The Little Prince and the Fox

I’ve been in Colorado for nine months, to the day. 

Nine months. A (re)birth. 

This isn’t the first time I’m feeling reborn. I remember a wonderful, joyful feeling of rebirth six years ago, for my first birthday in California, which was a little more than nine months after my move from Europe to California. 

This Coloradan rebirth is coming with a lot of symbolic, yet real, events attached: autumn with actual autumn-like weather; the final letting go of some situations that belong to the past; the official approval of my legal name change. 

The official approval of my legal name change from the county courthouse of where I’m now living came in the mail yesterday — unexpectedly early, and I’m still reeling from it. I’ve wanted this for so long and even known the details of my new, chosen name for quite a while. And yet, although my chosen name is not that different from my old given name, it’s my own choice and it reflects me, how I really identify and feel about myself. And now that it’s official, it redefines me, or presents me in a different way, to the world. Officially. (At least, that’s how it feels to me.) It’s a biggie. A real biggie. It’s HUGE.

After nine months in Colorado, this person that I’m choosing to be is born.

The more I think about it, the more I feel into it, the more I just live, and the more I agree and resonate with that anonymous quote

“Life isn’t about finding ourselves 

Life is about creating ourselves”.

I really do believe, I really do feel, that life is about creating ourselves. And today I had another opportunity to do so, to take another step towards creating myself: this afternoon I submitted the petition to legally change my name!!!! 

Today I felt it so intensely, this act of creating myself: intermittent and sometimes difficult, often strewn with obstacles, and yet ongoing for decades. I’ve been creating this scientist, this non-conforming rebel, this athlete. And now more than ever I see it happening, unraveling before me, also thanks to the visible changes due to the various processes involved in embracing my non-binary gender identity, as I gradually see and feel the effects of HRT, of the planned top-surgery, of getting my legal name & gender-marker changed. As well as my decisions to get tattoos for the first time in decades, for delving into rock climbing ever more intensely, for fitting more comfortably into my professional role as a researcher & mentor, for coming into myself wholly and out to the world openly. 

It feels good and wonderfully empowering — and I’m extremely grateful to have the opportunity to do all this (maybe in the nick of time)…!

As I try, for the hundredth time, to set some clear boundaries that I truly need with a person with whom there is a complicated relationship on multiple tricky levels, “Life, to me, is not that simple” is the response I get from this straight, monogamous, heteronormative, white cis-man who’s spent his entire life in California. 

“Duuuuude!!!! You are telling me that life isn’t simple?!?

I grew up in a multi-ethnic environment with clashing cultures, speaking three languages, as a trans kid with neurodivergence when these concepts hardly had words to describe them, let alone be accepted; I’ve been gender-nonconforming, non-binary, pansexual, and polyamorous my entire life, even before I was wholly aware of it and before society had words for these concepts; I’ve lived in half a dozen countries; I’m in the process of getting my full name and gender-marker legally changed, thus effectively redefining myself to the world — and you think that for me life is simple?!?

It is precisely because life isn’t simple and because the relationship between us is a “prime example” of this (as you say) that we need to not only establish boundaries but also respect those boundaries and acknowledge when we didn’t, or don’t, do it.” 

Do I reply to him like this, thus continuing a conversation of which I’m sick and tired, or do I just ignore him? 

[Disclaimer: I know the above response I jotted down can sound petty, bordering on victimism, and is making a bunch of assumptions; being petty, acting the victim, or making assumptions really are not my intentions: I just needed to vent in a “safe space”.] 

Almost one full month into autumn, I’m still fascinated by and reveling in the gorgeous colors and glorious weather of this season here in Colorado. And trying to let the riot of colors on the outside echo the one inside me. 

Finalizing my move over the past ten days or, at least, getting all my belongings and boxes from my temporary to my more permanent place here in Colorado, has been a very emotionally taxing endeavor. After all, I’ve basically been on the move for the past nine months, and it has weighed on me. It has been emotionally tiring and I still cannot get myself to open all those boxes of belongings from California — they still stir up too many emotions that are simply too intense for me to hold on my own. 

Fortunately, during the second part of the winter and throughout most of the spring I had some months of reprieve, which effectively allowed me to heal, to initiate my “new beginning”, and to get my textbook written and published. This summer, however, was tough — tougher than I had realized — and I’m feeling it now. 

We’re getting a beautiful autumn: the weather is sunny and balmy during the daytime; temperatures drop at night and it’s chilly in the early mornings, clearly signaling that summer is behind us; days are getting shorter but the colors are extremely bright in the sunshine, making the daytime hours more intense and wonderful than ever; leaves are falling from the trees — I can hear them fall as I sit outside and the trees are noticeably getting more and more naked by the day. And then we get sporadic days of much-needed rain. 

This intense alternation of colors and temperatures; all this intense and rapidly changing beauty — it reflects my emotions. The warm sunshine is like the happiness and enthusiasm I feel about living here, in this corner of the world that I like so much; the chilly, cozy evenings and clear starry skies at night reflect the welcoming feelings in this new house, with my kind housemate; the leaves falling from the trees represent my own shedding, leaving behind so much (of which I am reminded by opening boxes of belongings from California); the palettes of bright colors mirror the riot of colors in my heart — happiness, loneliness, excitement, enthusiasm, pain, joy, hope, sadness, and sometimes also still some anger. My emotions ebb and flow, depending on the time of day, on the activities I’m doing, on the people with whom I’m in touch. I try to let it all come and go within me — inside and outside of me. I try to focus on what needs to be done here and now — submitting an abstract for an important conference before the deadline today; processing my paperwork for the legal change of my name & gender-marker; registering to vote & getting my vehicles legally registered here in Colorado; unpacking only what I really need in my new place and what gives me joy or helps me feel at home, more grounded; socializing in the ways that nourish me and meet my needs; learning to understand, accept, respect, and communicate my needs more clearly. 

One step at a time. 

Like the changing colors of autumn, my emotions change too, they ebb and flow, they come and go. And hopefully also the intensity or pain of some of these emotions will ebb and flow, eventually “falling away from my heart” just as the leaves are falling off the autumn trees.

Four weeks into official autumn… My first autumn in Colorado, and it’s really beautiful here! 

I’ve missed such a colorful autumn — sitting outside one can actually hear the leaves falling off the trees!

For months now since having moved to Colorado I’ve often felt that I’ve been given, and that I’m living, a “golden moment”. A wonderful “second opportunity” in so many aspects of my life, both professionally and personally. 

The words “golden moment” and the quote “Life isn’t about finding ourselves; Life is about creating ourselves”  keep coming into my mind, in tandem. This second (or third?) opportunity I’ve been given feels like “my golden moment to create myself”. 

For many aspects of my masculinization process and my career, I feel like I got this second opportunity “just in the nick of time”: and for this reason I want to make the best of it even more. 

I’m getting my second puberty & my second youth, two decades after the “original” one, but in the “correct gender” for me now, and maybe also with the consciousness and awareness of those two decades of life experiences which make this phase feel even more wonderful and precious. Within this context, the relationships I’m building with guys (cis-men, mostly in their twenties & thirties) are extremely precious and meaningful to me now. All friendships are precious to me, I’ve always given a lot of meaning to friendship and I have often had many close male friends, many of whom are still good friends to this day. But I have changed, I am different now — or, at least, I feel different now because I have come into my non-binary/trans-masculine gender identity more fully, consciously and more explicitly even to the outside world. My feeling, and thus somehow or sometimes presenting, differently is affecting the dynamics in the interactions in new relationships with men around me now (at least those with whom I interact more regularly). I already got glimpses and tastes of these dynamics many years ago, in my “first puberty & youth”, with some buddies in high-school, with my beloved sailing buddy in college and with my good friends in grad school. And indeed, I missed those interactions, those feelings, when they were gone from my daily life. Having them back now, finding them again now so many years later (and in a completely different corner of the world) feels so lovely, so wonderful, almost unexpected, and therefore even more precious. Moreover, given many experiences of “flakiness” in California (which probably triggered or compounded childhood experiences of “abandonment” for me), I’m still partly in disbelief of these close, comfortable relationships now and almost always in some fear of “losing” them. 

The main feelings now, however, are of wonder, of joy, of learning, and of creating or building: I’m building new types of relationships while also creating myself anew. Maybe this is the feeling lots of trans persons have when they talk about the “phoenix”… I’m creating myself and relating to the world, and thus experiencing myself and the world, in an almost completely new way, presenting myself as the “boy” that I feel I am and not as the “woman” that the world around might might expect. It often feels weird to myself, too, because doing it so explicitly is so new to me. I can feel, see, hear myself behaving in ways that are more markedly different from the past or from what might be expected of the way I was socialized: this is a little strange to me, too, and definitely pushing my comfort zone, but it feels good. 

On the one hand, it feels good because I feel that I’m finally allowing myself to create myself as I really want to be — a boy, a climber & athlete, a professional scientist, embracing my transgender identity and my neurodivergence without hiding. 

On the other hand, it also feels good because I’m finding acceptance and affirmations from the pockets of world around me, and especially from all the males I’m around and whose acceptance and affirmation mean so much to me now.

Driving to work this morning listening to music, I realized that my voice has dropped low enough that I cannot sing along to one of my favorite songs anymore (“Bitch” by Meredith Brooks). 

A little mustache is starting to shyly yet stubbornly make its appearance over my upper lip — and it’s blond! 

I’m starting to get really impatient for some more male attributes to become more visible and I cannot wait to get my masculinizing top-surgery. 

As I present more and more masculine or talk more openly and explicitly about how masculine I feel, I’m starting to be asked more and more often whether I think that at some point I’ll switch to “he” pronouns from my current “they” pronouns. 

For now, my answer is “No”. 

I’m thoroughly enjoying this delayed male puberty that I’m experiencing and I identify very strongly with being a “boy”. I love boys: I identify with them, I feel comfortable around them, I find them fun and endearing (at least most of the time); and I’m mostly attracted to men and I generally feel (& almost always have felt) more comfortable with, and similar to, men than I have with/to women. 

However, I was socialized as a woman and this is a big part of me & of my lived experience. 

In languages with a more gendering grammar than English, I have asked my closest friends to use the masculine for me. The reason I feel comfortable with that but still prefer using non-binary pronouns whenever possible, and envision myself using non-binary pronouns even if/when I present more masculine in the future, is precisely because of the parts of me & of my experiences as a woman. Even if/when I get to the point where I could “pass” as a man, I probably won’t want to be identified wholly as a “man” (unless my feelings shift a lot from the present). I don’t want to be seen from the outside wholly as a “man” — which in my case would be a white man — because I didn’t grow up, wasn’t socialized, with those experiences and those privileges. I experienced the joys and beauties but also and mainly the difficulties and hardships of being AFAB, and also of being a “woman in science”, or at least perceived as such. Those are marginalized experiences that are very different, and often in many ways harder, than those of a white man. 

Last night I found resonance with two persons on such topics. 

One was my new housemate who is a cis-woman, a very-out lesbian in her mid-fifties. She had just asked me the question about the “They vs. He” pronouns and I gave her my answer along the lines I just explained. And she shared a very interesting experience and perspective of her own, which really resonated with me. She told me about an interview in which the trans-woman Caitlyn Jenner said how nice if was for her to be able to wear nail-polish and “giggle with the girls” because these were things that really made her feel like a woman. While my housemate respects this viewpoint and we agreed that different things can make each one of us perceive our gender differently and uniquely, she also mentioned how she & many (cis-)women friends of hers felt very differently from Caitlyn Jenner, specifically that their shared perception of “womanhood” was more along the lines of their similar experiences of oppression, lack of privilege, and even fear. Which is basically similar to what I’m saying when I explain why I feel that “they” pronouns represent me & my experience better because I lived most of my life with the world around me “treating me as a woman”, which includes experiencing certain types of discrimination and fear that oftentimes (white cis-)men don’t experience. [All this being said, I am very well aware of the terrible discrimination that often trans-women experience which can be even worse than for cis-women — but this is beyond the scope of this post.]

The other was a maybe more light-heartedconversation with one of my closest AFAB trans-masculine/non-binary friends. They were telling me about some gay cis-men friends of theirs in their late-forties and fifties who are experiencing a “decline in their manhood”; while we, as trans-masculine persons doing HRT are experiencing a “peak of manhood” because of the testosterone giving us a sort of “delayed male puberty” on top of our “peaking female sexuality” as females who are finally comfortable in their bodies, comfortable with their own sexuality/sensuality and even with their own female genitals. So somehow we’re getting the “best of the two worlds” — and honestly, this feels great! As far as I’m concerned, while still leaning towards the masculine side of the spectrum and identifying more as a “boy”, I am non-binary in the sense that part of me is “female”. And some of those “specifically female” parts I enjoy and love very much. 

So for me sticking to “they” rather than “he” pronouns, at least for now, is both a recognition and honoring of the difficulties I experienced in being socialized as a woman as well as a celebration of those female parts of me that I love and enjoy.

Two news-clips from last night that touched me deeply and really resonated with me (also because of having been AFAB & socialized as a woman for a lot of my life): 

– Women’s protests showing incredible courage in Iran;

– Interview with actress Emma Thompson on the excellent film “Good luck, Leo Grande!”

Despite the stress of the move, I had a good weekend. And it was good because I spent most of it in pleasant company. 

On Saturday, I attended the second part of a trad climbing clinic, hands-on and outdoors in beautiful weather, in the fun company of some students from the research group where I work. And after the climbing, we all went out for burgers and beers. Despite the age difference (I’m much older than they are), it was comfortable and fun — really fun. 

Yesterday two good climbing buddies, who are really friends at this point, came and helped me move. One of them brought his landlord’s small trailer hitched to his own car and his girlfriend also came to help. The other one drove my car so that I could ride my motorcycle and leave it parked at my new place. Their help was priceless. Although to them it might have felt that they simply moved some boxes around, for me it was a huge psychological support as well as physical help. On top of making things so much faster because there were four persons, instead of just one, carrying boxes, it really helped me feel less sad or lonely about moving. 

I’m not upset about this move per se. I knew it was coming up this October; I’m not moving far and I’m moving to an area that I really like and where I wanted to live; the person with whom I’ll be living seems to be really nice and kind and interesting. But moving is stressful and brings up lots of emotions and memories for me. So doing it with the help of friends, and then going out for dinner with them afterwards (buying them dinner seemed the least I could do to thank them all for their help!) was really great — a tremendous help! I’m also very happy that my climbing buddies got to meet my new housemate and that they all seemed to like each other — it somehow makes me feel more at home in this corner of the world… 

Anyway, the events and emotions of this weekend are an additional confirmation of how much I benefit from (the right) human company, how much I need to be around nice people in person.