Blaire (they/them/theirs)

Be a Body

Relaxation has never come easily to me, not because I am easily bored, but because there are so many other better uses of my time. That’s what I tell myself, anyway. But the problem with having a strained relationship to rest is that, when rest is forced upon you, it is all too easy to internalize your conditions as a shameful failure. I’m certainly no stranger to this.

When I was a sophomore in high school, I was named the choreographer for our school musical while also preparing for my dance studio’s upcoming recital. But God decided to be funny, and I fractured my foot almost immediately afterword. It was just a small fracture, enough to keep me practicing for a week before I danced into a doctor’s office and walked out in a boot. This stupid body inconvenienced my work.

I had to wear the boot for the next six weeks, just days before the musical would debut and only a few weeks before my recital. I felt a deep and terrible guilt for letting the cast down. It was my responsibility to get this choreography done, and I wasn’t about to let Mr. Masters take my job. My stubbornness pushed through my pain and frustrated weakness. I went to every rehearsal, every practice, wearing my boot, doing my darndest to teach without being able to fully demonstrate my vision or work the technique into my muscle memory. But lo and behold, the cast came off six weeks later, my foot was fully healed, and I danced my heart out for the musical and recital.

I was so proud of what I saw as an impressive display of hard work and integrity for my responsibilities. To neglect what I wanted and needed for what others needed of me was honorable. My own body and health meant nothing in comparison to what I imagined everyone expected (nay, demanded!) of me. If I failed, then everyone else would too. So long as I kept playing my role, all would be stable, I told myself.

But in over a decade since, the memory embarrasses me. Not just because I was so self-serious all the time then (let’s be honest: still am), but because of how willing I was to sacrifice my own needs in order to do what I was “supposed” to do. The “sh” in should is the same “sh” in shame. How much self-obsession, ironically, came with thinking of myself as that indispensable. I suppose that’s part of the teenage mindset from which one (hopefully) matures. In hindsight, I should have asked some of the other dancers in the company to take over, or at least step down from my position but still offer support during development. Or, you know, just allow myself time to rest. No, too obvious.

It can all be easy to justify when framed as something I’m running towards rather than away from.

My imagination has never been very visual. My daydreams compose of sounds and moods, rarely colors and shapes. Rarely am I myself in my own imaginations, and I never see experience my daydreams from my own perspective. If I am there, I am at a distance, far away, the words coming from my mouth belonging to someone else. My internal hum is filled with layers of conversation between strangers I haven’t met yet, or who could only exist in my mind. I can imagine the ways they’d ease through a conflict, or their tender moments of sharing a truth, or even how they themselves dream. For the characters in my head, the future is clear, but my own, I’ve been accustomed to fog.

But something shifted during the COVID lockdown. Whether due to the resulting boredom, confinement, and stir-crazy energy, the characters in my mind slowly began to take more concrete visual forms. Their features, how they were styled, how their visuals would tell the story of who they are, poured out of my daydreams, and I felt compelled to make them reality. Thanks to my patient roommate, I started a series of photoshoots where I took on character identities, wrote a story for them. It was a great deal of fun, even though actually being in front of a camera makes me frozen with insecurity. I want to get the final visual, but going through the work of getting to it is awful. I can’t seem to do it right. I can never be the kind of person I want to show up in the final photo. I have to filter through an ungodly number of photos where it’s clear I’m trying way too hard. In that highly vulnerable space in front of the camera, I struggle to get out of my head and just relax.

There’s one character in my imagination that stands out. All of my characters reflect some side of me, good and bad, parts of myself that I admire and fear. But this one is different. They feel more than just some character, they are fully a part of me, something aspirational, a more androgynous, mature, and confident doppelganger. They wear short, curly hair, and a sharp formal suit. They have a cool, easygoing, masculine way of gliding about, a body language that should be mine, but just isn’t, not yet. They never have to try being who they are, they just are. They wear an elegant, sharp black suit which shows nothing below the neck or above the wrist or ankles. But as clear and intriguing as that image is, what I long to visualize is their body. That image could never come to me, despite my struggles lying awake at night, straining to visualize their planes and curves. I am a little embarrassed by the desperation of my desire to know this part of them, but greatly frustrated by not knowing what I must do to realize it.

I long for sleep but the pain in my knee won’t let me rest. Tender and slightly swollen, it hurts to bend it too much, straighten it too much, or move laterally at all. And let’s not even get into my right shoulder which has never fully healed since I strained it half a year ago. In the dark of my room, defeat swallows me whole. I’m split between my desire to cry and my acceptance that crying won’t heal me. Underneath it is anger towards myself. I should have known better. I should have been more careful.

The aches, the clicking in my knee, the weakness of my rotator cuff, warning signs that I had willingly ignored in the name of what needed to be done. In the blink of an eye, everything I had worked towards, everything I had grown into and become, was over. My consistency and hard work these last few months should have been enough, but lying in my bed that night, all I felt was defeat.

Strength training had become such a critical part of my life, as central to my health routine as my diet, sleep, social life, therapy, and T shots. It was one of the most grounding and empowering signs to myself that I had finally made it. I’d started transitioning, started living my fullest life, and after only a few months, I started growing into the body that had long captured my dreams. My shoulders and back broadened, the lines of my abs defined more. Seeing and feeling my pectoral muscles grow felt like connecting with my real chest for the first time. I was putting in the hard work, and I was finally becoming me.

All for naught. Now, after a gym class triggered my injuries, I could barely walk or lift my right arm. My body is a work in progress, but if there is no work, there is no progress. And if there is no progress or movement or change, well, you might as well be dead!

I try to ignore the Shadow and its message of failure on loop in my head, with not much success. My eyes strained through the darkness as an unshakeable dread crept deeply through my bones, of stillness, inaction, decay, disappearance. I’ve placed so much of my self esteem and sense of progress in my transition on (correctly) building up my body, where am I supposed to find validation of my transition now? I fear that if I cannot do, there is no room to simply be.

I turn on a bedtime story audiobook, hoping the monotone voice can take me out of my own thoughts and at last bring me rest. Too bad it can’t also bring me a comfortable sleeping position.

My partner and I are watching Across the Universe, an old favorite for both of us. There’s a scene where Max, the Princeton dropout Kurt Cobain look-alike, argues with his conservative uncle about what he wants to do with his life. His uncle argues, “It’s what you do that defines who you are.” Max replies, “No, you’re wrong. It’s who you are that defines what you do.” I think it’s no coincidence that the older, stiffer character says the former, while the energetic but nihilistic youth says the latter. The former is said by someone who has done enough for himself to be defined by it, and the latter is said by someone who hasn’t done enough to be anything but himself. I guess I’m still young and inexperienced enough in life to prefer Max’s perspective in my heart. The Shadow often echoes the uncle.

I’ve been resting my body for a few weeks now. There is much greater mobility now and far less pain, but I am still for the most part incapacitated. I cannot walk for very far nor still lift any weight above my head with my right arm. My flexibility and strength are slowly weakening. Shirts that had tightened around my arms and chest feel loose once again. But despite losing muscle, testosterone’s effects on my upper body and how I carry it remain obvious. The harsh critical voices soften as peace with my circumstances grows.

In this time of rest, I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about this relationship between doing and being, how unbalanced I have been in favor of the former, believing that I could not simply be, that I had to prove that I deserved to be who I am. It’s clear now how that imbalance has wounded my self-esteem and held me back from living fully.

Dancing used to be the primary way I could feel control over my own body. I couldn’t control the persistent feeling of bodily wrongness that I would later recognize as gender dysphoria, but I could narrow all my focus onto molding my body to a delicate, graceful, feminine ideal shape. A correct shape. And in those moments, when my arabesque lines were just so, when I landed the perfect double pirouette, were when I felt the most valid. I did right, so I could be right.

It seems that I have fallen into a similar trap with strength training, only this time becoming obsessed by the need to masculinize my body to prove to myself that I’m “really” trans. All that internal pressure made me live in fear that if I stopped putting in the work, if I stopped doing trans, I would no longer be trans. I would lose my gender. I would detransition. I’d just become a woman again. Disappear.

But it doesn’t take much to remind myself anymore how that is just nonsense. My gender cannot be taken from me any more than my personality or spirituality could. My shirts may fit looser but my body is still changing; when I look in the mirror, I now see a trans body with female features, some of which sharpen my gender dysphoria, but which do not negate my identity. I’m at a point where strangers consistently gender me male even when I make no attempt to pass as one. Every week I take my T shot is a commitment to myself to keep going, a reminder that I’m not going to disappear. And even if I had to stop taking my shots for medical reasons (or if fascism takes them from me), I can’t detransition. I’ve already transitioned. I’m trans. And so is my body. I can give myself permission to just be a body.

Our world subjects us to constant doing, streamlining, improving, trimming our lives into atomized, profitable shapes. As long as the machine never stops, as long as the status quo of maximizing production continues, all will be stable and secure, neoliberals say. Our culture constantly asserts that our bodies are not and can never be good enough. There’s always more to do, new “exotic” superfoods to pursue, new exercises to try, new ways to discipline and domesticate the soul. Every time I open Instagram, my search page is full of impossibly buff cis and trans men with beautiful chests and abs and backs, and I am overcome with envy and deep inadequacy. Social media intensifies the anxiety that I’m not doing enough to be optimizing my bodily efficiency. It encourages me to be estranged from my body, to not love it as it is, but to value an unobtainable ideal of it. It’s an effective profit strategy.

In our context then, learning to be a body is not easy. Society dangles a beautiful ideal of being in front of our eyes while obscuring the doing needed to get there, leaving us disappointed when we encounter the reality of the work, forever inadequate to the ideal. Let us be easy on ourselves here. I’m still trying to define what it means to just be in my body, exactly. After spending much of my life using disassociation as a coping mechanism, using exercise as a path to self-worth, being in my body is daunting. It requires me to not run from myself all the time, but to simply meet myself where I am, whether that be an uplifting or disappointing space. This has been a constant challenge while I am still transitioning. I am not yet sure where I eventually want to end up, though I am anxious to skip the wait to get there. I don’t want to struggle through the process. I don’t want to be photographed, I just want the images done. I don’t want to be vulnerable in front of the camera and outside of control of its outcome.

Transitioning is frequently painful: the pain of not there yet, of not being far enough away from the old you yet. Yet if all I focus my energy on is the end product, accompanied by images of “fully” transitioned, successful, cis-passing trans people, I won’t find peace. The envy is just too much for me to take. For right now, I can take pride in looking in the mirror and still recognizing myself, even though my arms and legs have thinned out, even though my chest doesn’t stand as tall as before. I am still here, still a body. When I have healed enough to resume my workouts again, I shall not neglect the value of rest and being. When I lie awake in bed, the vision of my body becomes clearer and clearer, and it is beautiful. Still far away, but obtainable. I no longer need to strain to imagine it; I just need to ground myself within it.

Blaire (they/them/theirs)

Dare to Dream the Dark

Would you care to join me in a little ritual? I promise it’s nothing difficult and doesn’t require any tools or prior experience. This may be done in a quiet, private place, but I highly recommend doing this somewhere outside in nature, where you can meditate in relative peace and quiet.

Start by sitting down comfortably, whether on the ground or in a chair. Sit up tall, and place your palms face down on the surface beneath you. Take the time to imagine what lies beneath you. Close your eyes to begin the process of grounding and centering, of anchoring yourself to the Earth and drawing awareness to that connection. In grounding, we quiet our mind and try to listen to the world speak the language of things, of being.

Try not to force your body into the “correct” position. Instead, focus on your breath, and let your body gradually move itself into the placement it needs to be. With each inhale, imagine your back supporting your chest as it opens. With each exhale, keep your upper body lifted while you anchor your hips down. Once you feel comfortable and your breath falls into a rhythm, call to your mind’s eye the center of the Earth, where the fiery forces of life and death churn and radiate. As you breathe in, draw its energy up through you until it fills every part of you. As you exhale, imagine growing roots beneath you, returning that energy through those roots, down ever deeper into the earth. Notice each sensation around you: the sound of your breath sighing like the wind, your muscles expanding and contracting, your heart beating steadily.

Stay here for a while. Continue for as long as you need. Do not worry of thoughts as they pass. Focus on this time to build up your relationship to the Earth. Practice will make you stronger, guiding you towards truths understood deeper than reason or logic.  

Although I no longer embrace formal religion, my personal spirituality has only strengthened with time. I suppose it’s no surprise that I’ve turned to different questions and paths of knowledge as reality has become increasingly customizable and dogmas further wound our relations. The need for healing grows inside me, for myself, and my world.

There was a time when my heart weighed heavy with a God-sized hole that neither familiar teachings nor cold science could fill. My body and mind felt stagnant and like they would remain so forever. But of course, change is inevitable. A new inner voice, a clear and present knowing, began to take its place, forming new shapes. A need came over me to respond to that voice. It started with meditating, and it only grew from there.

I began a process that evolved over months, with lots of trial and error and a complete uncertainty in what I was doing. All I knew was to trust my instinct and intuition to guide me, not an easy task for someone like me committed to listening to (doubt disguised as) reason. But over time I found that they were far kinder to me than the voices of reason, and they have not yet let me down. Guided by this inner knowing, I began creating rituals, trying to figure out how to offer a response to the way Nature spoke to me. As I experimented, researched, and dedicated my time, the rituals grew in complexity, my altar grew full of objects of meaning, and I fell in love with the moon again as I had as a child.  Eventually, I called what I was doing magic. But what exactly do I mean by magic?

The meaning of a word is how it’s used. So, as I use it, magic is a philosophy and worldview, a call to fully engage with life, creating and maintaining a set of personally meaningful rituals, and active spiritual work. It isn’t the same as a formal religion. It isn’t about adherence to dogma or studying special texts to uncover the Truth; it’s about the work of searching, of focusing one’s efforts on understanding, transforming, and enriching the web that constructs the truths of our lives and the world around us. It’s not about rediscovering some lost secrets or returning to “tradition” or a bygone era, but about recovering the Mysteries of life that lie within and all around, about deepening, expanding, and enlivening your sense of self. It is not just something you do, it encompasses an entire framework through which to view and interact with the world. It’s the art of understanding the building blocks of your consciousness, and then changing them at will. 

Maybe some metaphors will make what I mean more tangible. 

Magic is sitting on the shore in the late afternoon to meditate by the ocean; sitting cross-legged, you face the mesmerizingly beautiful but chaotic crashing waves and the peaceful stillness of the waters on the horizon; you close your eyes and sink your fingers into the sand beside you, breathing in the salt-tinged wind; you concentrate on the energy of the waves, and as if connected to them, you can sense their power rise from underneath you, up through your fingers until it fills every part of you; the salty waves flow inside you as the saltwater inside your body flows, and you know deep in your nerves and sinews that all earthly life emerged from Her. Magic is reuniting with old friends that you haven’t seen in years; you have aged, matured, gone through a myriad of life experiences that may or may not be compatible; and yet, though dormant for years, the underlying friendship swiftly rises to the surface as if no time has elapsed; you all smile and laugh and joke, and you feel flowing through your heart and belly the warm sensations of solidarity, love, and a trust that runs deeper than the new lines on each of your faces. Magic is lying in bed with your partner as the night comes to a close and the quiet settles upon your home; You look into their eyes, safe in that sacred space that belongs to you two alone, when all at once you feel a deep, tangible connectedness between yourselves; in that space, you realize that the eyes are not the windows to the soul but the doors, which once unlocked may be stepped through in either direction. 

A while ago, I was browsing the upstairs section of The Last Bookstore in DTLA. There was a tiny section in the back corner on witchcraft, and curiosity instantly drew me to a book called “Dreaming the Dark: Magic, Sex, and Politics” by a witch named Starhawk. I mean, how could I resist? Without knowing what to expect, I brough it home and began to read it by the lamp light. Starhawk’s words and ideas resonated powerfully with me, like an old friend giving you sage advice on the nature of living. One concept she focused much of the book on in particular stood out to me. She talks about estrangement, a kind of alienation that we feel from other people, from our society and culture, from our own minds and bodies. Estrangement is born of the realities of surviving in our isolating and individualistic culture. It’s the alienation of our inherent worth from the arbitrary social constructs that determine what makes one “deserving” of worth. When we align our worth to false hierarchies based on dominance and purity, we lose sight of who we truly are, we become estranged to ourselves.

Estrangement is when you look in the mirror, and you cannot see yourself as just yourself; you are always aware of yourself in relation to others, to an ideal way of beauty that you cannot achieve but nonetheless feel a deep desire to emulate. Estrangement teaches you to sacrifice the infinite possibilities of beauty for a narrow, profitable aesthetic. Estrangement is driving on the freeway commute you’ve taken for years, when you look to the freeway walls of the freeway and suddenly think: “I’ve driven above this neighborhood my entire life, but never within it.” You look around and realize that you’ve almost tricked your brain into believing that you share the road with 1.5 ton metal machines, rather than people.

Estrangement affects so many aspects of life that it can feel like a natural fact of existence. But like all social realities, it has a history and a future, and it’s important to understand that it’s more than a state of mind. Estrangement is also a powerful tool, one that has been used time and again to divide and conquer resources and people. As a tool, estrangement divides and pits communities against one another and erases that which links us. Its logic erases the truth of our interconnected and inter-dependent world and instills the lie that life is individualistic, competitive, and hierarchical. It teaches us that people who are “not like us” shouldn’t be viewed on equal footing to us, or even understood on their own terms. It teaches us to view our bodies like isolated and error-prone machines which can be made to function “normally” again through the application of “correct inputs”. It teaches that the Earth is not a living, writhing, beautifully chaotic and complex creation that our very survival depends upon, but a dead thing, a resource that exists for human extraction and exploitation. Estrangement on this scale isn’t created or done by any one entity or even a group of entities acting consciously (necessarily), rather it is a force that emerges out of the existence of vertical power relations, from power-from-above, manipulation, domination, and competition. Estrangement erases the ancient relationship between our bodies, our minds, each other, and the Earth, making them all vulnerable to control and manipulation.

Magic is rebellion against estrangement. It declares that humans are not outside of Nature, that our existence is not consigned to arbitrary and rigid hierarchies that only benefit Power but is within a dynamic part of the churning cosmic order. Magic celebrates the full expression of our human nature – gender, culture, language, art, sexuality, etc. – rather than denigrates it as a corrupting influence that must be controlled through coercion. To practice magic is to practice an ethics based on integrity, not obedience. Magic sees that the true value of things lies not in an abstract value dictated by authority, or some otherworld that may exist outside our own, but in their relationship and interdependence to the rest of creation. Magic sees that happiness, personal power, love, and community are not bestowed upon us or given to us by some higher Power; the ingredients are already there and exist all around us, waiting for us to see them for what they are.

I love integrating candles into my practice. A new candle is nothing but pure potential. Though you can assume what it will smell like by its cold throw, its hot throw is what reveals a layered tapestry of scent. But only if you let it. When first lit, a new candle must be allowed to burn long enough for a pool of melted wax to completely fill the edges of the container. Otherwise, the candle will begin to tunnel over time. The pool of wax will gather in the center, leaving the outer edges solid. The wick will begin to burn down, down, until it’s gone, leaving hard walls of wax behind. So much of the candle’s potential and gifts fail to fully reveal themselves.

When I began my practice, I started with the ritual that began this post. The energy in the center of the Earth started as an intellectual concept, but in time morphed into something as deeply real to me as the candles on my altar lighting up the dark. In nurturing this inner light, it began to fill me, and it felt like release. But, as quickly as spiritual joy came, so too did the realization of just how little I had tended to my inner flame, and for just how long. I began to see just how high the walls of hardened wax had built up around me. How much of my wick was left? Was it too late for me to stop tunneling and welcome fullness and light?

I know in my heart that it’s never too late. With focus, care, and time, the melted wax grows ever closer to filling out to the edge. But the healing process is long and non-linear. The temptation to tunnel, to give up authenticity and pursue the shallow comfort of estrangement, is not an easy one to resist. The Self Hater inside me continues to be – as she always has been – persistently vicious. As often as I feel the presence of Spirit, I feel the presence of inner demons. Though I trust in magic’s strength, my will remains weak. Ritual creates a sensation of deep euphoria, but I often fall short in carrying that sensation throughout in my daily life. Estrangement is a difficult mindset to heal from, but healing from it is no longer optional.

It wouldn’t be a stretch to say this explosion of a new kind of spirituality in my life is also a response to the ailing world around me and the intense emotions it’s generated. Moral outrage. Climate grief. Existential dread. But where I once felt hopeless to express these feelings coherently, I now feel confident in my ability to uncover ways that transform it into action. And action is the key word here; practicing magic is work. We never become “woke” or understand ourselves and the world at a definite point, but rather we spend our whole lives awakening to the world’s mystery, trying and failing along the way, fighting to love, protect, and survive in a society that seems hellbent on estranging and manipulating us. But with work, dedication, and a commitment to love, the Way will make clear that which has lain hidden in the dark. 

Therefore, I propose a new perspective, some magic words (sorry, just this once) to change your mindset. Reject Apocalypse, Revolution, and other stories born of estrangement from the reality of change. Doomerism is, frankly, boring. Though the forces of black magic are constantly feeding us the idea that we are near The Great End, I propose that we in the early stages of a new age of reformation, of massive shifts in spiritual connections and social relations. We are seeing a great deal of backlash right now to these changes, but that is because they are already happening, undeniably. The old institutions of authority are losing their moral sway. New ideas are emerging, and old ideas long suppressed are spending time in the sun again. It’s a new age of magical thinking (ok one more), though admittedly not always for the better. I see the growth in the white magic of community creation and integrity building everywhere I look, but I also see the black magic of cultist thinking and its controlling, violent forces of obedience. It is not easy to live in an age surrounded by these forces. White magic one strives for, black magic one succumbs to. It requires courage and strength to embrace unknown change and resist known stagnation.

Magical principles are about seeing your life and your being immersed with all else; it is a counter-response to individualism, an ideology that says that our lives are best understood and self-interested, isolated consumers. Magic seeks freedom from individualism, and this can only be done by cultivating a life and culture centered around community, around people empowerment, around healing our scarred relationship with Nature and learning to see the Spirit within it again. Political and community work must be an essential component of magical beliefs and practices. The suffering of others and the destruction of Nature hurts the core of our very humanity, and as they say in activist circles, injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. Magic calls us to see the value and sanctity of creation for its own sake, and thus compels us to work against systems that seek to devalue life in order to exploit it. My old anxieties make the idea of being vulnerable and putting myself out there to build, love, and protect my community terrifying. But it must be done if my principles are to have any integrity. But more than anything else, doing it makes me feel thrillingly alive, and that is worth everything.

Blaire (they/them/theirs)

The Mystery of Gender

Mysteries cannot be understood, merely approached. Not documented, but sung. They are fundamental, their nature radiates outward, coloring, shaping, influencing everything they touch. Gender is a Mystery to me. It’s our self-concept, the base relationship between our self, our body, and the world we inhabit. It is as real and stable as gravity yet is little more than a fluid, dynamic, collective dream. The more I try to solidify definitions the more they elude me. I cannot remember when I first knew my truth, but it has always been a part of me, long dormant and unnamed. The more it is fully realized, the more my memories are recontextualized, and suddenly I look back and remember and realize oh, that was a “gender” thing. Attempts to explain it with medical and academic language never satisfy me. Only story-telling is sufficient.

It’s my earliest memory. I am maybe three or four years old, in bed in the middle of the night. In what was either a dream, or my brain forming patterns out of the darkness while I lay awake in bed, I stare at the mirror opposite my bed and see images of children playing. I am fascinated by the figures. How could they be there?

The next morning, I race to tell my mother, running with her to my room to show her the kids in the mirror. I am angry and disappointed that they aren’t there. Mom calmly says, “I think you just saw your own reflection, honey. Maybe you were dreaming.” I stare back at my own reflection. I know that the person who is looking back is supposed to be me. But, is it? I stare at the reflection for a long time. If the kids I saw last night in the mirror were not really there, then am I really here? Is the person staring back at me, really me? Eventually, I go back to playing and forget about it.

I go into the salon with the intention of cutting my hair short, shorter than I’ve ever cut it. Something different, something more edgy, more androgynous, or as different a shape as my tight curls could be shaped into. Just an aesthetic choice, you know?

I sit down in the chair and state what I want. Only, not really. My stylist excitedly tells me that I’ll look cute when I’m done. I don’t have the courage to tell him that I want to look handsome. 
When the cut is done, I look back in horror. The person in the mirror, with the short bob, is somehow even more feminine, more girly, more child-like, more Shirley Temple than Susan Sarandon. I leave the salon devastated, but too embarrassed to give my discomfort away. I promise myself to never do something that rash with my hair ever again. Look androgynous, with that hair and feminine facial features? You could never. Leave that aesthetic to your Pinterest board where it belongs, the Shadow says quietly, knowingly.

My body is out there, somewhere, moving through the world. But my mind is just here, just a step to the left. It’s impossible to emerge from the skin I live in, despite its paper-thin, malleable facade. 

No one seems to notice, maybe? Girl Scouts, Girls State, ballet school, sorority life: throughout my life, I’ve been in all-girls spaces. They make me welcomed, belonged, correct. But no matter what, I can’t shake feeling like a spy. Dread swelling from my belly is a constant reminder that one wrong move, one wrong word, is all it would take for the performance to shatter, and then people would see me for what I really am…or what I’m not…they’d see that I’m a…that I’m a…that I’m what, exactly? 

I am too afraid of the answer to approach the question honestly. I settle on “weird” instead. Something others understand. Something I understand. 

7th grade. One of the popular girls in my class invites me to bring my favorite clothes to her house after school so she and her friends could give me a makeover. It’s definitely a trap, but I don’t want to see it that way. It didn’t matter that I didn’t like her or her friends as people; here was a chance for me, one of the school’s perennial outcasts, to be invited in by the cool girls and molded to be like them. I so desperately wanted to look and feel like them, like I belonged like they did, even though privately, shamefully, I knew that I categorically wasn’t like them. But that didn’t matter. Why would I want to be me? I’m just weird.

I arrive at her house with a big bag full of my favorite clothes and am immediately ambushed by a staged intervention. Most of my clothes they trash as ugly and unfashionable by their standards. I sit in silence, with no courage to defend myself as they go into great detail about how hideous each item is and question what I ever saw in it. Normally, I’m an easy and expressive crier, but here my body, heart, and face are numb and frozen. I mumble something like, “Wow, I never saw it that way.” Some part of me ceases to be there, for my own sake.

The night goes on and on. They demonstrate which poses for pictures would get the most attention from boys (diagonal to camera, apathetic face with a slightly open mouth, chin tilted down, hand on hip) and how to dance sexy for boys at parties (“You can’t expect that ballet shit to impress anyone”). When they ask me to demonstrate what I would do first, every move I show them is always too weird, too unfeminine, too expressive, or too prudish. 

By the end of the night, they’ve treated my hair with a bright blonde dye that turns my roots orange. They roughly straighten my mass of curls, tugging at it with brushes and hair dryers. I am frozen in place from discomfort. They mistake my silence for approval of this quiet erasure.  Social acceptance requires me to be outside myself. I hate accepting that.

My first day at work in The Real World. I’m met by my coworker, a stunningly beautiful figure seemingly grown by Professional Businesswoman Laboratories, Inc. I’m shocked when she tells me that she’s only three years older than me; she carries the grace and confidence of a seasoned VP. Even though she is genuinely friendly and kind, I am constantly self-conscious around her and cannot relax. The way I talk and behave around my coworkers feels like a #girlboss disguise. I am deeply uncomfortable in my skin every second of every day I’m here, praying that no one notices. Wearing “feminized menswear” attire alleviates some of my discomfort, but it’s not enough.

It’s not just discomfort with corporate conformity. It’s not just insecurity about behaving professionally (whatever that even means). Newly employed, I would probably feel those things no matter what work environment I went into. Something is seriously wrong with me, and I don’t know what. All I can articulate is that I’m painfully conscious of this performance I play every day. I don’t have a word for what I am performing, I just know it’s miserable to play.

I’m an adult now. I’m alone. The support networks I built up in school are scattered across the states. I cannot hide within them anymore. The realization washes over me that I’m going to have to perform this part for the rest of my life. It’ll just be there, haunting me, this Woman Who Isn’t Really There, while the Me inside will stay quiet, unseen, unknown. 

The thought drains the warmth from my blood. 

I can’t remember when it started happening, or how, but there’s a dread inside me growing stronger, fed when people assume I’m straight. When they call me pretty. When they talk about me dating men, or worse, marrying and starting a family with a man. When they treat me “like a woman”. And yet, what is there to actually fear? All my friends and most of my family know that I’m queer and they don’t care. My gender expression certainly hasn’t looked like a straight woman’s for years.

But it’s not enough. It still feels like a lie. Like a half truth. Like I’m still pretending, and at any moment, the curtain will fall and everyone else will realize that I’m still faking it. I practice poses that masculinize my silhouette as best I can, and dare tell no one.

I’ve spent my whole life wanting to feel like a “real” woman. Chasing the feeling of being accepted as a real woman by other women. 

But maybe…that’s not the same thing as being a woman. Or wanting to be one.

Dresses and skirts eventually stop being tolerable. I wonder how I ever convinced myself that I liked to wear them in the first place. 

I am scrolling through photos of my college years. The vast majority of my saved photos come from formal sorority events. The photos fill me with mixed emotions. That time was, in countless ways, a happy one for me and filled with great friends. And yet, with sorrow, I notice my eyes look dead in so many of these photos.  Old comments from fellow sisters tell me I looked pretty that day. I internally cringe at the word.

I don’t see myself in those photos anymore, but a Woman Who Isn’t Really There. Would anyone else notice? She poses with a prescribed femininity, hand on hip, turned slightly sideways, to highlight her boobs and butt and minimize her waistline. She’s among her friends, people she feels safe with and loves and should feel relaxed around, and yet all I can see is how deeply uncomfortable with herself she looks. Perhaps because the image is expected of someone with my body, no one else has looked too closely and doubted it.

I’m going on my first date in many months (has it been a year?). I don’t want to go, but my sorority sisters are eager to set me up and hear the gossip. “Come one, Blaire, it’s about time you got out on the scene. Get some, girl, you deserve it!” I know they mean well. I put on a tight blue dress and full face of makeup in spite of myself. 

I arrive at the restaurant and immediately regret what I’m wearing. He talks to me passionately about books and his grad program and his favorite hobbies while his eyes calculate my body. I despise men looking at me like that. Then why’d you wear that dress? I say nothing. I smile, I remain polite, I keep entertaining him. Why? 

After the date, he starts walking me back home when, out of nowhere, he kisses me deeply, aggressively. The mind screams, but the body detaches and continues on its own, a familiar and disturbing separation that seems to happen whenever I’m intimate with someone. Get out of there! The mind is ignored. My body walks back to his apartment with him. A blur of heat, breath, pressure. What the hell are you doing Blaire?! Stop! Get out! You don’t want this and you hate this! But my body doesn’t stop. Sex always seems to be something that happens to me, or at me. Or at least my body. But not with me. I’m never really there.

When it’s over, my mind berates my body for allowing that to happen. I say it’s time for me to go. He looks confused. “Didn’t we just have a good time?” Did I really just let him think that I had a good time? I’m disgusted with myself. Before he can pressure me to stay, I hastily get dressed and leave. 

When I walk back to the house, my sisters excitedly ask how my date went. “Great, he was a pretty interesting guy. We kissed afterwards. Maybe I’ll see him again, but maybe not.” Do they notice? 

I don’t tell anyone what really happened. The shame runs too deep. It’s the last time I attempt to go on a date with anyone for years.

I abroad for the summer, feeling terribly homesick, an alien-in-disguise among my classmates. I am walking alone along a pedestrian shopping avenue, aimlessly browsing on my day off. The women and girls here dress more gritty, more punk than most people back where I’m from. Doc Martin boots are worn by everyone, everywhere, and I cannot help but be drawn to them. I pop inside a shop, curious to see what these chunky boots would look like on me. 

A black patent leather boot with bright pink laces and a vertical pink stripe along the back of the heel immediately catches my eye. Different, but still feminine, not enough to be a total whiplash. Laced up with weighted feet, I stand up and look in the mirror. Who I see utterly delights me. The boots clash with my outfit, but I don’t care. They must have some kind of magic, I decided, because I looked in the mirror and rather than seeing pretense, I saw a confident, assured, powerful looking figure before me. I am that. Euphoria rises. I immediately buy them and wear them out of the store. 

The new leather rubs sharply on my ankle bone, but no matter, it beats the dull ache of my flats. I’m feeling tall and mighty and, strangely, very much me in these cute but aggressive boots. I can’t describe why or how, but I just know that I do. Nothing else has really changed. I’m still homesick and awkward and in a foreign country where I don’t fit in with my peers. What has changed is a sense of self-assurance. Those things may be true, but so what? Today, I know and feel like myself, and that matters more than anything. 

I can’t recall the last time I thought anything remotely like that, much less experienced it in my body so fully. It seems silly that a pair of shoes could do all that.

The full moon illuminates the dark corners of my room. Cinnamon incense burns, candles flicker, the selenite feels smooth in my palm, and I am safe within my circle. Deep in meditation, I ask myself, What gender am I? No word comes to me, but the inner knowing asserts its power and calm. The knowing is dark and changing and growing like the moon. It’s chaotic and deep like the sea. It’s steady and warm like the rising sun. It’s formless, undefinable, yet entrancing, like fire or water. It hangs around me like sweet morning air. 

Nature speaks in the language of its Being, and the words it speaks weave self-knowledge deeper than norms, older than culture, more certain than labels. If only I could shape them into human language. 

The Shadow is quiet. Some other voice speaks, steady and honest. One message becomes clear. Know the difference between how you feel yourself to be, and who you want to be.

I awake to moonlight peeking through the blinds. A brief second before I’m greeted by the sensation of her warm, soft body wrapping around mine. The moonlight illuminates her face as she sleeps soundly next to me, her eyelids fluttering the midst of dreams. I sigh and smile delightfully remembering the feast of heat, breath, pressure, only hours before. 

Being with her is the easiest, simplest, most natural thing in the world. It’s not something to tolerate in exchange for validation, but something that pours forth from inside me and reaches out to connect. Here, now, I am not estranged from myself. I am with myself, and I am with her.

A deep and knowing rightness flows over me. I want to protect and provide for her. I want to support her to grow into the best version of herself. I want to buy her gifts and take her on adventures and give her a massage afterwards and wax poetic about her beauty while I make love to her. I want to be her boyfriend. When I am with her, I feel like a man. And I love it, even though it scares me, even though I can’t articulate how exactly. Is masculinity any more rational than a feeling?  

Words can tell me what I am not, but affirmation requires language more abstract. I settle on warmth and touch, hold her body closer to mine, and fall back asleep with her breath tingling my ear. 

No, Blaire, stop being ridiculous. You’re not trans or non-binary or demi-boy or whatever bullshit these emotional tumblr teenagers make up. You’re just a queer woman. Just a queer woman who loves other women. Just someone who wants to love women like a boyfriend would. Just someone who feels right masculinizing their body and presentation. Just someone who watches a lot of trans creators and is very invested in knowing everything about trans political issues and the medical facts and risks of low-dose testosterone journeys. Just someone unpacking a life-long, repressed alienation from the femaleness of their body, from the womanhood that demanded. Just someone who sometimes feels like a woman, and sometimes like a man, but who actually wants to be somewhere in-between…because that’s what you are.

Fuck.

I’m watching The Matrix for the first time in years, this time knowing that the directors have since both come out as trans women. Queerness is woven throughout the movie’s vibes, subtle, but clear to me as a queer viewer. The sapphic tension in Neo and Trinity’s relationship. The superonline nerdy hackery of it all. The promise of taking a magical little pill that allows you to see your real body for the first time. The way Mr. Smith constantly deadnames and misgenders Neo as Mister Anderson, only for Neo to boldly declare “My name is Neo” before defeating him. 

The Agents bring a new gut punch meaning. Anyone who isn’t unplugged, upon witnessing the reality-bending capabilities of the resistance fighters, turns into an Agent, and then moves to destroy them. I recognize who the Agents are. They may be friends, but they are not Friends. They may not be enemies, but when the time comes, they will show they are the Enemy. And they will sacrifice you to maintain the status quo. 

Even in a safe and supporting environment, knowing that anyone could become an agent of the state if I show them my truth, I cannot help but internalize that love is not guaranteed. I’m acutely afraid that people do not love me but merely the idea of me, and the social capital that I can bring them. Endless tragic LGBT storylines show that desires are either perpetually baited and canonical unfulfilled, or must end in death. The message the straight people get is: isn’t it sad and tragic that the world is so cruel and won’t let queer people be who they are? The message I get is: You want to live like this, you’re gonna die like this. 

The package arrives with my first binder and a mix of emotions. I try on the binder with my favorite button up. I’m in shock by how well it flattens my chest, but more shocked by how much seeing myself like this delights me. Have I always wanted to look like I have a more masculine chest? Have my breasts always bothered me? Yes, I have, and they do. Why has it taken me so long to see that clearly? 

I cannot stop staring at my body, squarer and flat-planed and as right as knowing you’re in love. I practice the old familiar poses, and they are so much more convincing now. Happy tears well up and surprise me. The longer and more frequently I wear it, the more I love how it makes me look and feel in my body. Before I know it, I’m wearing it almost everyday. Maybe one day I will want my body to look like this full-time after all. I’ll need to think about it a lot more before I’m sure.

I’m getting dressed as I wait for my girlfriend to come over for dinner. I twist my short curls and slick down the shaved hair around my temples. Is my jawline getting squarer? The bandaid on my stomach from my morning T shot makes me smile everytime I catch a glimpse. I spritz a scent of cedar, bergamot, and eucalyptus. My soft black button-up over my binder shows off my growing shoulders and back, and I beam. I’m feeling handsome tonight. My current experience in my body, my body language, my gender expression, my social dynamics, my role in my relationship: is comfort, and ease. Finally. I hear a knock, and I give one last look in the mirror before I head to the door, and I’m transfixed. 

I used to stare at my reflection, feeling like a child again, wondering if the person looking back at me was really there. But tonight, the person looking back is exactly who I expected to see. Exactly who I wanted to see. I wondered if I would ever get to meet them. But here they are, staring back from the reflection at last. Somehow or another, they have managed to emerge from within.

Hello, I say to them. It’s so very nice to finally meet you. The Woman Who Isn’t Really There is gone. I don’t remember when or how she left, but I know I will never see her again. Instead, there’s Me, the real me, the One Right Here. They’re more than a costume, more than a performance, more than an aesthetic desire. This is Me, living My Truth. 

I know who I am now, deep inside, even if no word given to me exactly suits me. Non-binary is a term that describes what I am not but not what I am. Gender-blendy feels more apt. It’s all just semantics, really. 

I give myself one last nod, then head over to open the front door.