Four years ago I wrote this essay. Quite a lot has happened since then including gender confirmation surgery, relationships, and growth. But this was my declaration of liberty to be, evolve, love, and live as I always have believed I should have. This was written only a few weeks after I came out at work; only a few months after I got my first passport in my true name; only a year after I got my birth certificate and driver's license. I do hope that this proves helpful to someone. But if not that is okay, it was helpful for me to write it and for me to read it again this morning.
Namaste,
Julie
I am woman. I identify as such, and do what I can to look and fill the roles that womanhood implies in my somewhat jaundiced view of the world. Even so I know that there are pieces of my personality that appreciates my residual masculinity, I have endless admiration for people who seem to be able to weave a blended life into successful living.
"We are alive, and as such we grow, we learn, we change. There are things about us that do not change, and denial of these things is not authentic, authenticity demands us to be open and honest about these things." And yes I agree that authenticity demands candor about the core, but that portion of me that is static seems to be shrinking and that which is fungible expanding.
My attitudes and beliefs about what is masculine, and what is feminine as always been tempered by what needs to be done now, but I seem to be shedding the need to define most things in that dichotomy. I am not Yin or Yang, I am a blend of all the universe has to offer (YinYang). Transition is less and less about the journey from guy to gal, although that continues, but more about the journey from persona to person.
"Working sincerely and honestly and feeling right while transitioning defines my journey of change." Yes I agree that sincerity is the defining trait of transition which can only be accomplished by an honest and open examination of who I am. I have to cast off the chains of my oppressors to become me, and I am both the oppressed and the oppressor in that metaphor.
My male persona was not authentic, neither was he a lie. He was the best I could do at the time with what I believed to be true. So, can sincere inauthenticity be acceptable? For a while I think it can or I would have spent much more time in the psych ward on suicide watch. But there is the rub, for me to live the persona leads inexorably to despair, and if I persist long enough to emotional or physical death.
The good news is that seeking an authentic life is a phoenix exploding from the ashes of who I tried to be. And since that flight is fueled by acceptance of the search, it is filled with color and excitement. (Whew, sometimes I mix metaphors until there is a patina of chaos in my thoughts, but I don't know how not to.) I am thriving on the conversation, and by the freedom of action in discarding most of my check boxes. That freedom does include trying to make myself pretty, and trying to blend socially. But I do not live in stealth, nor do I take umbrage when misgendered. Actually I'm not sure that I can be misgendered. Gender queer? trans female, cis-male, they all feel mostly OK. If wishes were fishes, as Tessa says, I would have been raised a girl regardless of my genotype.
I wasn't, but that is becoming OK as I travel through life. Next year I will have surgery, and be anatomically female. Will that make being addressed as sir more or less annoying? When I am addressed as a woman, I feel affirmed. Will that simply fade away as it loses its novelty? Know what? I don't much care. However I am imagined by others is their business, how I am imagined by myself is mine. It seems simple, but is actually hard. I often imagine myself in the third person. The integration of male, female, queer is not complete. I am not a multiple, but sometimes it feels like that disassociation is immanent.
The costs of an authentic life are real, but mostly paid. I have lost love, but I've gained both love and respect.
What does it means to be authentic? It think that it means to be the best me I can be. Not hiding, not shading the truth, being willing to accept the costs and to delight in the evolution. It means loving without condition, and nurturing without expectation. It means embracing spontaneity and owning responsibility, but eschewing rigidity. It means living in the fullest most joyful way I know how, and to know that the knowledge will expand for as long as I live. It means laughing, helping, building, crying, even destroying.
I am reminded of Pete Seeger who quoting Ecclesiastes, "To everything turn, turn, turn, there is a season turn, turn, turn, and a time to every season under heaven." Embracing and acknowledging that, is what I believe is the essence of what it means to be authentic, and also what it means to be truly alive.
