P.S.: The practical viewpoint

…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!

A basketful of feelings

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 new type of friendship

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…

“Welcome to dude land”

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…

Horrible dream

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).

Two quotes for this week

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.

It’s not just sorrow from a returning wave of grief that I have been feeling in the past week or so. There’s something deeper, older. Something that had started resurfacing this past spring, around March. I only have inklings of what it is but I know it’s really important: I know I’m getting to the “core of it”. 

Part of it is unwanted attention. Something I’ve been experiencing my whole life and, especially having being socialized as a woman and being an attractive female, I was conditioned to accept as “okay” or even “good”, as an indicator of my “value” or “worth” (although I always instinctively & viscerally rebelled against this idea). 

In the past months since moving away from California, especially last spring and this past week or so, the insight into unwanted attention and the traumatic effect it has had on me for most of my life has been growing in clarity. 

I’m not ready to go into it at the moment. There’s still too much wrapped up in shadows and fog and pain for me now. 

For now, all I want to say is that in last night’s online gender-support meeting the topic of unwanted attention came up repeatedly even for other non-binary/trans members in the group and I felt really heard and understood in a way that had rarely happened to me before. Which was nice. 

Two other nice and somewhat healing, or at least soothing, things came up in the group meeting last night, after my share. 

I mentioned my recent feelings of loss and sorrow and heartbreak, and the decision of seeking professional help to do some counseling to get unstuck and/or to heal from these feelings/situations/patterns. In response, one person at the meeting said two lovely things: on the one hand, although it is sad that I might never see or hear from one or two of those persons in California again and that I will never have with them the relationships I would have liked or hoped for, although there is definitely loss in that, it’s also good to remember that I was a different person then, not as wholly or authentically myself as I am now, and that I am much happier and healthier now; on the other, that there are things from which we may never heal, that we will always carry as “baggage”, as part of our experience and even of our own selves, things (persons, relationships, feelings) that make us who we are, and that’s okay. 

Even this pain is mine, and it makes me who I am today. 

———

“… Yes, I am wise, but it’s wisdom born of pain” 

———

“… Love is destruction

But this war is mine

This war is mine”

Zen and the art of motorcycle riding

I love summer storms. It’s one of the many things I like about Colorado (& missed when living in coastal California): four definite seasons. 

Now I’m sitting at home relaxing after a late lunch, having gotten home on my motorcycle, after a slow, powerful swim at the pool, while it was already drizzling but just in time before the storm really rolled in. I love this safe, cozy, satisfied feeling. 

As I prepared myself & my bike for the ride home outside the recreation center, not letting the rain make me panic or rush, going through the methodical movements of putting away the lock, strapping down my bag on the back, and getting on my jacket and helmet and gloves, in that exact order, a thought struck me, a memory: the book “Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance” by Robert M. Pirsig. 

This is one of my absolute favorite books. I can still remember the bookstore where I bought it in Reggio Emilia. 

The first time I read this book, I was doing my PhD, over a dozen years ago. At the time, I didn’t ride motorcycles, yet, but I already dreamed of doing so and of taking long road trips, cross-country trips on my own bike someday. 

I reread the book for a second time five or six years ago, shortly after moving to California from Europe, in what was (& is) for me the “move of my liberation”. At that point, I knew I’d get my own motorcycle ASAP, and was already planning to get my license for it. 

For the first three years in California, before the pandemic started, I rode my motorcycle for hundreds of miles every summer and even during the other seasons whenever I had enough time to go on some trip (apart from using it regularly as an alternative to my bicycle to commute). I’d ride for miles, on my own, often camping, exploring new places, and visiting friends along the way. It made me feel free and empowered. But it also cleared my mind, like the spring cleaning of a cluttered house, especially at the end of the academic year every summer. 

Going through the methodical movements of preparing for my ride home today, it struck me with a new clarity that it isn’t only the adrenaline, the speed, the sense of freedom that I get from riding my motorcycle which grounds me and unclutters my mind: it’s also precisely those small methodical gestures, like a ritual, when I prepare to ride. 

Robert Pirsig in “Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance” tells the real story about a cross-country trip he took on his motorcycle with his son one summer: a trip that was meant both to help himself heal from serious mental illness and to heal his relationships with his beloved son (who was very sadly murdered a few years later). Pirsig described his relationship with his motorcycle as grounding and healing: not only the riding and traveling, but also or mainly the maintenance of the motorcycle. For Pirsig, too, the methodical gestures, the routines, the rituals of motorcycle maintenance were grounding, healing: literally a life-line for the mind (or the brain?). 

Now I see it clearly how similar it is for me, too. In these days that I have been feeling very profound sorrow and some anger as a wave of grief hits me again and as I struggle with little anxiety attacks that probably come from the overload of emotions and/or from weaning myself off the anxiety/depression meds, in these past days being around my motorcycle has been extremely and wonderfully grounding for me. Not just the riding, but also the rituals around preparing for the rides. And, in fact, I’ve been reminded of two situations in California, on in June 2018 and one almost exactly one year ago, when I had meetings with two (different) guys with whom I knew I would probably have upsetting or difficult conversations: on both occasions I purposefully rode my motorcycle to the meeting. Because I knew that no matter how those conversations would go, getting ready to ride back afterwards would get me back into my Zen place. Not only because of the focus and speed from riding; but also from focusing to prepare for the ride. 

Being around my motorcycle, connected to it, is a life-line for my mental health: it brings me back to my Zen place, almost instantly, like active meditation. 

Maybe this in one of the reasons I love my bike so much, in such an intense, visceral way…