re: your acne

Wow, I really am turning into a teenage boy. I just discovered that men's swim trunks are the most awesome things ever and now I want lots of them. Mesh lining. MESH. LINING! I'm wearing them right now. :)

I've started my Renaissance Faire season (opening weekend this Saturday!) which means another couple hundred people joining me on my gender transition. Yes, I know, this is terribly self-centered of me, but that's my vantage point. Sometimes it feels like every moment I've lived for the past few months is about the transition, like I'm always in the spotlight. (Sometimes, I even like it.)

Every time I'm spoken to, my gender expression is considered. Every time I'm referred to, there's a hesitation before my pronoun is used. My very existence makes people feel weird for using a pronoun they didn't use last year; or guilty for using the one I don't prefer; or resentful of me for making them think about it. And for that, I do genuinely apologize. Not for doing what I'm doing, but for the side effects that come along with it. This isn't so much a fabulously unknown discovery as... something that's good for me to remember, and something I'm learning the realities of. Something else I'm learning is that my image is shifting in my mind faster than it's shifting in the outside world and that the flow of pronouns around me is something of a gauge* for that external image. It's going to take time, and the truth is that I have the opportunity to step back and watch it happen. (Sometimes, that's kinda cool.)

Is this a depressing post? It doesn't feel like one -- but the image in my mind is not, at times, the one that others see.


*one of those words that's just weird and never feels like it's spelled right, argh.