Girl as a Verb

  • Reading time:2 mins read

It’s interesting how “feeling like a girl” and “feeling human” are basically the same thing for me. I had no idea how much pain I was in until it started to lift.

Gender is such a weirdness. People take it as a noun, as a thing that is, when nearly all of it is read in terms of doing: how one holds one’s self and moves; one’s vocal timbre and tone and speech patterns. Just posture is this absurd, huge signal. I got into this recently, when I tried on that dress and bracelet and realized how different my face looked in a different context. It’s not about the fact of things; it’s about what they have to say.

To change how I sit or stand, it changes how I breathe, where I hold my tension, and sort of shifts the wiring that tells me who I am, to myself. (And based on how people have reacted to me the last few months, I know it changes the signals to others—mostly but not entirely in good ways.) I feel so much more well, and so much more me, and so much more feminine, when I tend to my posture.

We are all verbs, right. We’re never static. We exist in the doing. Who we are is a matter of procedure: our thoughts, our actions, our feelings, in response to our environment. Change the way you do things, you change the person you are, in your own perception and in others’.

Who we are is a matter of software, not hardware. (And what we are is a matter of opinion, which is its own process.) Act as the person you want to be, and that’s who you will be. The more that you do it, the more that you’ll feel it—and the more that will reinforce what you know to be true.

Smells Like Teen Spirit

  • Reading time:4 mins read

You know, along with this second (much more aggressive) puberty, i feel like a teenager. like, I never really went through any of this the first time—these thoughts, feelings, realizations. I just sort of got older, and drifted through this traumatic haze for 30 years.

I didn’t experience this becoming—this shedding of projected trappings, and euphoria of new agency and potential—that seems to be written in our culture. I literally was never that hormonal. I didn’t develop a matured sense of myself as a person. I kept waiting for instruction.

I think I’ve mentioned how it just feels like 20 years are missing for me—which I guess isn’t uncommon with trauma. But, I imagine that also plays into this a bit, probably. I have been in this holding pattern for 30 years, waiting for just my teenage years to hit.

This may speak a bit toward why I feel such difficulty accepting the notion of myself as a woman, but am a little giddy at being a girl. Heck, I never have really thought of myself as an adult, regardless of the gender I’m wearing. Adulthood is a thing you grow into, and I never got that chance.

I’ve been on pause for so fucking long, and my life is just getting started now. I feel so amazing, being me. It’s so confusing and embarrassing, but I just need to run with it and figure it out. And, fuck it; this is my life. Why am I treading water, trying to be good and not bother anyone, and afraid of the smallest frown of disapproval from some misery?

A few weeks ago I cried with what must have been happiness, because nothing else made sense, which made me realize that’s an emotion I had never in my life felt. Since then, on and off, I keep feeling it. My eyes sting with it now.

Holy shit, I am a real person. I am alive. A pandemic is the most awkward goddamned time to come into all of this, and fuck this poverty, but oh my God, I don’t have words for the relief. The weight that has defined my understanding of being, it has been melting away like so much salt in the rain.

I just want to exist. For the first time, I want to be alive, and to feel all of the things I’m feeling. I don’t know what i’m fucking doing. I have so much going on inside me that makes my face glow red, and I can’t figure out how to frame or describe, that I have come to know bothers everyone when I try to talk it out. But, just. Whatever, lol. Teenagers are meant to be fucking dummies, right.

I am going to keep clomping around in my wooden clogs and there will be toes caught in the process. I don’t need to be proud of that to be able to say, look, if you love me like I love you, you need some patience. I am going to be a little nuts for a while. It’s long overdue.

Tou gotta know my aim isn’t to make things awkward or do anything malicious. But, like. Fuck. I need to figure out what it means to be alive. This is all new to me. And it’s gonna be annoying and embarrassing, And you’re understandably gonna want to look away. But where’s the fun in that?

I am going to just go with it. and I am going to regret nothing. I am going to be a complete fucking mess. and you are going to love me anyway. Because you get it. It’s finally my turn. I get to do this now.

For once, I’m not gonna do the suffering. I’m gonna be suffered. Azure is gonna paint the sky blue, and you’re going to grin and pretend it wasn’t always like that. Because this is going to feed something magnificent. I don’t know what. Beyond, you know, me. But maybe that’s enough, right.

So, yeah. I am going full cringe. And this is going to get so very stupid.