The Little Prince and the Fox

It’s been one of those BIG days. An intense day and in some ways a day to celebrate. 

Today I cast my first Coloradan vote! Which to me feels like a HUGE step towards making Colorado my new “real home”, at least for the time being. 

Since moving to the U.S. from Europe in 2016, there’s been a succession of important “first times” for me: my first motorcycle; my first car; starting to run long distance and then trail run, hence my first half-marathon (in California); starting to rock climb; coming into myself & out to the world more fully and authentically in the many facets of my identity, including adopting non-binary pronouns and getting my name legally changed. 

I remember how excited I was in 2016 about celebrating my first birthday in the U.S. (or the first one I remembered as an adult, since I celebrated a few here in the U.S. when I was a baby & very young child but cannot remember those, of course). My first birthday in California, my first Thanksgiving and Christmas in California: they were all symbols, milestones that helped me feel more settled and at home in my “new home”, my chosen home. 

I’m going through similar experiences and feelings now: this past weekend I ran my first half-marathon (my “typical” or “standard” distance until now) in a trail race here in Colorado; today I voted for the first time here in Colorado, showing my proof of residence; this upcoming weekend I’ll be doing my first (ever) rope-climbing competition and soon I’ll be celebrating my first birthday in Colorado; in ten days I might even run my first ever 30km trail race! So many “first times”, so many first times that feel important to me, and maybe even more so in this moment that I’m feeling some homesickness towards California and/or struggling with loneliness and melancholy. 

So many new “first times” here that slowly, in tiny steps, build towards my feeling more at home here… slowly but surely…

Was is Coleridge who compared grief (or guilt?) to a dead albatross hanging around his neck? 

In the past couple weeks at my new place I’ve been experiencing renewed asthma symptoms probably triggered by allergens (NOTE: I had never had asthma in my life until after getting sick with COVID in 2020 — I was left with asthma from COVID, which was extremely upsetting in itself, but fortunately the symptoms had subsided in the past year, until recently…) 

There definitely is a real physiological component which is asthma, as proved by the faint wheezing. Today, however, I realized that some of the other symptoms, especially the shallow/difficult breathing and chest  tightness, are also partly emotional. It’s waves of grief coming at me again. It’s sadness and loss weighing around my neck. 

There can be so much pain together with liberation, with the creation of ourselves, with living authentically the life we want as the persons we want to be. 

I love Colorado very much but I also miss California — or, at least, some things of California, for example the gorgeous “Indian summer” they get there around this time of year, and some people who are very dear to me. 

I love Colorado and overall I’m happy here — maybe the happiest I’ve been since grad school or, at least, in a decade. 

But my move to Colorado is also rooted in pain. 

When I visited this part of the world for the first time over three years ago, with a friend in the summer of 2019, I (we both) were doing a trip to try and forget, to get over heartbreaks. It was a wonderful, fun trip with one of my dearest friends, but the motivation of the trip, what had motivated me (us both) was pain, basically. I came here that summer to try and forget, to try and get over a certain person. 

When I came here on vacation in the summer of 2021, I was also healing and recovering from long COVID and burnout from over a year of sadness and fear and isolation and stress. 

When I finally moved here this past winter, I also did it to get away from an unbearable situation in California, including pain. I moved without knowing exactly what I’d do next, after the summer, but then my love for Colorado quickly took over everything and I decided to do everything I could to stay. So, in fact, it was my own conscious, convinced decision to move here (leaving California & so much behind). 

Conscious, convinced decisions, though, are not always pain-free, and mine definitely was not. And I’m feeling all that pain again intensely now. 

Last week was momentous for me: my request for legal name change was officially approved, thus effectively (and unexpectedly early) redefining me to the world and adding a significant step in the “creation of myself”; I went for my second tattoo consultation and got confirmation that I will get another of my drawing tattooed on my upper body in a few weeks, which to me feels like another step in the “creation of myself”; I sent a very important email to a person who’s meant so much to me and whom I’ve loved intensely, to set extremely clear boundaries, effectively closing a door and leaving something big behind me, in the past; I improved in some very concrete and relevant ways climbing, which felt wonderfully empowering and satisfying but also brought back the painful memories and wishes that never came true with two special persons in California; I opened some of my boxes of belongings, which also blasted me with memories, most of which I wasn’t really prepared for or willing to face, yet. 

That’s a lot. It would be a lot even if it happened over a month, or several months: all in one week is almost more than a heart can bear. And it rests heavy on my chest. 

So much of what I left (and am still gradually leaving) behind I truly love(d).

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.