Last night, I attended a play reading (“Pluck” by Jan Rosenberg) and stayed for the post-show discussion. I often resist being there because it usually takes me a few hours to understand it better, and as was the case for those who talked, my focus had been on the eating disorder part. Yet, while I could relate to how I have had ups and downs with my food over the course of a lifetime, I felt I had missed the mythology in it. It was a generational thing, the myth including a werewolf, which would be associated with being trans. I often quote my third therapist saying that all their clients had very different experiences leading to who they were, and I certainly didn’t grow up knowing what was inside of me.
I often wake up, as I did this morning, with the feeling I “should” write a memoir piece. Yet I have started more than one and left it on the pages of a notebook, or in a file on my computer, abandoning the project at the thought of reader bullies… But also because in my “third third” (Ann Lamott’s expression) I feel I want to spend most of my time dancing (modern) and running. While running is my way to maintain my body in good condition (a self-esteem booster too), dancing at the studio where I go has been the equivalent of unspoken therapy (expressing myself through movement) as well as improving my social life. So writing memoir, writing a blog, or anything that might involve the judgment of others, has taken a back seat.
It’s also complicated. I don’t have a simple biographical line that could explain who I am today. I still question myself against the norms of my generation, in which someone transitioned with conviction or remained closeted for the sake of fitting the binary. I have been relieved by how young people now have a looser classification of themselves. I live in a town where I don’t turn heads (except for the annual influx of tourists) and rarely get the angry stare of a man for whom my image is challenging, so I’ve been lazy with my appearance (luckily because it’s still a lot of work going out). I have hair loss, but still prefer my long hair to wearing a wig, so I always have a hat on. Or a head band in dance class. And the wig doesn’t fit inside my bike helmet. So I settle for “my pronouns are they/them or she/her” so I lessen the need for another judgment: am I trans enough?
Alright, then. I’m not sure what the next post will be… But it will come…
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