moment. 

I discovered the film The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society during the height of the pandemic and back then it appealed to me, spoke to me, mainly because of the topics of isolation, threat, and human connection (with the happy ending after hardships). 

This morning I’ve been wondering why this movie is appealing to me and speaking to me so much now and I think it’s for several reasons. Probably I’m still — or again — resonating with the topics of isolation and human connection and happy ending after hardships as I finally come back to life after a hard, and quite isolated, winter (first with my second round of COVID in November 2022 and then with all the pre/post-op preparations & recovery). But there’s also other levels or elements speaking to my heart even more strongly now. 

There’s the element of living — and surviving — with the enemy, in a hostile environment: the Guernsey islanders with the German occupants during WWII; me with my hostile, controlling, passive-aggressive housemate (who’s recently been acting up). 

There’s the theme of personal liberation even going against expectations as the leading female character makes her own path, finds her own way, following her heart, breaking a stifling engagement, stating her independence. And also, the related theme of the importance of getting support from the right people in finding our path or in finding the courage to actually walk our way. 

Another important element is also that of the “chosen family” or “village”: so much of the story in this movie is about not being able to have or connect to or be loved by one’s biological family but finding support and connection and love within a group of people who are a chosen family, a tribe in which persons support and love one another profoundly and without stifling each other. A theme that is extremely dear to me and similar to what I have experienced in most of my life. 

And finally, there’s the topic of the “impossible love”, of the profound, instinctive, almost immediate but also unexpected connection and understanding and attraction between two people who seem so different and yet share so much deep inside them. Something I’ve experienced, too, more than once: for me those connections, those moments, were lovely and beautiful and wonderful, even joyful, but also painful sometimes because many of them didn’t last as much as I would have liked them to or didn’t develop as fully as I would have hoped. In the film The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, instead, the seemingly “impossible love” — the profound, instinctive, almost immediate but also unexpected connection and attraction between the writer and the pig-farmer — ends happily, somehow giving me some vicarious catharsis, I guess.

Yesterday, I had one of the loveliest and most wonderful celebratory moments of my life. At the crag. A dream of decades come true: I climbed totally bare-chested amidst several other people, without hiding anything. And I didn’t do it discretely: I did it loud and proud — heck, yeah! 

After eight weeks of no climbing at all (& seven weeks of no real physical exercise), yesterday I went climbing outdoors again with one of my best climbing buddies: someone with whom I climb regularly, whom I trust fully, and who really gets me (he’s also one of my closest and most affirming cis-male friends). 

I was excited but also a little anxious or worried, uncertain of what my body (especially my upper body) could do, still feeling vulnerable: both physically vulnerable because the forced rest to recover from top-surgery has weakened my upper-body but also emotionally/mentally vulnerable because it truly isn’t easy — it’s actually terribly hard & scary — to be a trans person in this world. 

My buddy & I got t the crag, which was quite crowded because of it being one of the few that are exposed to sunshine. We found a spot towards the end of the main wall and started warming up on a couple of easier routes, to help get me back into things, and we sort of spontaneously fell into some casual conversation with the people (a mixed group of about half a dozen persons) climbing next to us. During this time one of the girls said a couple things that seemed referred to me using “she” pronouns. Although I was quite certain she was referring to me, I wasn’t one hundred percent sure and we weren’t interacting directly so I decided to let it go, at least for the moment. Then, this group next to us was having trouble retrieving their climbing gear from a 5.11b (i.e. very hard) route and asked if we might be willing to help — which, of course, we were, as all climbers are always willing to help each other, especially outdoors. So my buddy got on this route and after several attempts at the initial roof, which was really hard and probably the crux, he eventually made it all the way to the top and cleaned the route for them. 

[When the girl from the other group once again referred to me with “she” pronouns (now unmistakably referring to me), I turned around to them and said, politely but firmly, “I am not a woman. I use ‘they’ pronouns”.] 

By this time, the caution and almost fear I was feeling on the first routes that morning was gone: this route that my buddy had just cleaned was exactly my style (I adore roofs and overhangs) and I felt an irresistible desire to climb it. I said to myself I would just attempt it and if I couldn’t get over that initial roof, it would be okay, this was my first day climbing after surgery, after all. But deep inside me I could already feel that irresistible desire of actually DOING IT, i.e. of getting over that roof and getting all the way to the top. So I got on the route, wearing my three layers of clothing because of the cold, and started tackling the roof. It was hard, really hard, but the more I tried, the more I could feel the energy coming back to me, my physical energy but also my mental energy, that fire in me, that will-power that is one of the strongest drives I have. The physical exertion warmed me up so I removed the top layer and after a couple more attempts, I finally got over the roof. At that point, I made a couple more moves to get myself into a relatively comfy position where I could rest momentarily and then I knew it: I would get to the top of this route and I would do so with my bare chest. To celebrate it, to bring this boy’s chest of mine into the world, to bring it to the top of a hard route, to show it the view and to show it to the world. So I told my buddy to keep the tension in the rope for a moment longer and I stripped: I removed my helmet so I could get the long-sleeved T-shirts over my head; I got one off; and then, finally, there was the last layer between my chest and the world. And when that was removed, I didn’t do it discretely. I did it loud and proud: I took it off, twirled it in the air, and then launched it off to the ground with a cheerful “Woohoo!”. Probably the whole crag heard and saw me but I didn’t care. In a sense, I wanted them all to see. Either way, at that point I was at some other level of consciousness. I had a full, clear, and powerful awareness of the strength but also of the extreme vulnerability of my body, and of my upper-body in particular. At that point, there was both a sense of pride (my Ego?) but also a sense of vulnerability in getting to the top of this route clean, i.e. without falling or slipping: because in that moment, more than ever before, slipping and scraping my still-delicate boy’s chest on the rock wall would have been extremely painful (& maybe even somewhat dangerous). In some ways, I was extremely self-conscious and aware of my body, of its exposure, of several eyes down below looking up at me; but in other ways, I was also just in that magical state of consciousness that comes over us when we climb outdoors, of being totally in the flow of the moment. In any case, this was a new me, the real me, in the flow of the moment. The real me climbing bare-chested, at last. 

When I got back to the ground (after a clean rest of the climb to the top), I was so happy, I was besides myself with joy — beaming, glowing. And of course, I got my buddy to take a photo of my naked “boy’s chest”. 

I couldn’t contain my joy, and I didn’t. I told my buddy out loud, “Let’s take a picture of this boy’s chest!” I cheered out loud about this being my first time climbing again after surgery. And I ignored the slightly embarrassed looks on the faces of some of the other climbers (in the other group). 

Fortunately, their embarrassment seemed short-lived but it definitely was there, as it was when earlier I had stated firmly, “I am not a woman. I use ‘they’ pronouns”. 

But it’s not up to us (trans/queer/non-binary etc.) persons to take on extra burdens to try and alleviate the embarrassment or “uncomfortableness” that cis people, in their privilege, might feel around us, around our “weird” bodies. And so I let that roll right off me yesterday and I reveled in my joy. In the joy of another liberation, of one of my greatest and most profound dreams coming true at last. And I even said it out loud: when one of the guys who had been there during my “striptease” and celebration later mentioned my celebration again and asked me in a nice friendly tone, “So, you’ve just started climbing again after surgery?” I replied, “Yes, but it wasn’t just the climbing after eight weeks that I was celebrating: my celebration was for something that I’ve been waiting to do my whole life”. Which is the truth. 

My entire life I’ve been wanting to live like a boy, to be a boy — for the world to see me like a boy. And although I am painfully aware that most of the world will never see me or treat me as a boy, and there are plenty of people who will actually see me and treat me as a “freak” or as someone who doesn’t have the right to be, I am also profoundly happy and, as my good climbing buddy said yesterday, “more connected to my body now than ever”. 

My “striptease” at the crag yesterday was a wonderful, liberating moment of celebration for me — one of the best in my life. But it was also a statement, a political act, especially in this moment when so many people in my community are under attack, risking their lives or not allowed to be, to live as their authentic selves. Like I wasn’t for decades, either, with my own family ostracizing me. And somehow, having had my gender-affirming top-surgery on the day of my sister’s birthday and my liberating striptease at the crag yesterday on the day of my mother’s birthday feels even more significant and empowering to me, since they are among the people who have most ostracized me and the boy I’ve always been. 

But this boy is alive. He’s alive and strong and brave — and grateful to all the supportive people on his path. 

Yesterday was one of the most beautiful days of my life and I’m going to revel in this joy as long as I can — and hopefully be able to use it to improve the world around me and life for other people, too.

Two news clips from last night that I found really troubling, upsetting, concerning, and even quite infuriating: 

https://www.npr.org/2023/03/15/1163670457/abortion-pill-kacsmaryk-mifepristone-texas

https://www.npr.org/2023/03/15/1163733442/wellesley-students-vote-for-the-school-to-accept-trans-and-nonbinary-applicants

It’s amazing how much the ability to be active in my body again has brought me back to life in the past two days. 

I had had glimpses of this wonderful feeling again with the visit of one climbing buddy who took us to explore a National Park three weeks after my surgery and then the hike with another of my closest climbing buddies a couple of weeks ago. 

For a month and a half, I was in survival mode. A survival that was made much easier and even more joyful thanks to the loving support and practical help of so many friends and acquaintances — I don’t know what I would have done without that, without them all. But I didn’t realize how much I’d been in this survival mode, how deeply I had dissociated from my body and even from some of my most intense feelings and memories, until this past weekend, until I was officially out of my recovery time/sick leave and could start doing all of my physical activities again — until I started running again.  

I’ve started living in my body again, not just surviving in a wounded shell of a body. 

I cannot survive in a wounded or sick shell of a body for long — at least, not without severe damage to my mental health, which is one of the reasons why COVID & long-COVID were so hard for me in 2020 and I’m so terrified of getting very sick again. In order to survive in a wounded or sick shell of a body I dissociate from that body. Which is, in fact, a trauma response and also a possible symptom or aspect of depression. 

I don’t in the least regret getting gender-affirming top-surgery but now that I’m active and living in my body again, and thus being my whole self again, I realize how traumatic the past four weeks of recovery have been for me.  

On the other hand, I’m also realizing how joyful it is, or can be, to be on the other side of it. The sheer joy, the profound happiness I’m experiencing at feeling in my body, with my body in motion again, is wonderful, despite my relative weakness and lack of fitness now. It’s a different level of consciousness for me — that’s how it feels to me. I experience myself as well as the whole world in a completely different way when I’m active in my body. And now that I have a partially new body, and a body that finally aligns with how I feel inside, it’s even more wonderful, even more joyful. It’s also strange and a little melancholic, though, at times. 

Strange because I haven’t got fully used to my boy’s chest, yet: it still looks unfamiliar, almost surreal to me both when I look at it naked in the mirror and when I get dressed in ways that make my flat, masculine torso evident, especially when I’m out in the world and feel very self-conscious of how other people might perceive me. 

Melancholic or a little sad because being alive in my body again, and especially in this partly new body that I love so passionately, reminds me of the physical cravings that I have: my sexual “hyperdrive”; the need or desire for cuddles; the fact that I’m touch-starved. And also some melancholy coming from emotions or situations or memories connected to other people that I had shelved while recovering or that I don’t really think about in my daily life anymore but that are coming back in wavelets now. Re. one person in particular, the memories of our “special feelings” have come back with the wish of showing him my “new body”, of showing him how real this boy is, how similar to him in some ways. I know this wish cannot be satisfied and the memories, fortunately, are not so painful anymore (oh, the miracles of time healing!). Although I know this boy in me was clearly visible even through my feminine clothes three or four years ago and therefore that the boulderer fell in love with this boy and without knowing it helped this boy in me come out, he would probably never admit it or understand it or fully appreciate it, so it’s best to leave this wish on the shelf. 

Admitting the existence of this wish or feeling, though, is important for me because it is part of my coming back into my body, part of my coming back to life: I live wholly only when I can be fully in my active body and finally having this body that externally aligns to how I feel inside intensifies not only the beauties and joys but also some melancholy. Which, for me, is all part of life: beautiful, joyful, but also sad sometimes.

It’s hard to put into words the joy I am feeling in this moment. I’m almost besides myself with joy. 

The boy is running! 

I’m a trans athlete! 

The boy is running, I’m a trans athlete, and I’m ready to let the body-hair come! 

Today I went for my first post-op run: my first run in nearly seven weeks; my first run after six weeks of hardly any physical activity; my first run after masculinizing mastectomy; my first run ever without a bra! 

But the joy is not about not needing that garment (the bra) anymore. As much as it feels liberating to be able to ditch bras for good, the joy I’m feeling now is a much deeper one — a happiness with much deeper roots and a more profound significance. Because this was my first run in the body that really feels like me. 

It’s not just that I don’t have to wear a bra anymore (unless I want to, of course): it’s that, at last, I have a truly flat chest, actually a boy’s chest. At last, the body I see in the mirror, the body that I feel under strain running on the trail, is the body that belongs to me, the body that feels like me: a non-binary/trans boy’s body. 

I’m a boy. I’m a boy with XX chromosomes (as far as I know); I’m a boy with female genitals, a boy with a uterus, a boy who was brought up as a girl: but a boy nonetheless. 

And now I am ready: I am ready to let the body-hair come, to let it grow, to see what happens. I’ll probably then shave it off, at least on my upper body (if I get any there), but I’m ready to let this happen. I’m almost eager to let this happen, to see what might happen, to see what this boy will look like. 

And then to go race on my next trail run, with my now-legal ‘X’ gender marker, in the male category. 

I am trans, wholly and proudly trans. A trans athlete. 

God, I feel so liberated…! 

There are several verses of the song “I am woman (hear me roar)” that I relate to deeply, and the title/refrain has often resonated with me, albeit it changing it slightly, sometimes. 

Sometimes, due to my upbringing & past experiences, I’ve resonated with the original, “I am woman, Hear me roar”. 

At other times, I’ve felt like, “I am human, Hear me roar”. 

Yesterday what rang in my head was, “I am boy, Hear me roar”; and this morning it’s simply, powerfully, “I am lion, Hear me roar”. 

I’ve just come back from my first foray into the “outside world”: I had to attend a huge scientific conference which was held at a convention center on the Strip in Las Vegas, NV. So it was a very extreme, a horribly extreme, first foray “back in the outside world”. It wasn’t just tipping my toe into the water of a small, quiet lake; it was being plunged into an ocean during a hurricane. The biggest yearly conference in my scientific field with thousands of participants held in a place that is already teeming with people and a continuous, overwhelming deluge of sensorial stimulation; and both at the conference and in Las Vegas itself, mostly people who are totally unawares of (at best) the non-binary/trans realities. So my brain collapsed under the overload of negative/threatening/difficult triggers: my impostor syndrome was back at its worst, given that this was my first scientific conference in years and I haven’t been able to do my work as well as I’d wanted to recently because of health issues; my autistic brain was completely overwhelmed by the sensorial overload that couldn’t be escaped anywhere else that my hotel room (and even there only barely); my COVID-related PTSD was re-triggered almost uncontrollably by the swarming crowds of people (hardly anyone wearing facial coverings) everywhere; I got constantly misgendered (I guess the world now sees me as a flat-chested woman despite the all-masculine clothes I was wearing) and the conference was very non-inclusive towards gender issues, so I felt invisible and/or not represented there, too.

Each one of those triggers or levels of difficulty would have been hard enough — and, in fact, I have already experienced them before. But having to deal with all four levels, all four triggers at once, and in such a delicate moment, too, still recovering from a surgery that feels life-changing to me — that was just too much. 

I had one major and one smaller meltdown. Full-blown meltdowns that, although I remained wholly aware of what was going on with me, were really scary: I was scared of the monster I saw. Sunday & Monday were the worst two days I had had in ages. They were dark and scary, and I don’t know how I would have made it through without some friends and my therapist. I was so bereaved that I wasn’t able to finish the work necessary to prepare and then present my talk at the conference, so I had to withdraw it — which felt (and still feels) like a huge failure. 

But I was also able to self-soothe and self-regulate, which is a good sign.  

I was able, in the end, to pull myself together and get myself home (earlier than originally planned) to feel safer. I was able to help and save myself. To get myself out of that hellhole. 

And I’m feeling stronger, more motivated, on the other side of it. The “fight” part of the “flight/freeze/fight” PTSD reaction has now simmered down to the healthy aspect of anger that motivates me to do and to be: to be myself unapologetically (for example, not asking people to not call me “M’am” but rather to use some phrases I’m finding that make people actually stop and think and apologize for misgendering one); to do my work so that I can show my supervisor (as well as myself) that I am actually capable of it; to do my work so that I can present it at some other conference; to get back out there in the world, on smaller, safer, more reasonable scales, like going to the gym and out for dinner with friends, to get myself used to a relatively safe and/or manageable, and hopefully pleasant, social life again; to start exercising again, now that I can, and get “buff” again. To be the boy that I am, whether the world sees it or not. To be the lion that I am and fight not only for my right to be myself, authentically & apologetically as I am, but also for the rights of others by engaging more in forms of activism. To make all these f***ing flaws in the system evident and to help change them.  

I went deep down to the bottom a few days ago, plunging (or being plunged) into scary, dark waters; but now I’m back up again and somehow I feel stronger than before… 

Heck yeah — “I am a lion, Hear me roar” — “I am me, Hear me roar”!