I’ve been wanting to write something new here for a long time. The Bache this year made me throb and explode with so much, and it took weeks for it all to sink in, but I couldn’t write for some reason. Nothing seemed “important” enough. I was so BUSY. Overwhelmed with laundry and accidentally breaking every drinking glass in the kitchen. Stupid shameful girl blah blah blah buy plastic for yourself okay? In fact, I broke another one today. Ah, life. How the stupid shit consumes me.
But underneath something was changing, shifting. My dreams felt entirely different.
There was this common theme of gender mix-up. People would call me a boy and I wouldn’t correct them, or they’d call me a girl, but I knew I was a boy. It was all fine. I felt so at peace about all of it. So grounded. I didn’t even care, boy or girl, it didn’t matter.
In one dream, I had been talking to a few people casually in this small lounge, and as people started to leave, this woman beside me smiled at me and suggested I come to her therapy group for people with “gender difficulties and confusion.” She looked at me like all the guidance counselors in school used to, with this odd mix of pity and, I don’t know, condescension? I just smiled at her and said thank you and walked away. I felt so happy, so secure, protected from within somehow.
Then I started having superhero dreams. (Last night I was twelve, at the drive-in with Spiderman, who was also twelve. He was showing me how he flings webs around.) I’m a vampire slayer, I thwart terrorists. But all this time, in my waking life, I feel so WEIRD! Stuck. Oddly dispassionate. So I asked, before bed, for some clarity. Show me. I dreamt that I was ushered into this circle by a great friend of mine. He stepped out of the circle, and I stepped in. As I did, a huge penis unrolled and fell to the floor. I was moving around in the circle. Though I had this really thick and long penis, I felt like a panther, agile, graceful, fast. In my head, I heard the words,”This is your potency,” over and over. So I go there as much as I can. I’ve been trying to stay in the circle all the time, really.
Most of the time I am overwhelmed with excitement, energy comes from this place, it’s like deeper than my core, and brighter. Yesterday, I realized that I was struggling somehow. I felt sadness. Or something. I couldn’t put my finger on it. So I started writing about it, and got it.
I feel alone. Alone in a new way. It is as if I’ve been on this big old wooden ship, with hundreds of people for so long. We’ve been floating and floating and in the middle of the night we reach an island. I know that this is what we’d been waiting for, that this was our destination, and I am first off the ship. I turn to help the others off, and in that moment, they are gone. I feel confused. Not scared or abandoned, but confused. It is very dark on all sides, but it is easy for me to tell where the water is, because its darkness looks and feels very different from the darkness of the land where I now stand. I am disoriented. I can feel that everything is different here, but I can’t explain, really, not yet. I am curious and bristling, alive in this place, so new to me. I am here now. I will not return. That ship is gone for good.
When I am alone, writing this now, tucked in a corner, I feel it so much it is astonishing to me. And I am full, so full of thanks that I have found this place, my place, the place where I most belong. But in the world, it’s all weird. I walk outside, and I feel myself exploding, like a new animal, with a purpose I cannot put into words. But that strange loneliness creeps in. I feel such a distance from people, a different species altogether. But it’s okay. I mean, it is a much truer feeling than pretending to fit in or whatever. But I know, entering into this new place, really surrendering to it, means I will have to let go even more, of people and things. And, even though I know it is not only a positive thing, but it’s essential to become all that I am, it is hard. It is painful to let people go.
There is a clarity in that circle, on this island, that is stronger than I’ve ever felt. I need to listen, and let the love and connection take me.