tightrope

You don't really realize how high the platform is until you look down. From the ground it seemed totally manageable, but it's different from up here, dizzy; you can almost feel the hunger of the ground and its desire to claim you for its own. You're painfully aware that there is no net. At best, you might take a cold, cynical comfort in imagining that even if there were, it would only serve as a filigree shroud in the split second between when you hit it and when it failed and you plummeted to earth.

You look across to the other platform and realize that you don't really want to go there anyway, and the narrow cable between here and there makes it even less appealing. What made this seem like a good idea in the first place?

Looking across to the other side, you glance up, and then it all comes back; it wasn't that you wanted to get from here to there, it's that you wanted to fly.

manifestation

I'm not sure I know how to do this, to manifest the sense of self I feel. I'm suspicious of 'secret self' models, and yet from a lot of perspectives (often even mine), I'm guilty of exercising it. I think I used to have hope that hormones would help in some way, maybe give me a clear push to an embodied otherness (other than 'here', my default, assigned, perceived position, not Other) that might grant occasional access to the socially sanctioned other without insisting on permanent residence (providing a convenient, material basis for a nonchalant shrug of the shoulders, an appeal to the body to justify what I (sometimes) want) but of course things are not that simple.

I've lost, or am losing, some of the few aspects of self that I liked but took for granted, like relatively effortless thinness and more reliable, predictable sexuality. In the process, I've gained better legs and an ass, but I've also picked up (at least the beginnings of) a gut. I have not mixed good with good, created some hybrid vigor in pursuit of an undivided self but have instead created new division, ruptures, breaks, chasms. I am still internally riven, only differently so. I have not escaped my problems with my assigned, perceived place on the standard gender line and have taken on new (to me) problems associated with the 'other'. Things are different, but I'm not sure they're better.

I've started messing around with my regimen, some with endocrinologist approval, some not so much. I'm down on my spironolactone; interestingly, my testosterone was lower than average to start with, so 'standard' dosages were overkill for me, and had sexual side effects with which I was not pleased. I've noticed that I've grown irregular with my biweekly injections as well, adding a day here, a day there, until this round in which I am consciously five days late. I'm not sure what I'm after here. Maybe what I want is comprised of incompatible things, in which case I am well and truly fucked. I don't know that I believe better is really possible. I'm pretty sure I wouldn't recognize it if I encountered it right now.