9/4/23, 3:20 pm
The old me met the new me in a vision once.
Earlier this summer, I had a vision that I met someone. Immediately I was certain that it was a vision of me meeting my next partner. I tried to find any context clues that would give me something more tangible to hold onto. Where were we? What year was it? For days on end, I found myself recounting the details in my head. Not just of the vision but of this person. We stood eye to eye, at just about the same height, and yet something about the sureness in their stance made them appear taller than me. Their hair sat at the tops of their shoulders in short locs. From the clothes they wore to the way they wore them- they bled androgyny. The way the air shifted around them, the way it made space for their existence, the way the corners of the vision contoured around the fullness of their being, all told me that this was the kind of raw transness I had dreamt about. For weeks on end, I repeated the details of this vision to myself afraid of the consequences that forgetting could bring.
Locced androgyny. Dreaded transness.
I wondered if it was too late to muster up some kind of artistic talent. Maybe 23 was the lucky year I learned to draw. Or better yet, to paint. The vision in my head felt like watercolor hitting canvas. And I worried that the face I saw behind my eyelids would slowly change day by day. I needed something more permanent. The urgency nipped at my ankles and kept me pacing my room.
Locced androgyny. Dreaded transness.
I saw them for the first time in May and pried the sketches of them out of my hand by the first of June. I tucked them away on my desk the way I tucked the vision away in my memory. The urgency had faded but it was something I wanted to hold on to. At least until I could make sense of what I saw. I settled on the idea that this vision took place years down the line- this couldn’t be someone I met in my current state. There was no way I could cross paths with someone like that, no way I could love and be loved by anyone that close to holy. I wondered if this person, that love, was something I would be rewarded with down the line further into whatever my transition was becoming. There was a sinking feeling at the reminder that the goalpost was constantly moving, always at arm's length but never close enough to touch. The best I had gotten were moments where my fingertips brushed against something akin to God. If we were to meet now, like this, it would be sinner meeting saint. I was certain of it. I let the loudness of June suffocate the chanting.
Locced androgyny. Dreaded transness.
I did make sense of it, the vision, eventually. Everything good manifested through the whirlwind that was June. I walked into July with nothing but the change in my pockets and a stupid grin on my face. July took me for all I had left and I let it. The waves lapped over me during Cancer season and I became a willing accomplice to the drowning. I didn’t rise for air until August, where I blinked salt water out of my eyes and re-emerged covered in what the summer had done to me. It was in glass shards, that washed up much like I had, where I saw what the season made of me. It was under the fullness of the moon where I could look at my reflection in the water and finally see what I had become.
Locced androgyny. Dreaded transness.
There was a sense of knowing the first time I saw the new me. A sense of familiarity tinged with anxiety. The sense that whatever you were seeing, was something to be afraid of. Undercutting the fear was awe, mixed in with the feeling in my chest was something I was certain was love. What I saw now was what I saw then. It was what I thought I had years left to prepare for. It was not a matter of where or when. It was barely a matter of who. This lesson asked me what. What would I have to lose to become the person I saw in my head? What would I gain when I did? When obsessive perfection leaves the room, what takes its place? What was I? What was I to become? All questions that demanded to be answered the months before. They were answers that I prayed for then prayed on. Answers that I let dance around in my head until they could roll off of my tongue with sureness. Answers that seemed to be never-ending only to taunt me with their simplicity. Answers that wrapped themselves around my spine and pulled me back into place. That planted themselves in my mind and sprung out of my scalp like vines, raveling around one another, constantly intertwining.
