The Do-Over

The universe isn't subtle. (On sharp left turns, throwing away the plans, and finding the plot by losing it.)

Before I tell this week’s story, like y’all, I’ve been enraged and horrified at the ICE occupation of Minneapolis and the murders of Renee Nicole Good and Alex Pretti (and all of the people killed by ICE or held in detention). If you haven’t been calling your representatives, checking in on your neighbors, or getting involved in resistance efforts, I strongly encourage you to do so. I really appreciated this list of resources and next steps from River Selby: https://substack.com/@riverselby/p-186107481

*Correction: I meant to double-check Renee Nicole Good’s name and then I missed it on edit. I deeply apologize.

Five years ago, I was watching the reel of cultural and artistic performances in the Biden inauguration. The Trans Chorus of Los Angeles was featured in it, if only for a few seconds. Watching reel after reel of performing artists at the top of their game, I found myself filled with jealousy.

I think jealousy is a useful emotion, especially for alexithymics like me — people who struggle with identifying feelings and connecting them to body sensations or underlying needs. After sitting with that feeling, I realized I wanted to be recognized as a writer. I wanted to have put more effort and intention into my writing practice. I wanted to have put myself out there more widely than I have.

I’d successfully built a freelance business by treating it like an iterative project to manage, so why not bring the same autistic structure and supportive routine to my writing career? I came up with a five-point methodology to this plan, which involved creative production and authentic non-sleazy connections with other writers. My nickname is Catfish — it’s a reference to the chin whiskers I grew as a nonbinary trans person on low-dose T, and please don’t stress, because a fellow trans person gave it to me — so I named my project Operation Big Fish. Its original mission was “become a big deal.”

At the end of each quarter, I’d write a two-pager of notes about how Operation Big Fish was progressing, set some goals for the next sprint, and put some tasks in the to-do list. And for a while, it worked pretty well. I used the momentum to put together three drafts of a novel, get a couple of flash nonfiction pieces published, including one I’m really proud of, and was accepted into Tin House’s summer workshop, which was a life-changing experience.

But as I kept at it, I watched friends and people I admired get chewed up in the meatgrinder of professional jealousy, or launch a decade’s worth of work to a reception of silence and indifference. A slow processor, I struggled to keep up with the speed of the news cycle, let alone meaningfully comment on it, and I’m not cut out for the barrage of criticism that public intellectuals receive. I realized that jealousy, entitlement, and resentment may be good indicators of what you want, but they’re lousy fuel for pursuing what you want, and they ruin all the fun of the process.

Over the holidays, I met up with some friends for a DIY writers’ retreat. I’d had a stressful December. In the middle of a drawn-out process involving my name change, some of which I wrote about in my last update, my aging Windows-10-running desktop computer decided to brick itself. I got all my files successfully consolidated, loaded onto a flash drive, and copied to my new computer, but it took several emergency errands and about a week’s worth of effort.

“I don’t want to be a big deal anymore,” I told my friends, as we all shared our intentions for the week. “I want to write. If I continue doing the work and putting myself out there, I may become more widely known than I am, and that’s going to come with a set of responsibilities I’ll need to learn how to manage. But the goal should never have been to become known. It’s like the difference between wanting to act and wanting to be a famous actor — one of those can be done anywhere, anytime, by anyone, and the other depends on widespread attention, and heavy investment from the film and publicity industries, and the whims of what’s popular, and the continued existence of the film and TV industries, none of which are within my control. So the goal of Operation Big Fish is now to express myself creatively, and to share it with other people. No more targets, no more KPIs, that’s capitalist nonsense. If I’m doing the thing, I’m doing it right.”

“Sounds good,” they agreed. (This is not an exact replica of the conversation we had.)

“Awesome,” I said. “I’m going to open a new doc in my Operation Big Fish folder and write down everything I just said.”

You all know what happened next, right?

The folder for “Operation Big Fish” was nowhere to be found on my shared drive. I searched for the word “operation” in all files and found the first iteration of Operation Big Fish, but none of the subsequent updates or year-end reviews. I checked my online cloud storage backup: no Operation Big Fish files. The final backup from my old computer had expired and been overwritten.

It was gone. Five years of life plans.

Honestly, though? I’m not even mad. I thought it was hilarious. The universe isn’t subtle. And though I wish I had the docs for archival purposes, I’m taking the message at face value: Yes, it’s time for a do-over.

And, because the universe isn’t subtle, I’d also recently decided to increase my testosterone levels. The truth is, I’d never tried to go up, even just for a few weeks to feel it out, because I was afraid.

On one hand, I was afraid of making a permanent change, a decision I couldn’t back out of. I was afraid of finding out that the gatekeeping I’d experienced in the 2000s was right all along, to say nothing of the messaging I’ve gotten from medical and mental health professionals that I’m going through a phase and that I would eventually detransition. I fought my hairline for years because I was afraid of no longer being able to blend into the background if I needed to. I struggle with predicting how I will feel about a situation until I’m in it, and I’ve been through seismic shifts in my understanding of my sexual orientation before. What if I woke up one morning in an altered body I could not stand to live in? What if I trigger some underlying cancer, or catastrophic illness, or I’m targeted by random assholes or by the state, and I’m dead inside of five years?

This is the scenario all trans people are threatened with, in one way or another — the fear of making the wrong decision.

I was also afraid of making the right decision.

I was afraid that with the first full dose, my entire life would change. That as soon as the queasiness of medication adjustment subsided, I would realize, in a knowing that arose from my whole body as well as my conscious thoughts, I’m a man. I was afraid that I would finally experience the feelings of euphoria and tender baby steps that other trans people talk about, the absolute miracle of congruence between mind and body. That I would experience a homecoming to my body so profound, I would lie on the couch for hours, like a shipwreck survivor on a sunny beach, feeling wave after wave of physical comfort washing over me, holding myself and knowing My god, this is what it’s like to feel okay. I made it. I survived. I am healing. I was afraid of something truly wild shifting, like that I suddenly have capacity to name, localize, and feel emotions, or that the arsenal of self-soothing and grounding techniques I’ve learned in decades of therapy actually kind of work now. I was afraid that I would realize exactly how miserable I had been, how deeply I had suffered in an estrogen-dominant endocrine system. I was afraid of finding out that my surgery journey isn’t over. I was afraid to discover that, for me, T wasn’t an adornment or enhancement I could pick up and put down as I wanted in order to express myself — it’s medicine, and it’s a need, a survival need as fundamental as food, clothing, and shelter. I was afraid of discovering I need medicine to live, and of living with the fear of losing access to this medicine. I was afraid of realizing that if I’ll be dead inside of five years as a result of this decision, then so be it, because for the next few precious years I will have been alive.

I’m proud to report that one of my greatest fears has come true.

Let me tell you about the simple pleasure of opening a door and feeling one’s body respond with the exact amount of strength the brain expects. Hearing my voice approach a sound it’s never made before, but that I somehow know is my voice. Knowing that there are limbs to be stretched, and walks to be taken, and heavy objects to be lifted, and all of these things are free, and none of them depend on the subjugation of any other human or any living creature? That’s the good shit.

I read some of my old journal writing, and I want to go back in time and say, Honey. HONEY! Put down that well-worn shroud of bitterness and go back in the bathroom and put a full dose of T in you RIGHT NOW!

Okay, yes, figuring out how to engage in feminist and social justice projects from the positionality of a white man will be tricky, but you can do it! And yes, the grief and rage you feel at losing time is real, and difficult to hold and carry, but weren’t you able to access some relief and learn how to build your own gender identity in the face of intense opposition, not to mention make the path easier for other trans people, and weren’t those experiences valuable? And you’ll likely face the conflict between blending in and standing out as a trans man, but isn’t that such a better problem to have than aging in a body that doesn’t feel like it’s even yours?

Sure, styling and coloring your hair has been fun, but YOU WILL BE FREE!

Y’all! Go bald and throw away that story you had for your life.