I guess it’s kind of scary, she says. I guess watching your girlfriend become someone else, more of a grownup, but still stay herself, while meanwhile you’re still working the same job you always have, at the same level of broke with the same people who knew you years ago and knew you when you transitioned. When you see the same people every day that you’ve seen since before you transitioned and you already went through this massive social and physical change, and you’re afraid to really even consider changing or evolving in any way, because you kind of had to have all this bravado, to act like you really believed in yourself in order to transition.

When I started writing this, I intended to just do a quick “she just like me frfr” post, maybe comment on the gender stuff that I relate with now. After my re-read, what I related to most was not really the gender stuff. I had already got everything I could out of that. What did jump out is how Maria and James are continually stuck in their lives, lost on how to move forward. This is something I struggled with before and after starting my transition and even now.

The first time I read this book, I did it right after I made one of the most important breakthroughs of my life. I felt like I figured it out. I was on my way to happily ever after. And in that mindset, I missed the most important (and oft repeated) message of the book:

It’s never done.

When we finally finish our internal puzzle we’ve been wrestling with, we can fall into a kind of complacency. “I did it, I figured out who I’m supposed to be, the struggle is over”. And in this static state, the defense mechanisms that once protect us from harm now sabotage our mental health, stunting any further capacity for growth. And this happens so gradually that it can be difficult to detect the problem. It becomes normalized. Once again we are trapped in a cycle.

There is no inherent set “solved image” to the puzzle, but that doesn’t mean we don’t try to create one anyway. This is our expectation. Rarely does reality meet us here. And so we try to find new ways to achieve our expectation, and one source is looking in others. Of course it's not there. Our puzzle is in flux, our pieces are in flux. Just like everyone else.

People are complex. We are not just one puzzle to be completed and find fulfillment forever. Our puzzles are comprised of infinite pieces and we can build outwards forever as long as we are aware we can do so. And realizing this also means that it’s easier, not harder, to move forward, because now we are free to build ourselves up non-linearly and in increments. Just like creating any work of art.

At first, I wanted present femme. As femme as I could manage, as much an act of rebellion against masculinity as any inherent desire. I watched all the tuts I could on hair, skin, makeup, fashion. This was my true gender and I wanted to get it right this time. I struggled at first (I mean, of course I did, I was trying to catch up with a cis woman’s years of experience in a span of months). But I eventually got the hang of it and it was great! Until it wasn’t. Being femme is work. Being femme is pain. And after some time it felt like more work and pain than I was getting back in satisfaction.

That’s a normal thing to happen to women. If I had started this earlier in life I wonder if I would’ve felt more euphoria and less exasperation? But I was starting to become dissatisfied socially too. I had left one rigid social role behind, one with asinine codes of conduct and toxic rules. Now I’m in a new role, a paradigm with its own bullshit codes and rules, feeling just as trapped and I’m hating this too. It feels even worse because this is something I chose, and if I don’t like this either, then am I wrong about everything?

This is where self-doubt set in. This is what I wanted. I was so sure. Shouldn’t I be enjoying this? Okay, yeah, the answer could be as simple as GNC or :flag-non-binary-pride: and yeah I likely am non-biney but at the time it didn’t feel that easy. After I fought so hard to go against everything that was expected of me and do this really daring thing and upend everything in my life to chase it, I only felt disappointed that I didn’t put all the pieces together after all. I also wanted to avoid using non-binary as a stopgap like I’ve seen so many complaints about so that prevented me from exploring it.

But maybe I was using trans woman as a stopgap to non-binary :thonk-trans: Should I have read more theory? :nerd:

Anyway as strongly as I felt about being a woman before my transition, my reality was falling short of the expectations I had set for myself and I was only able to move past it by adopting new ones and creating a new “solved image” that fit with was now. And now I know that if I ever feel this way again, I can always just make another goal. I can make infinite goals and I never need to let myself be defined by any single one. And fuck it, I’ll make a new gender while I’m at it! I’ll make a new gender for EVERYONE THAT WANTS ONE

Weirdly, the less emphasis I put on putting on the femme, the more interested I was in doing it. Maybe I was just forcing it too much? Or maybe I really am just fully in-between, a pendulum rocking from one end to the other. Vers, switch, demisexual, why not gender too?

And finally, I’ve run out of things to say. My post is finally done. If you made it this far, ~~why did you waste your time reading this slop??~~ thanks for reading and I hope you got something out of it.