Who Do You Think You Are?

January 29, 2015

The Hubble Ultra-Deep Field, revealing thousands of galaxies. Source.

We were born in the borderlands of the ancient civil war between the sexes. Some of us become migrants, carried with the seasons, crossing back and forth and forth and back again. Some of us settle down in the little border towns of our youth and make ourselves a decent home there. Some of us go out, cross over, and never cross back again; we make our desert home on the other side of the fence.

All of that is fine. Actually, the difference between such choices is trivial, in the long view. All that matters: decreasing pain. The only imperative: live well and help others do the same. There are a lot of border towns along this wall. Fit in wherever you can.

Don’t get stuck too long in the swamp of your own indecision. If you’re not ready to choose, don’t choose yet; if you know what you need to do, just do it. Don’t torment yourself for not knowing or for knowing, for being different or the same, or tall/short/normal/strange. Whatever the case: don’t torment yourself.

Here is the situation. We are misunderstood, which only means, they have failed to understand us. We are misfiled, which only means, their filing system has failed to account for us. This is in many ways a burden. It’s also a gift. This facade comes pre-cracked. Don’t patch it.

Don’t get trapped again in chasing breezes. Having liberated yourself from one set of made-up standards, don’t hold yourself to another. Don’t test yourself with rulers political or gendered. That would be to squander the incredible opportunity of the border-dweller. So they threw you out–don’t get sucked back in. It does not matter what you guess a cisgender man or woman would do–grasping for someone else’s answer to your own question. Nor does it matter what you imagine is the radical thing–taking your own answer to one question and trying to force it to answer another. Don’t trade a cage for a carpeted cage.

Hold your new self lightly. It is a baby bird. Do not horde it or crush it or demand things of it. Admire it. Bestow the gentlest kiss.

The secret isn’t that they got their definitions wrong–although they did–nor that we need more and better definitions, though that is also true.

The secret is: here: the definition. And far, far away: the truth. Not just for gender. For everything.

Whoever you think you are–you aren’t. Who you are: clear, clear, clear. No one knows your name.

Written by rimonim Posted in Uncategorized Tagged with LGBT, queer, spirituality, transgender, transsexual, wellbeing