“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… 

From “A man called Ove”

Lately I’ve been reading, almost devouring, the book “A man called Ove” by Fredrik Backman. 

In the past few days I read a couple passaged that really touched me deeply, that resonated profoundly with some emotions that have been resurfacing more intensely for me recently. 

‘”She’s the only teacher I ever had who didn’t think I was thick as a plank,” he mumbles, almost choking on his emotion. […]

He’s silent. And then they both stand there, the fifty-nine-year-old and the teenager, a few yards apart, kicking at the snow. As if they were kicking a memory back and forth, a memory of a woman who insisted on seeing more potential in certain men that they saw in themselves. Neither of them knows what to do with their shared experience.’

[…]

[…]

‘Maybe their [common] sorrow over […] should have brought the two men closer. But sorrow is unreliable in that way. When people don’t share it, there’s a good chance that it will drive them apart instead.’ 

Controlled meltdowns

I guess I can be proud of myself: despite one partial and one nearly total meltdown, I managed to get myself safely to my friend’s house and then all the way back home riding my motorcycle for half an hour each way on the freeway. 

It started as a hard day already this morning. I dragged myself out of bed past 9:30 AM and struggled with feelings of being tired and overwhelmed and also concerned about the swelling on my ankle from the wasp sting I got yesterday evening. So I skipped the swim workout I had planned and just did chores and slowly got myself ready to go to my French climbing buddy’s housewarming party. 

On my way to his place, I stopped at the grocery store to get drinks and asked a shop assistant for help finding something. He didn’t know where the item was so he asked a colleague if she “could please help this lady”. Immediately, I snapped, “This person — help this person, not lady”. He was very taken aback and tried to apologize, but I ignored him and stormed off in the direction that had been indicated to me by his colleague. That was my first, partial meltdown of today. I know I was rude and that he probably meant no harm by calling me “this lady”, but I just cannot take it anymore — or, at least, couldn’t take it today. I understand that people are brought up with a binary view and taught to say “lady”, “m’am”, “miss”, or “sir” to be polite and show respect. But I’m just so fed up with having to be the one who is understanding about society’s binary view and misgendering. I’m fed up with being misgendered so often just because I have (small) tits and I’m fed up with always having to ask to be called something different from “miss” or “m’am”. It’s upsetting to us non-binary/trans people and once in a while it’s okay for cis-persons to have to bear the weight of their misgendering. 

At that point, I realized I wasn’t in the best of moods to socialize today and I strongly considered to just go home and spend the afternoon by myself. The weather also looked a little stormy so I was undecided about riding my motorcycle all the way and back. But I definitely didn’t want to drive my car, it felt like such a waste, and I felt itchy to ride, and my French climbing buddy said the weather was nice at his place, so I decided to go. 

I enjoyed my motorcycle ride there but still felt grumpy when I got to my friend’s place. After changing out of my riding gear, I joined the party in the backyard and felt completely overwhelmed by the crowd and loudness — music playing and over twenty people, mostly in beach-wear, chatting loudly and playing with water guns and water balloons. Moreover, they were all strangers to me except for my friend and his girlfriend. I felt like a fish out of water, with all my social anxiety bubbling up. 

My buddy came to my rescue and then a couple other people introduced themselves, helping me out of my social anxiety moment, and I fell into a pleasant conversation with a nice guy (and his girlfriend joining on and off). Then, California came up and we exchanged opinions about it, and found to have similar impressions of it. I said something about it and he replied that, interestingly, all the women he had talked to had said something similar and all the men the opposite. That really rubbed me the wrong way. And I think it was the last straw for today. When we finished the conversation as food was being served, I told him that I use “they” pronouns & identify as non-binary, not as a woman. He was very nice about it and got the reference to his previous comment about men vs. women, but still I had no desire to make more efforts to socialize at that point. 

I took a break inside the house and even went for a short walk around the block to try and get myself into a “good sociable mood” but just couldn’t do it. So I decided I would eat something and then head back home (my body needed some food before the ride). I got myself something to eat and discretely sat in a corner of the backyard where I could go unnoticed. My French climbing buddy, whom I had told I was having a tough day, saw me and asked if he could join me, and then asked how I was doing. At that point I broke down in tears — meltdown. I realized that being seen as a woman was unbearably upsetting for me. I just couldn’t put up with it — it made me feel naked in a horrible way, almost traumatizing. 

On the one hand, since the pandemic, I simply struggle with crowds of people, even outdoors sometimes. On the other hand, I realized that I’ve gotten unused to be at settings/events that don’t explicitly include either climbers or trans/queer/non-binary persons (or scientists, at my job): those are the spaces that feel safe and comfortable, manageable and known to me now. I cannot handle anything else for the time being. 

As my friend walked me inside and sat on the couch with me, asking me how I’ve been doing and catching up a little since we haven’t seen each other in over a month, I felt his affection towards me and my gratitude towards him. But I also realized that I’ve been through so much lately: the emotions from my trip to California in July are still raw; my recent move, all the changes of the past months and the changes I’m still going through and expecting for the upcoming months — it’s A LOT. And today all this along with a crowd of strangers playing loud music and beach games was simply too much. 

I needed to get myself home safely, possibly before the storm rolled in. 

So I donned my riding gear again and headed out. Sorry to not have met my friend’s housemates, especially the gay guy and his queer friends. But I’ll hopefully meet them sometime soon when I go over for dinner in a smaller group. 

For today, that was enough — and my French climbing buddy, who’s also a motorcycle rider, understood my mental/emotional state this time as well. 

So I got on my bike and rode home. Keeping my mind focused on the road and feeling the wind, the speed, and the tricky edge on which my brain was balancing itself precariously today. 

Watering the garden

This evening I watered the garden of my owners’ house again: this is the big responsibility I have here while they’re away this summer. 

I’ve never been very good at taking care of plants but I’m really loving tending to their garden. I love the smells that come up and out of the soil, out of the leaves and flowers the moment the water hits them. I love the immediate gratification one gets from this activity. I love the connection I feel to nature and everything around me —  including the bunnies running around all over the place. 

In general, one of the things I’m enjoying the most staying in this place temporarily for the summer is the close contact with nature, being surrounded by it so easily. Even if it entails contending with rodents nesting outside, wasps stinging me while I’m watering the garden, and constantly having to watch out for mountain lions and bears on my trail runs, I love this closeness to nature, this feeling of being part of it — albeit a very vulnerable part — immersed in it. It makes life feel so much more real somehow. I just love sitting outside at night to read my book with a headlamp, listening to the loud crickets (who are now in mating season and jumping around all over the place during the daytime!), looking up at the sky and seeing a shooting star now and then. 

Today, I also watered my own garden, the garden of my soul. 

It wasn’t a super productive day of work in terms of my scientific job. But I did lots of small things that are extremely important to me. 

I tended to friendships. I reached out to counselors to inquire about starting psychotherapy to help me get unstuck from my inability around romantic/intimate relationships. I had a visit with my primary care provider to finalize the steps to wean me off the meds for anxiety/depression which I no longer need. I scheduled an appointment with a psychiatrist to be properly evaluated for ADHD & autism at the end of the month. I followed up with my endocrinologist re. HRT & thyroiditis. I took my motorcycle to get serviced so now I can ride it safely. I ordered an extra safety device to add to my rock-climbing gear to give me & my partners/buddies more peace of mind on our outings. I started taking concrete steps towards my next non-scientific project. I ate plenty of food despite not exercising, as one should on the “rest day” to build strength, without feeling too guilty about it. 

I took care of myself and of important things & persons around me, close to me. 

And it feels good: watering the garden really feels good!