The Little Prince and the Fox

My weekend turned out much better than it had started on Saturday morning. 

First of all, after writing my blog post, I went to one of my neighbors here, who is wonderfully kind and always encouraging me to stop by and say Hi to him & his wife, and told him very simply that I was feeling lonely. So he hung out with me for a little while, giving me tips of places I could explore on my motorcycle, and then sending me home with a bag full of yummy vegetables from their own garden. 

As I was getting ready to go to the swimming-pool one of my most recent but also most regular climbing buddies replied to me confirming his availability to climb together on Sunday — which we did yesterday and had another great day climbing outdoors together, with interesting and very open conversations, strengthening our bond as climbing buddies and platonic friends. 

I struggled a bit through my swim on Saturday — and that might even have been just physical tiredness. But the workout in the fresh air & sunshine (it was my last swim outdoors before the pool got closed for this season) helped me, and I came home feeling relaxed and at peace, feeling a quiet, grounded joy. And well enough to reconnect to two close friends with whom conversations have not been too easy lately, for different reasons.  

They’re both friends from California and with both there has been physical intimacy on top of very deep emotional and intellectual connections. They are both persons I care for very much and miss and who, I know with no doubt, care for me and miss me. The details of why we haven’t been able to connect as much or as deeply in the past months are different with each of these two people, as they themselves are quite different from each other, but nonetheless they both mean a lot to me and I know their affection for me is deep and sincere. So being able to reconnect with them on Saturday was really lovely. I video-chatted with one of them for over two hours and then with the other for about an hour, thus effectively spending my Saturday afternoon with two of my dearest friends in California! I wouldn’t have been able to do that even just a week or two ago: the simple fact that I was emotionally ready to do so, to have such deep, open-hearted, even vulnerable conversations with them, especially with the non-binary climbing friend, was really wonderful. So healing — such a gift! 

After the two video-calls, I watered the garden and took care of the plants here before getting dinner, in order to calm all the reeling emotions in my heart. And by dinner-time all that was left was the glow, the joy, of those conversations, of those (re)connections. The profound, tangible feeling of those little “jewels” that the conversations with those two friends left me, planted in my heart. 

It also felt like reassembling pieces. Rebuilding these important relationships that, for different reasons, have suffered a bit over the past few months. And rebuilding them in a different way, almost on different foundations from previously, partly also because of my own discoveries in gender-identity and changes in how I’m approaching relationships. 

Analogously, climbing with my buddy yesterday also felt like building something in a way that is very new to me, that I haven’t experienced since I was around 16 years old, basically since I was “pre-sexual”. Most of my new relationships, especially here in Colorado, have this new (or newly found) feel or dynamics for me, which I like but which I’m also not used to anymore, that I haven’t really had for almost a quarter of a century and that I therefore have to relearn. 

As I’m getting to know myself, my authentic self, better and better, the way I relate to & interact with other people is also changing, the way I’m connecting and building relationships is changing — mostly for the better. It’s nice — wonderful, actually. I like it. But it’s also baffling because it’s so new to me or, rather, something familiar to me from a part of my life that is quite far in my past… I’m relearning. 

I feel that in almost every aspect of my life in this moment I am learning or relearning — building or rebuilding. 

In a way, I feel like I have a multitude of random pieces from a LEGO box strewn in front of me that I can arrange and rearrange almost as I wish now. It’s exciting and empowering and lovely (lovely in the original sense of the word, especially when it comes to relationships), but it’s also scary and so much work!

It’s beautiful but also a little daunting and it takes effort, at least if one wants to do it well, it takes intention and attention. Dedication. 

Loneliness and the lack of a regular pattern in human interactions or relationships are the biggest source, or trigger, of anxiety for me. And it’s been so my entire life — which is one of the reasons this blog is called “The Little Prince and the Fox”! 

I have been consciously aware of this fact only for the past three years or so, and it was actually the super intense but also erratically irregular interactions with the boulderer that really brought it home to me. I’ve realized that most of my closest and deepest relationships and long-lasting friendships were built through an initial phase of meeting up regularly: a fixed evening dinner; a regular afternoon walk&talk, maybe with a snack or tea ritual added to it; a regular evening ice-cream walking & chatting; an almost-every weekend meeting to climb or hike or walk along the beach. Something I (and the other person as well) could count on. Loosely, with no stifling expectations and no drama if we had to skip sometimes, and often even the understanding of the regular pattern of our meetings was implicit, taken silently as a gentle certainty on both sides without the need to say it out loud. Maybe because it was a shared need or desire. 

I’ve been missing this recently (as I often missed it in California). 

For several months between last autumn and this spring, I had found a regular rhythm in my own life, a new rhythm compared to the one I had had for several years teaching in California, but a good, regular rhythm both for my own activities (working on my textbook, exercising, resting) and socializing with frequent and quite predictable patterns with several people consistently. And I thrived in those patterns. 

Since May or June those patterns have been disrupted, mostly because of my own changes in jobs and living situations, my move, temporary accommodations, and getting settled into a whole new routine (new job, new schedule, new place, new interactions). 

I have plenty of interactions. Some weeks are quite full of plans, meetings, and interactions, as are some weekends. Overall, I’m able to express and receive validation for the most important parts of my identity now as climber, scientist, and trans-masculine/non-binary person. I’m even getting plenty of compliments and/or attention without seeking it. But it’s all on-the-fly, almost superficial. It’s the recognition or attention or compliment from a stranger, here now, gone the next second, making me glow in the moment but leaving no really deep or lasting wellness. 

At the end of the day, I have no plans with any friends or buddies for this weekend nor for any of the weekends to come, and no plans with anyone for the long holiday weekend coming up. And I know some of my friends or acquaintances do have plans but I haven’t been asked or included. 

While I do feel the need to maintain independence and freedom to do my own things, and to do many different things, I also really feel the lack of consistent, steady, regular relationships or situations in which I can count on persons and plans a priori, without every time having to doubt or guess or plan at the last minute. I miss having a friend or two with whom I could meet up regularly for a hike and/or fun dinner out every weekend. I miss having a specific climbing buddy with whom to share fun climbing adventures on a regular basis, building trust and deep camaraderie. 

And not having these types of relationships — apart from being tiring because every time I have to reach out, ask, seek, make efforts to connect — also really undermines my sense of worth: am I not fun or interesting enough? Am I too “intense”? Am I not enough of a good climber? Am I just not likable enough? 

[Trigger warning: anxiety]

This morning I had to go get fasting blood work done so I got up, took a quick cold shower (a new habit I’ve started this week and that seems to be helping how I feel), and then rode my motorcycle to the medical center. And back. All on an empty stomach. 

I haven’t felt so well riding my motorcycle since pre-pandemic, for almost three years. It’s so wonderful to get this feeling back, this feeling of being one, my body-my mind-my motorcycle: we’re just one thing, my body-mind-bike.

Yesterday evening I managed to start listening to my friend’s podcast again and really enjoyed it (as I used to) — it gave me so much excellent food for thought while also relating to a lot of what was discussed — it also helped me feel more intellectually alive again.  

Yesterday afternoon I managed to get a full three hours of good, focused, and intentional scientific work done — more than I’ve done in a while. 

And yesterday morning I went for a long swim at the outdoor pool again, swimming over 2 miles, and overcoming a small anxiety attack during the first 300 meters. 

These small anxiety attacks aren’t new to me. Come to think of it, I’ve had them my entire life, at least since high-school. They’re often triggered by a sense of being overwhelmed by the task at hand and/or an intense, extremely deep feeling of loneliness. 

And one of my most powerful and effective coping skills has always been to break down the overall task and think only about the next tiny step. 

I remember feeling terribly overwhelmed in college if I considered all the coursework and exams I’d have to face over the course of one academic year, or even just one semester. But then I’d break it down, look at each individual course, each individual week of classes, each individual deadline and the intermediate goals or milestones to reach my final goal. In the end, I was able to make it successfully to the end of my PhD, one small (or big) step at a time. 

The little anxiety attacks now can be triggered by something as simple as facing a day on my own, and I usually feel them at the beginning of a long run or long swim, during the first 5-10 minutes, maybe before the chemicals from the workout kick in to quiet my brain. When that eventually happens, I get into a runner’s high, or even a swimmer’s high, and could run or swim for hours — my body is quite an endurance machine, it turns out! But in those first moments, keeping my mind quiet, keeping it from spinning, is quite an effort. And the way I keep it from spinning too wildly or dangerously, the way I rein it back in, is by thinking “Just take this small step, just swim this one lap, just run to that next tree, and you can stop any time you want or need to”. And in the end, taking one small step at a time, completely and wholeheartedly committing to small chunks while also allowing myself to stop after every completed chunk, I get through miles, and my mind (or brain?) eventually not only quiets down but also enjoys the process — and so do I as whole! 

Sometimes I wonder how far these coping skills can get me, how long they will hold up. If they have been working for two or three decades, does that mean they will keep working for me for ever? 

Anyway, for now, I can feel my mind quieting down overall, over the course of days, and feeling more and more grounded as the weeks go by since the reeling month of July. I can physically (chemically?) feel something settling and improving in my brain. There might still be relapses, especially as I continue to slowly wean myself off the antidepressant/anti-anxiety medication, but hopefully this positive trend toward a more clear and grounded mind will be a relatively steady course for a while… one (small or big) step at a time!

[Trigger warnings: mental health, neurodivergence, pandemic]

I’ve often read and heard about mental health issues, or mental illness, affecting relationships, disrupting them, straining them, sometimes even completely tearing them apart. 

It wasn’t until the pandemic and my own mental health issues, though, that I became fully aware of these impacts, also through my own personal experiences. 

I grew up in a society where stigma and/or ignorance around anything concerning the mind or brain was extremely pervasive: very little was known, or mentioned, about mental health; the word or concept of “neurodiversity” didn’t even exist; any form of “mental issue” was taboo. 

In hindsight, I realize that two or three very important relationships I have had were negatively affected, and eventually torn apart, by my own — and probably also the other persons’ and society’s — ignorance and incapacity to deal with mental health issues. In those cases, though, I was sort of “at the receiving end” of the situation. 

Lately, I’m realizing, it’s some very good friends of my own who have been “at the receiving end” of my mental issues. 

In a week I will, at last, get professionally evaluated for autism & ADHD and hopefully get confirmation of some neurodiversity which I’ve been experiencing and coping with my entire life. The real issues, though, came during a phase of anxiety/depression that I had during the first year and a half of the pandemic and whose effects are still dragging on now. My own parenthesis of anxiety/depression made me so often incapable of being there for some of my dearest and oldest friends, incapable of listening to them — even literally, incapable of listening to a wonderful podcast that one of my best friends from grad school has been doing, or incapable of reading interesting posts/articles that other friends have been sending me, or making it hard for some other dear, close friends to spontaneously share things with me. While I fully believe in the vital importance of healthy boundaries and the right to have them respected and to ask for trigger warnings, I also realize how estranged my own phase of anxiety/depression has made me from some of my dearest and oldest friends. And this is terribly sad for me.  

I’m an incurable optimist, though, so I will do what I often do (at least, when I’m at my own healthy baseline): now that I am aware of these facts and of how they have negatively affected some important relationships in the recent past, and now that I am doing so much better myself, I am going to use this newly found bandwidth, this newly found mental well-being & emotional energy to start being there, again and/or more, for my friends. 

On another positive note, I also want to mention how the courage and openness to share personal experiences about mental health and/or neurodiversity/neurodivergence have, on the other hand, brought me so much closer to so many wonderful people, old friends as well as new ones. Since moving to California in 2016 and even more since the pandemic and now living in Colorado, I have had the fortune to meet more and more people who are aware of, and open to talk about, mental health and/or neurodiversity and I have been sharing some important growth in these directions in parallel with some good old friends in Europe. Their courage to share with me as well as my own improved awareness have allowed to build stronger, deeper bonds, weathering the difficulties that naturally arise in human relationships, and giving rise to wonderful and often unexpected closeness in many old and new friendships.

…But I can also see things, or at least explain them to others, from the practical viewpoint: I had some wonderful, interesting experiences in California but then got to the point where there was no professional growth for me or no professional opportunities in the directions I wanted/needed and in ways that would be sustainable for me financially, socially, or emotionally. So I looked for a new, better job in a location that I like: I found one and went for it. So that’s what I’m doing here in Colorado now: I’m working at a job that gives me an opportunity to grow in some ways that I feel important to me now, in a comfortable/safe social environment, and while also allowing me to do the things I enjoy in my free time, like rock climbing, trail running, etc. 

That’s all I need to explain to whoever asks — and also to my own self when emotions get overwhelming!

Yesterday was the first day of classes at many colleges & universities, including the new one where I now work as well as the one where I used to teach in California.

It was a gorgeous sunny day and I went on campus just for a few hours in the afternoon after a nice swim at the outdoor pool, so my mood was pretty good yesterday. 

As I walked around the bustling campus grounds and the more crowded rooms, as I sat working a bit in my own office, and when I was introduced by a colleague faculty to his class of students, my emotions and feelings felt very mixed. 

During most of the afternoon, I felt a huge relief. Relief while I was working in my office as I was finally able to concentrate on technical work again (I have been noticing an improved focus that has been returning as my mind has been quieting down again over the past week or two). Relief also while walking around the bustling campus, feeling a sense of recognition for these strangers — STEM students and some STEM faculty — but knowing that I wouldn’t have to engage in a classroom this semester: the relief of being unburdened of the responsibility of teaching, guiding, performing. 

On the other hand, though, there are also more complicated feelings, deeper down. 

When my colleague, who is tenured faculty, introduced me to his class with generous and flattering words, there was a mixed sense of pride and embarrassment and humility within me. 

In general, there is a sense of having to relearn, readapt, and of not wholly belonging: this school environment is very different both from my own as a student and from the place where I taught in California; moreover, I’m neither a student nor teaching or tenured faculty now. I’m a post-doc, a decade after having done (and failed at, in my own view) my first post-doc, and I’m the only post-doc in our department, as far as I know at the moment… 

In these years I’ve learned so much but in so many different fields and directions that I really have tons to relearn in my own field of research that I’m attempting to pursue again. And this is scary and it also requires a huge amount of humility. Or the right balance between pride/self-confidence and humility. Which is tricky, especially in an environment which is new to me from the human/social viewpoint… And even more so while I’m undergoing my own personal changes and growth, especially connected to gender. In this sense, the relief and feeling of safety for not having to show up in a classroom, for not having the responsibility to teach, guide, perform constantly, is huge. But I’m also worried about getting too isolated and/or lonely or simply feeling different because of my age/experience… 

And then, beneath it all, there’s still a sense of sadness, loss, almost failure even for the job & life I left behind in California. These feelings get intensified by other people around me and some conversations with them when they express surprise at my having struggled or not enjoyed it as much as expected in California, in a place that so many people see as “the best possible place to live or aim for in the world”. It’s so hard, often impossible, to get people to understand that it’s actually NOT “the best possible place to live or aim for in the world”, or at least not for everyone. And even harder to get people to understand my particular experience there, the reasons why it was so tough for me there, and how the professional experiences I had made my social/personal/emotional life so hard and eventually impossible for me to bear. I’m still struggling to accept my own struggles there, to validate them to myself, to not see them as “failures”. And then having to try and explain the situation, or my choices, to other people and not being heard makes it even harder for me to accept and validate my own experience. To actually believe myself and the validity of my own pain. To believe that I didn’t “fail” in California. 

So while the overall feeling I have now is of relief and enthusiasm at being here, in this geographical location that I love and with a job that allows me to “start over” in some ways, relieving me of some burdens, I also feel a lot of pressure, on one hand, and unresolved pain and the need to come to terms with important parts of my past, on the other. Which is a whole basketful of emotions!

A few days after my emotional meltdown at his housewarming party last Saturday, my French climbing buddy invited me over for a quiet dinner at his place last night and I had a lovely evening with him, his girlfriend and two of their three housemates. 

After eating dinner and sitting around the fire chatting all together in the backyard, the girlfriend and housemates went to sleep while my French buddy had to do the dishes, and he & I weren’t really as tired as everyone else, yet, so I kept him company as he cleaned up and we had some time for a deeper, or more personal, conversation. 

I’m learning a new type of relationship with him and although I still tend to feel uncertain in it, i.e. I always have the nagging doubt that he might not “really be my friend”, my gut tells me it is a true friendship that is growing between us and I like it. 

There is sincere affection — from my own past experiences, I tend to always doubt true interest or affection from the other person(s) involved in a close relationship. He’s very direct, almost abrupt or curt often. If I didn’t know that this can be common among many Europeans (it’s actually something I like about many Europeans vs. Americans), I might be offended or taken aback by his super straightforward and brisk attitude. But fortunately I know better so I can appreciate him & his attitude for what they really are. 

He’s the “tough love” kind of person; he’ll give you things straight, with no sweetening or embellishments. But he’s honest, and this means the world to me: I know I can trust him, trust what he says, trust what he does. 

He takes me as I am and shares my journey, both the professional aspects and the personal/gender parts, with genuine interest and enthusiasm. He won’t delve deep or allow much space for emotions, but I can see he understands them and feels them himself and even shares them. I also know that part of his attitude has probably been very influenced/conditioned by the way he was brought up and has to function in society as a white cis-man. 

Overall, there’s something very “man-to-man”-style in our friendship and I like it. It’s totally devoid of any form of sexual/sensual/erotic attraction, and that also feels comfortable and safe to me. 

All this is new to me, and although it’s taking some learning & adapting on my part and it isn’t the only type of relationship I want or need, I’m enjoying this. I’m also realizing that it’s part of this new phase of my journey that got most of its momentum from my move here to Colorado, especially the gender-identity part: discovering, redefining, and expressing my gender-identity more openly and authentically is affecting all of my relationships and in general shifting the way I enter or start new relationships quite radically; it’s still new and sometimes even scary to me (because it’s so unknown) but it feels so much more authentic and healthy…

When I was in California a month ago I met up with my climbing buddies for a nice outdoor session and then dinner there. They’re still close buddies for me and it was great seeing each other and catching up, and I was able to share with them my plans for top-surgery this upcoming winter. I didn’t feel ready, however, to tell them yet that I’ve started HRT. 

At that outing one of my closest buddies from that group wasn’t present because he was traveling somewhere else at the time, which was a bummer. But yesterday I got one of the loveliest affirmations ever from him via text message. 

He & I were quite close during my last six months or so in California before I moved out here last winter, meeting up for dinner sometimes besides climbing together, having some deep conversations, and sometimes even flirting in a light-hearted way. And he was one of the first people from that group of climbing buddies to whom I had mentioned my non-binary gender identity — but now I’ve come a long way since then… 

The other day we had been texting about motorcycles, since he rides as well. And then I felt comfortable enough to share with him a photo of myself wearing a new men’s tank-top with the writing “This is what trans looks like”. His response to that was positive and genuinely curious, caring, so I told him that I’m feeling more towards the masculine side of the gender spectrum and that I’ll be getting top-surgery at the end of January 2023. He asked me what top-surgery is, so I explained to him about masculinizing mastectomy. And then he asked me, “So will you be starting hormone therapy as well?” 

So at that point I told him that I’ve started HRT already. And his reply was one of the cutest replies I’ve received from a cis-man friend: 

“Welcome to dude land! You’re a dope dude”. 

I’ve been very fortunate, so far, receiving some really wonderful responses from all my male friends and buddies about my gender identity & masculinization process. They’ve all been more than accepting: they’ve been enthusiastic and affirming, reflecting back to me the boy in me and how well I am now that I’ve finally found “him”. Most of my friends overall have been responding in wonderfully affirming, enthusiastic and positively reflecting ways, and I’m really grateful for it. It means A LOT to me.

In the case of cis-male friends, though, it has a particular meaning for me now, I guess, because I somehow feel an instinctive need to be accepted by them since I feel that I’m almost one of them…

I had a horrible dream last night. One of those dreams that is basically a nightmare: it wakes you up in the middle of the night and leaves such a deep impact on you that it still affects your mood and emotions when you get up the next morning. 

It was in the context of meeting, or running into, a group of ex-students who graduated (Bachelor’s Degree) with me a couple years ago. At a certain point in the dream, one of them who hasn’t decided yet whether he’s going to pursue a graduate degree said that he had stopped at his Bachelor’s because of how some professors had treated him; then he eventually told me that “some professors” was me and that he had stopped at his Bachelor’s because the way I had behaved with him made him feel like he wasn’t smart enough to pursue an advanced degree. 

I was so deeply hurt (& partly surprised) that I was left speechless. 

Then, even in my dream, I remember thinking clearly to myself: of all the “successes”, i.e. positive experiences and wonderful feedback from students, the one experience that really sticks with me is this one, unique “failure”. And it hurts so profoundly that the pain is almost physical and quite unbearable (although I know it to be only in my head, the expression of some deep fear of mine and probably not really what the ex-student thinks).

I’m enjoying the coziness of home during a summer storm. The rain and chilly air are nice. And it’s even nicer to be able to enjoy them from the safety and warmth of a house on a relaxed weekend afternoon. 

Although I am giving myself a hard time to relax. In general lately. I’m still overwhelmed by all the changes and events of the past year, especially the last eight months, so I’ve hardly been able to get any work done at my new job. Being in academia in summertime, it’s not a big deal, really. But I cannot give myself a break so easily, I keep beating myself up for not getting enough work done, for not being able to be “productive” — whatever that means… 

I’m trying to keep in mind Ovid’s wise words 

“Take rest; a field that has rested gives a bountiful crop”. 

I should know from experience that’s true… after all, I just got a college textbook published thanks to taking time off last semester and just working on my book, at my own rhythm… But it’s hard to unlearn years of conditioning against rest… 

Another quote that has been coming to my mind often lately is one by Oscar Wilde: 

“For one moment our lives met, our souls touched”. 

In the gender-support group on Monday one of the other members very gently and wisely pointed out to me that I have changed a lot, and am much healthier and happier and more myself, since certain relationships — they were saying it to help ease my sense of loss and pain. What they said is very true (about me). But I’ve also realized in the the past few days that the other person, at least in one of those meaningful relationships, has changed a lot, too. We both have. “For one moment our lives met, our souls touched”: we were given a moment; we made what we made of it; maybe we did our best given the circumstances. That moment is now over. We’ve both grown, evolved, come into ourselves more, which has pulled us apart as we’ve been walking down paths that diverge more and more. Maybe it’s sad. Maybe it’s liberating or relieving. Maybe it’s sweet, or bittersweet. No matter what, though, it’s real. It’s a fact. And it’s okay — or if it isn’t completely okay now, it will be okay someday. 

After all, if I want to, I can always choose to cherish that “one moment in which our lives met, our souls touched”. That’s up to me. That’s my choice, in my power.