I woke at 2:30am half-dreaming about just being done, about being as much a woman as I will ever be able to be, and yearning aching for it...but also doubting, once again,
this whole enterprise. My concern: I have always been a zealot -
totally into whatever I'm into - and with each new enthusiasm I have
felt utterly convinced that I have found It, the Answer to All My
Life's Questions...but many of these fads have failed to last.
Some examples:
In
college I invented Lifegame, a social-group game where players asked in
other players who asked in other players, and you had to make up a
secret symbol for yourself and then make a life-long commitment to
contribute annually to a group mailing. (This was obviously
pre-Internet.) I became passionately involved in this idea and
recruited all my closest friends, and I did keep it up for a couple of
years, gathering people's annual narratives and sending them back out
again. Then it began to feel like a chore, and after a few more years Lifegame petered out.
In my early twenties I test-played a custom-made
bodiless electric standup bass and fell in love with it. I didn't feel I could afford it,
though, so I promised myself that at some future date I would get one,
learn to play it really well, and then find personal fulfillment as a
jazzy funky bass player. I held onto that dream for twenty years. Two
years ago, as a present to myself on the occasion of surviving
divorce, I bought the bass - I even splurged on the five-string - and
there it stands in the corner, silently rebuking me every day for never
playing it.
In my late twenties I fell in love and got married
and begat babies, and deep down inside, in my fierce secret girl-heart
(wait, can I say that and still make the point I think I'm trying to
make here? Well, keep typing and let's see...) I really felt that I
had succeeded at last in my greatest life-project, manhood. My love
was real...I know because when it was no longer wanted and I had to
kill it I felt like I was going to die...but I couldn't make manhood
last either.
OK, um...so I was going to say, what if this idea
that I'm actually a woman is another temporary enthusiasm...but then I
had to go and write that last paragraph. Well, I can still say it,
and should, because of the devious cleverness of the zealous mind. I have thrown myself wholeheartedly into the idea of my femininity, and my zealous mind does pounce
on each new bit of evidence which favors the precipitous drive into
womanhood, at the same time discrediting any doubts or
lingering mannish impulses. I am biased, headstrong, quite possibly
self-blinded. I must strive to doubt, even as I inevitably spin every
new datum and compulsively seek to subvert the process of doubting
itself.
On the other hand, it does needs to be noted that I have not always been
wrong about my enthusiasms. I was right about wanting to be a parent.
I am right about being a writer. Despite how hard they sometimes are I have embraced
these passions for life, and they have
become much of who I am.
[long pondering silence]
Once again I feel my way back to the
insight that the best real-world answer is that I must trust the
process. Be
in each moment, and allow myself, if I can, to act on every
healthy-seeming impulse, either to move ahead or hold back...while always thinking of those I love. Unclench.
That has been a crucial mantra since the beginning, and here it is
again. Unclench. Unclench.