Decrying Gravity

I'm tired.  In the "earned" kind of way.  Drove 8 hours at night to place to stay, got there at 1a [thanks again LB].  Went to Rally.  Stood for a few hours.  Couldn't hear or see much.  Left.  Left LB's at 6p.  Drove or was at exit from 6p-5a.  And it's starting to catch up with me.

Transitioning has made me paranoid.  Paranoid in the way that illustrates how nice it is to be white, male, TAB, cis, neurotypical, straight etc.  Paranoid in the "They kill transsexuals when they're not laughing at them or talking behind their backs, true story" kind of way.  Paranoid in the "even around my well-intentioned and mostly supportive friends/family, it only takes one slip for me to be outed and irrevocably changed for the people around me."   "He's" are contagious.

I was driving through Pennsylvanian backroads [like, bright-lights on, OMGWHEREAMI roads], and I thought: if I break down, I'm more vulnerable in this situation as a female.  I'm more vulnerable because a police officer just has to see the "M" on my ID for things to get tense.  I'm more vulnerable because I'm not normative.  And it's a feeling that really is difficult to understand [or understand the lack of fear] unless you transition between the two.

Nothing happened.  Nothing happened at the gas stations.  Nothing happened in the women's rooms.  Nothing happened at Subway.  Nothing happened at the Rally.  Nothing happened at the toll booths.  Nothing happened today on the train.  Nothing happened at the vegetarian event.  Nothing happened walking around Harvard.  Nothing happened at the restaurant.  Nothing happened.

Can it really be this easy?  Do I pass?  Are people just polite?  My biggest problems, so far, have mainly been with people who have known me having a difficult time with pronouns/my name.  Sometimes they slip up and it's clear they've been trying.  Sometimes it just doesn't seem important to them to change unless I ask.  My sister's particularly egregious about the latter.  Perhaps it'll come.  It's unfortunate, but it'll take time too.  But if that's the worst thing I'm dealing with...  I presented as female across the country, in hordes of people, in rural conservative areas, in the middle of the night.  I'm sure prejudice will come up with jobs and if I'm outed in more interpersonal relationships.  But honestly?  I did not expect this.

I have been so afraid, for so long.  And to have everything just... work out?  Hell, I had a full beard a bit over five months ago!  I only came up with my name in August!  I went outside at UTK mid-September!  I came out on facebook two weeks ago!  It's all so fast.  And relatively... painless.

And it feels right.  When I feel like Juliet, when I see female, when others see female, when I *am* female, it feels so so good.  Relieving, like a giant weight is gone.  I might get SRS surgery.  But, honestly?  I can feel female without.  It's in my face.  And sometimes it's there.  And sometimes it's not.  And I'm growing into it.  But when I do feel it?  I feel wonderful.  Alive.  Excited just to be.

I'm actually making it.  I don't know how well.  And I am still afraid.  Nothing happens, and I'm afraid. It comes with knowing that I am the butt of so many jokes, that I am a deceiver less than human, that I am bringing all of the wrath and isolation upon myself.  It comes with knowing that Trans Remembrance day is coming, and all it takes is the wrong person at the wrong moment and I'm on there, too.  It comes with knowing that I am a freak, even if people are polite about it to my face.  It comes with knowing people talk and stare.  Nothing happens.  But it is so real a possibility that it could.  That it does, and I don't even know it.

But I'm making it.  I am.  And, for one of the first times in my life, my hopes are being made real.  So much promise.  And the promises, at least for now, are coming true.

When I was around four, I used to sleep with my father in his room [my parents stopped sleeping together... I'm not really sure, because I can never remember it  actually happening].  I can't remember the specific reason.  I know I was afraid of the dark, and I know I had a very active imagination that would turn the lamest of scary villains into pernicious demons bent upon, I suppose, my destruction.  Maybe I knew my father liked it, and I didn't think I could tell him otherwise.

Regardless, he had a rather large king-size bed.  As a child, it seemed colossal.  While this could make for interesting pillow fights [which my father hit hard in and always seemed rather intent upon winning], it made getting out of it hell if the person with you was a light sleeper.  I was acutely aware of this threat, so I would spend what seemed forever, slowly inching off the bed in an attempt to get out and to the bathroom without waking my father.  My father was wrathful about many things, but being woken up made him incredibly angry, and I continued to be surreptitious any time I left my room once he was sleeping until college.  At any rate, being a young person still naive, I told my mother or mentioned it in one way or another.  She, in turn, told my father, who was at once quite hurt, disgusted, and furious.  "Am I some kind of ogre who rampages through the house, preventing you from even going to the restroom?"  It was disastrous.  And that's when I learned not to tell my mother anything, not to standup to/criticize my father, and that it was best if I never expressed my needs or the truth.

To him, anyway.  I have difficult time truly recalling my childhood, but I know I was relatively spoiled.  I got most toys/video games I wanted [I was rather materialistic to the point of excess until I realized it only felt empty, swinging me in the opposite direction; it was probably a good investment], I was an incredibly picky eater [so my mom would fix something specific for me instead of just making dinner for everyone; I never helped], I was sarcastic towards my sister, I didn't do any chores except, occasionally, taking out the trash throughout the house, etc.  My sister and I walked all over my mother; I can't say, precisely, how much of her serving me was me not respecting her or me hating myself to the point where I wouldn't feed myself or do anything for myself so she felt she had little choice but to [if she didn't fix me anything, I was generally ok with not eating].  Neither of my parents established clear boundaries [too permissive v. too authoritarian and carpicious], neither of my parents established anything like a mutually respecting relationship, and neither of my parents made me feel that I was safe with them or that I could trust them.

I write this because I want to try and explain what it was like for me, growing up.  To you, to myself, to my future selves.  I want to try and elaborate upon the fear, the paranoia, the worthlessness.  I want to find some insight into my self, to explain the problems I encounter today.  Why do I have such a hard time connecting to people who haven't experienced significant pain?  Why am I so afraid of the anger and opinions of others?  Why am I never satisfied, can never see the good for staring holes through the bad?  I want to answer these questions, and the 80% of my life under my family's roof seems so ripe for such insight.

But I can't.  Not entirely.  Not satisfactorily.  Not without making it sound so... small.  That story?  About me being afraid to go to the bathroom?  That, to me, is symbolic of my entire relationship with my father.  I learned from a very, very young age that I had the capability to seriously hurt and to do serious wrong by simply being.  I learned that I needed to be what he wanted me to be.  To spin all of my feelings to assuage him.  To read his face and features to try and tell if now was a good time to ask for that essential thing or permission that my mother could not grant and so I had no other choice.  And I was scared, we all were.  We walked on eggshells when he was home.  We never talked, as a family; any criticism of him was invariably personal, was invariably my mother being a stubborn bitch and "always getting her way."  I cannot explain the fear.  I cannot explain how any small mistake was liable to provoke immense wrath.

But I was also spoiled!  I had many nice things [primarily because my grandfather doted on us].  It wasn't... immense, but it was still pretty spoiled.  My mother practically waited on me.  I even remember risking my father's ire to play my online computer game which would tie up our old dialup modem so he'd know when he couldn't call home.  And I can't make it fit together.  I am abused and resilient.  I am cowardly and selfish.  I was worse off than I can say.  I was better off than I know.  I was hurt.  I hurt.  It's a war narrative by another name.

I'm learning to trust my mother.  But I still don't.  [She still cannot keep any secrets to herself].  I'm learning to not fear my father.  But I still do.  [I can run from him, but I can also hear the liquor over the phone; I can not even mention my transition for fear that he will deny me yet again].  I'm learning to allow myself faults.  But I still self-hate.  [There's so much I need to do and so much more I need to do better].  I'm learning to be more responsible for myself.  But I still let my clothes pile up until my mother finally breaks to wash them.  [Do I wash them sooner just to stop her?  I will wash them, eventually, when the need seems great enough.  But she always moves on mother time which is three steps faster than mine].

These things haunt me.  And in retelling them, I see "Oh, so that is why I think of myself as capable of causing so much hurt: my father's wounded voice coated with so much anger."  I see "Oh, so that is why I cannot trust my mother: she would bring his wrath upon me, for even as my advocate she was merely a catalyst for more acrimony."  I see what I cannot explain.  I see in the words of others "My father used to get angry about the little things, furious if a cabinet door was open" and I say YES YES that is what it is those are the words you know the fear you know it!  But we only know parts.  I know.  But my knowing is years too late to be a thing of truth.  Now I look at ripples.  Now I stumble to the bathroom, for I do not care enough to tread carefully.  But I don't dare call my father after 8.  For he may be sleeping [or in the company of his liquid friends], and he so hates to be awoken.

A week ago it rained.  Darkness feel, the kind of darkness only autumn wields, the long deep darkness after so long light, and it poured.  It poured, like the aftermath of that night swallowing my apothecary's pills in a sardonic concrete tomb.  It poured, like my looking out across the neon orange, waiting for the inevitable blow to come, waiting for the ax to fall with "I do not love you, anymore" with "I cannot do this" with "You drain me."  It rains.  And drains.  And when the sky returns, with a beautiful pallet of color, I am born anew.  Dead, but acutely aware that these colors, so distant in the sky, represent a longing for a life I've yet to live.  Longing for the rains to cease, for the colors to seem more real than the dark skies and white noise and cold.  Noise and cold, death.  When what I want is living color.

I'll just come out and say it: I hate October and I'm depressed.  October is all about terrible memories of breakups and suicide attempts, the school year revealing itself as yet-another "I can't wait until next time" event, my weeks entering a cold monotony of procrastination and self-hatred.

I have written variants of this at least three times, but always stopped, because I want to like October.  I want to like the dark and cold, because it's always felt more "true" than a callously bright summer, the way rainy days feel right because they make the world look how it feels.  I want to like October, because I want to need, I want to need someone to keep me warm, to stave off the past and charge the present, to have the darkening days be all the more reason to stay close at night.  I want to like October like I want to like depression: it is rich and real and painful.

But I hate it.  I hate it because it feels terrible.  I hate it because time is running out, and I have so much to do that I am not doing.  I hate it because I need someone, I want someone, and she's so far, so sparse, so hurt herself that our moments together are wondrous and our hours, days apart feel like wasted time.

I feel like I'm floundering.  I hardly ever work on grad schools.  Each day passes almost imperceptibly, and I have no idea what I do or where it all goes.  My ambitions about self-improvement and growth are crashed; I'm lucky to stop myself sleeping just nine hours, to read 30 minutes before I sleep, to do something, anything I can look at and say "This matters."

She matters, of course.  And she takes up my time.  We start talking and hours leave us in droves, yet we still crave more.  We never stop for lack of words, we never stop for lack of desire.  Sleep, work, the tormentors of our time and distractions of our days pull us apart, violently, and we are left clinging to vapors.

What was going to be "PhD or Death" has turned into "Hope for PhD, settle for Social Work" and I feel so comfortable in settling, as long as I have her.  It is dangerous, perhaps unhealthy, but I think I'm ok with my priorities and desires.  I'm ok with my massive need, I'm ok with my insecurities, I'm ok with capabilities and limitations.  I can always improve, certainly.  But love matters more to me than all else; it's all that's ever made me happy, all that's ever made me feel alive, and I've seen nothing in my life to prove to me anything else will do.

So so much now seems wasted time.  So much now is a ghostly state, where it is not real but for imagining her in it.  What I watch, what I listen to, what I think and feel, is contextualized in some hypothetical space with her, just as I used to do with teaching.  I want to share it all.  Everything.  I want to never be alone, and all of this profound aloneness makes me feel dead.  I think of myself as a vampire, sometimes; alive only when I feed upon others who are living, a state only tenable if the other feeds on me.  As she does.  Perhaps being fed upon is just as important as feeding.  But alone?  In and of and by myself?  I am a ghost.  I'm becoming a ghost I like more and more, a ghost that can survive on her own if need be.  But a ghost all the same.  And I so desperately want to be alive.

That is where I am.  Waiting each day to come alive with minutes on the phone, hours via more damned words upon a screen [the vast majority of my emotional life has been textual or, to a lesser extent, auditory; but I crave touch and site and closeness of an immediate kind so so rarely fulfilled].  And when I see her, for brief moments, when I see her I cannot help but smile, cannot help but love entirely anew, cannot help but lust and laugh and sigh and think "Would that this screen was but a window, with my hands, my lips, my breasts reaching through."  I live with her.  Already.  Because it is the only way I can be alive.  All else is shade and shadow.

It is not healthy.  It is not safe.  It is a mistake I have made so many times, a mistake I know I make but I have made, am making, will make again and again for I cannot live alone.  I cannot bare to be by myself.  Such is my monstrous need.  Such is my gaping void demanding sacrifice.  Such is who I am and how I am and changing that seems at once like what survival demands but I do not wish to survive.  I do not wish to haunt this realm, pale and ethereal.  I wish to live or die by love.  And, indeed, I have been able to do little else.

This is terrible.  This is perverse.  This is the stuff of torment and tragedy, filled with briefly blissful trysts between apothecaries and tombs.  Even in living, I die by my hand, distraught over the corpse of another.  My name is a self-fulfilling prophecy.  I love.  I live.  I lose.  I die.  And the rest is October rain.

Things are moving rapidly.  Time is flying, a product of both my age and my relative lack of stress.  Transitioning isn't even the greatest source of anxiety in my life.  It's not even second.  But it's the one that takes up most of my attention, because it's the one I can actually do something about.

About a month ago, I posted about my struggles accepting "Juliet," of conceiving of myself as female.  And it's still not all the way there.  But, undoubtedly, I am making progress.  I *feel* like Juliet, now.  I call myself Juliet, unless I'm almost forced not.  Someone called today asking for "Dylan," and I almost couldn't admit it was me.  It hurt.  But it hurt in a "I'm finally really embracing Juliet" kind of way.

Last Friday was the first time I went to a restaurant as Juliet.  That night, I went downtown in a bra but khakis and a pretty standard t-shirt, but I  heard someone ask as I walked by "Is that a boy or a girl?"  The next day, I was at a tailgate party for the LSU game, and the friend who hosted it said, afterwards, that her friends [who I'd never met] asked if I was a guy or a girl, even though I wasn't even wearing a bra.  And this week, I've been on campus a fair amount, even talking to people etc., and it's gone fine.  No one said anything, I didn't notice any looks [although I try to look straight ahead so I don't make myself nervous], no one yelled anything.  It was good.  Hell, last night an older lesbian said she'd be "drooling over me" [in an endearing, not creepy way] and that I looked like Julia Roberts, in response to me talking about my dysphoria more.  I felt like Juliet.  They didn't even seem tempted to say "he."  I felt female.

In fact, I got overconfident.  So much so that, when I went to a restaurant tonight and I heard my waitress say something like "Es bella por un chico, si?" it hurt ["Is pretty/beautiful for a boy, right?"].  I mentioned it to one of my friends, who said "That's good, right?"  And I kind of agreed, moreso because she seemed so convinced it was.  As if I couldn't reasonably expect better.  As if all my confidence, all my assurance that I'd been gaining was founded upon politeness, not genuine passing.  Pretty.  For a boy.  Half of that is good.  The other half... goddamn it.

I feel close to being female.  My voice, my dress, my self are all converging on  female.  I cause confusion even in "boi mode."  A fair number of people have called me pretty, and I don't think they were all just doing it to be complimentary.  Hell, even the waitress who said the comment was really nice.  I imagine she said it just to compare notes, to point out that she had noticed and to see if others agreed.  She didn't think I would understand what she said.  But it still hurt.  It still took me away from Juliet and reinstilled in me the fear, the doubt that accompanies so vulnerable an expression in most of our society.

Will I always be "pretty for a boy?"  There are worse fates, but that would be a bitter pill to swallow.  Will I always have my confidence increased only to have some errant comment or clocking [what we call the act of ascertaining I wasn't born female] shatter me?  I feel like I've made a great deal of progress in the past nine months, hell in the past two [I decided upon "Juliet" mid-August].  But at each individual moment, it seems like I've so far to go.  It seems like I'll never *truly* get there.  It seems like I may try and I may get close, but I'll never get quite close enough.




It seems that way.  I know, compared to where I was, that such thinking is very premature.  I know, given the advantages I have, that I'm quite privileged in so many ways.  And I know I have so much to be thankful for.  I am.  I really am.  But, as selfish as it may be, I don't just want to be "bella por un chico."  This isn't about being pretty [although that would be a wonderful bonus].  It's about being who I feel I need to be.  It's just unfortunate that I need others to believe it, too.

Goddamn it.  It's been a few weeks since I've been on the trans-forum.  For awhile I'd check it as a proxy for doing anything tangible, particularly when I had my beard.  It was encouraging and helped, but oh the envy.  Things have been progressing recently [and Indians are taking up an increasing portion of my time.  MY LIFE IS BEING OUTSOURCED!?!? True story?], so I haven't felt compelled.

But tonight I did.  And goddamn it.  I swear, it's voodoo.  There are before and after pictures that make me want to scream.  Pretty standard looking guys transitioning into beautiful women.  I mean it.  You doubt, if you haven't seen for yourself, but you not only cannot tell they were even male, if you're attracted to women it's ever-so-much a moot point.  If you know what I mean.  And you might, I don't really know.  I'M TRYING TO SAY THEY'RE REALLY PRETTY, OK?

Anyway.  It bothers me.  Yes, there are some who are... not.  And I have a lot to be thankful for, in so many regards.  But I see so many of the others, so gorgeous, as if by magic, and I want some of their magic.  I want to know where I can find it, what I have to do to implement it, how I can effectively replicate this magnificent transformation.  Because, honestly, I feel like all I do is change clothes and use a smidge of makeup.  I shave, too, and sometimes it's enough to make my stomach not feel repulsively infested for a day.  But they... they're beautiful.  And I so, so want to be beautiful.

I am making progress, though.  I'm 2/3 through with LHRT [lazer-hair-removal therapy, and it's delightful not feeling compelled to shave anything but my upper lip unless I'm otherwise inclined [although the upper-lip is ghastly].  I've been on hormones for ~four months, although I've only been on my "full" dosage since early July.  I'm not great at noticing differences, except that my arm hair is growing back clear, and I now have breasts.  They're undoubtedly A-cup, but they're also really breasts [I never had manboobs, for better or worse, so it's a novel experience].  My hair is smoother, thanks to prolonged and consistent conditioner use.  And it's entirely possible that various body hairs are regrowing blonde ["invisible"] without my knowledge, although that doesn't stop me from staring at them with so much ire.  My voice is higher as a baseline, although I think I can still improve it.

And I'm progressing socially, too.  I've told just about everyone, aside from the grandparents/my mom's conservative family.  I'm pretty consistently Juliet at home.  And, hell, I went to campus on Monday and no one explicitly confronted me, even as I nervously strolled through the Commons.  I am progressing.

But I can't help but feel stagnant, too.  Part of this, I think, relates to never having felt "like a woman trapped in a man's body."  Certainly, I can pretty safely say I've almost always wished I was born a girl.  But I didn't feel as if I was a girl.  I felt I was a boy.  One who hated himself and wished so desperately that he was not, but a boy nonetheless.  So now, as I transition, I can't help but feel I'm still... kind of a boy.  "Juliet" still sounds strange, especially when people introduce me/I introduce myself.  I think of it in the same way I think of receiving compliments about my insecurities: it hurts, and I want to immediately counter by saying "Oh, no, no, I was Dylan.  But now I'm Juliet.  I don't deserve to be seen as a woman, if you were tempted to do that, which you probably weren't, because I'm pretty clearly a boy in women's clothing, right?"  I have a hard time requesting it, if people don't ask about it.  As if I don't deserve to be called Juliet if they don't think I do.  It's as if I want to have a giant asterisk hover next to my body that, when pushed, says: "THIS BODY IS UNDER CONSTRUCTION FROM MALE TO FEMALE.  PLEASE IGNORE/TOLERATE THE AFFRONTING INCONGRUITY YOU SEE BEFORE YOU AND ACT AS IF NOTHING IS WRONG EVEN THOUGH IT CLEARLY IS."  Yes.  Caps and all.

Am I Juliet yet?  Well, kind of.  In the right lightning.  With the right mood.  In the right frame of mind.  I am not Dylan unless compelled, certainly; I won't sign my name as Dylan unless I have to, I won't refer to myself as Dylan unless I have no choice.  But Juliet?  It's almost of a form of self-hate to say I'm not quite her yet.  At least, not all the time.  And I don't just mean when I'm presenting as Dylan for my grandfather, and going back to Juliet when I'm at home.  I mean, even dressed as Juliet, I can look in the mirror and sometimes see a rather cute woman looking at me and sometimes see a disconcerting mess of a person, a male with cavernous hollows under my eyes and cheeks, egregious and conspicuous facial hair, a hair style that is "eccentric," and cartoonish features.  Hell, I can look at pictures from the GSSE prom and see the same thing.  For instance:

I can see arguments for both sides.  Makeup helps a bit [I rather love mascara], and I guess I could brush my hair, too.  But that's how I look with clothes changed, and it doesn't improve [too much] otherwise.  Everyone reading this knew me as Dylan before Juliet.  So that somewhat colors what you see.  It affects what I see, too.  But what does everyone else see?

Gah.  It makes me think of Mulan, a transnarrative by another name [although a good case can be made for The Little Mermaid, too].  Indeed, it's entirely fitting that Mulan is painted and fit into the trappings of gender performativity to begin with, and as the song progresses she exposes its artifice as she wipes it all away.  [It's disheartening and ironic, though, that the initial image is of a woman with a "beard" made for comical effect.  Oh, look, a woman who is not entirely feminine, even masculine.  Let us laugh.  Oh, wait, isn't that exactly contrary to the film's message?  Disney, Disney, Disney...]



"Look at me
I will never pass for a perfect bride
or a perfect daughter..,
Can it be 
I'm not meant to play this part? 
Now I see 
that if I were truly 
to be myself 
I would break my family's heart. 

Who is that girl I see 
staring straight 
back at me? 
Why is my reflection someone 
I don't know? 
Somehow I cannot hide 
who I am 
though I've tried..

When will my reflection show 
who I am inside? 
When will my reflection show 
who I am inside."


You can read it twice in different ways, struggling with decided to transition and then struggling while trying to transition.  It depends on which "part."  If that part's male?  Definitely, not meant to play it.  But what if it's female?  Will I ever pass for a daughter, much less one fitting conventional norms?  What if I'm not meant to play female, either?  Hell, who is that person staring back at me?  When will that image be who I feel expresses the me I feel inside?  And how do I recognize hir once ze's there?  Or is it from the inside out, me  coming to terms with how I look and owning whatever femininity I have?

I don't know.  It's all still new.  Juliet, as a named identity, is not even a month old.  But god, I see the magical transformations of those gorgeous transwomen.  And I'm left staring at my reflection, wondering if I'll ever see something so beautiful myself.

So, as of... now, I'm twenty-four.  It's not terribly noteworthy; I've been referring to myself as 24 for two months now, and I have no plans and don't feel bad about it in the slightest.  But I suppose it's as good a point as any for reflection upon where I've been, where I am, and where I'm going.

I took the opportunity to look over some past entries around my birthday over the past 6 or so years that I've kept a blog.  I considered linking to them, but they're honestly rather embarrassing.  My 18th birthday post is so very indicative of the tension I negotiated for most of my newly adult years: irreverent, distracting humor and hints of hurt begging to be seen, felt, and touched.  My 20th birthday post is a direct reference to this tension, with a more mature articulation of the dynamics involved and signs of my increasing wariness with keeping up a veneer that was so very evasive as to be fruitless to all involved.

I say I'm embarrassed because the writing seems distinctly different.  It is not real, not honest, not the relentlessly exposing force I've turned it into.  I struggled with authentically engaging my emotions for years, and I suppose I still do.  But then, even as I felt miserable, I danced around them, hated them, tried desperately to intellectualize them and fight them instead of just acknowledging them as real regardless of what I thought they should be.  I was intensely aware that I was being read, and even as I strove for more authenticity, there were still fears of an audience that may or may not have existed.  There were still fears of admitting to myself the depth and truth of what, exactly, was going on inside of me.

I read the madcap attempts at humor on my 18th, attempts informed by puns and randomness, and I cringe.  It's a type of ridiculous, absurd humor that rather leaves me cold, today.  I read the poem with its stilted rhyme and all-too-blunt messaging, and I cannot help but shake my head.

The entry for the 20th, two years later, already shows more realness.  At that point, I still felt an intense desire to create something that would truly express myself, something that would give my life some meaning by the value it had to others.  I am not as brash, I am not as manic, I am not as.. young as my younger self's post makes me seem.  But I also feel old, feel desperate, feel that time is wasting.  At that point, Meredith was an increasingly distant memory and Elise was a raw and fresh pain, a reminder of my continued ineptness in lieu of any kind of validation.  I was still grappling with purpose and personality, identity by any other name.

But in that process, I was also becoming more artistic in my language.  It's rather pleasant to read something your past self wrote that you rather like.  In this case, it's the imagery evoked by humor.  "But humor cuts.  Humor stabs, humor gores, and its targets bleed laughter."  Its targets bleed laughter...  I really do like metaphor.

And I say this to say that I honestly feel I have grown, have matured over the past six years.  I am so thankful that I am who I am today instead of those people then.  I feel as if I have a handle on who I am and who I want to be.  My worries are decidedly terrestrial, at the moment.  And I know that's a phase. [I will relish the time when I will have solved my relationship with my self to a sufficient degree so I can focus more completely on how I relate to others].  But, aside from fits, I do not have existential dilemmas.  I do not feel that I am underachieving; unfulfilled in the challenges presented to me, perhaps, but I am not doomed to a mediocrity beneath my potential, traveling upon my present course.  I do not feel intense desperation over love, for I had one that was valid, and I now have one that may, perhaps, be sound.

I am becoming my own.  "Juliet" sounds so queer to my ear; it hurts the same way it hurt to hear the wonderful things my students described me as at governor's school that wonderful/terrible final night.  As if I don't deserve it.  As if it's not me, no matter how badly I want it to be.   But I am increasingly looking in the mirror and seeing her staring back.  I recorded my voice today, and I liked the way it sounded.  I can run my hand along my face and appreciate the new smoothness after the lazers have done their sci-fi magic.  I can cup my nascent breasts, stand topless, side-to-the-mirror, and see femininity sprouting.  I can fantasize about love and sex and not feel as if I am in an unnatural role with unnatural expectations.  I am not there, by any stretch.  But where I once felt primarily fear with small hope, I now feel so much hope with small fears.

What has changed me?  "Age," in and of itself, is unlikely to be the culprit.  Certainly, cognitive growth may have some minor role.  But in the years since I was 18, I have taken hundreds of hours of college courses.  I have become a feminist and immersed myself in its culture and philosophy.  I have written over half-a-hundred short essays for my peers to read.  I watched "The Wire" and defined my political philosophy.  I've begun to embrace the process of making Love a religion.  I loved and been loved for the larger part of two and a half years.  I've awakened my sexuality and grown into it.  I've come to terms with my gender dysphoria and begun transitioning to a self that expresses me authentically.  I've endured terror and finely-honed anxiety on a daily basis for a school-year and survived.  I've changed a not-insignificant number of lives for the better.  I've made better friends than I ever expected; friends who keep in touch no matter how far they are; friends who have not left when it's convenient.  I've been thoroughly humbled by being poor at something I tried to do.  I've been thoroughly encouraged by being good at something I wanted and enjoyed doing.  I've found someone who mirrors my strengths and insecurities with an uncanniness that defies reason.  I've begrudgingly embraced intuition, appreciating a knowing that operates outside of pure logic.  I've failed.  I've survived failure.  I've come to appreciate many of my strengths, come to acknowledge many of my weaknesses.

So even though I am unemployed, skeptical about my future plans, lacking in backups, at a perilous place in my expression of my identity, even though I am so much uncertainty in a place I never expected to be, I have grown and I am glad for it.  I think of the seventeen year olds I know (and there are an eerie number; it's senior year of high school all over again), and I wonder how much they'll change in the same time frame.  Hell, I think of myself, six years from now.  I will likely have been Juliet as an adult just as long as I was Dylan.  And, outside of that, who knows what will have happened and where I'll be or what I'll be doing.  If I've learned anything, it's definitely that personal prognostication is a fool's errand.  But I've learned that change is possible.  That hope is not illfounded.  That terrible, heart-wrenching things can happen, that depression, anxiety and stress can reign supreme, that failure can manifest its ugly head daily, and that, despite all this, I can survive and come out on the other side a better person for it.

And yes, this is a passing mood.  Just yesterday, I was self-doubting, terrified, bruised and raw.  But, at the moment, I'm thankful.  And I'm glad for the growth.  And I so look forward to a lifetime more.  Happy birthday, indeed.