Moving Forward, Again

I feel better after taking a ride today.  Still, I am thinking about Janine and  something both my mother and Millie said yesterday:  "A lot of people have been dying lately."  They have never met each other, but they said, verbatim, the same thing.  That in itself is a little strange.


Then again, they're both, shall we say, a few years older than I am.  And my mother lives in Florida.  So I think that they're both going to see more people dying around them than I could expect to see.


And, yes, it is the very end of fall.  So some living things are supposed to die, or be in the process of dying, now.  


I guess that I could see those deaths as part of a cycle of change.  It's been going on since, well, there have been living beings and seasons.  I'd rather that no one else in my circle dies any time soon.  And that may well come to pass.  But change is unavoidable.  And I've known, ever since I started my transition, and have understood more fully since my surgery, that more is to come.  


Someone with whom I had to break off relations lamented, "Why can't things go back to the way they were before?"  Of course the person who said that is male:  Everyone who's ever said that to me, or whom I've known to say that, was of that gender.


That question, paradoxically, makes two seemingly contradictory traits make sense, and seem entirely congruent with each other.  On one hand, men are said, or expected, to be more decisive and to move headlong in important actions.  On the other, they have a harder time making and keeping emotional commitments.  When you believe that you can return your (or the) past, whether the way it actually was or the way you wish it had been--and perhaps even feel entitled to do so--it's easy easier to take risks about things, but harder to do the same for people.


Women have never been able to "own" the past in the same way as men.  Until recently, they had to relinquish their own names--and most still do--upon uniting with a man.  And while men have typically experienced changes that affected their circumstances (a job lost or gained, for example), women have undergone more changes that fundamentally affect the way they see the world.  For example, most women give, or are at least capable of giving, birth.  And our bodies are more easily traumatized through sexual and other forms of violence.


It seems that for women, the only choices have been to move forward, or to live in the present or the Eternal Present.  Many who settle into lives as Mrs. Man end up doing the latter.  That's not likely to happen to me.  But the present, whatever that means, is also not an option, for it is gone as soon as it happens.  That leaves only the future, and I am just starting to see it now.

A Meeting Yesterday, A Committee From Long Ago

By the end of the day yesterday, I could just barely keep my eyes open, even when I was standing up. After my classes, I had a meeting with my department's curriculum committee. It's the first committee meeting I've attended since June: Last semester, I had a class during the same hours that the committee met.

However, I didn't feel as if I were "catching up." I'd been following the proceedings and staying in touch with the other committee members. But that wasn't the only reason why I had a sense of deja vu at the meeting.

During the past few months, I'd all but forgotten what deja vu is. I was experiencing a lot new things, some of which had to do with my surgery and transition. What seems ironic now is that even after a few weeks, having to dilate three times and take hot baths twice a day didn't seem repetitive or routine. Perhaps it had to do with the fact that I had to take care of my body in a way I never did before; in fact, consciously taking care of my body, period, was a new experience for me.

Even talking to my mother and having Millie stop by at my place every day remained fresh experiences for me. I had begun talking daily to my mother around Memorial Day. I continued through my stay in Trinidad and my first three months home. And, once I got home, Millie started coming by every day.

I hadn't had daily conversations with my mother, or any member of my family, at least since I was in high school. And I can't remember the last time (before last summer) that I saw a friend every day.

But going to the meeting yesterday was simply repetitive. It seemed that the same things were being argued about, in the same way, by the same people that argued them all those months ago. Actually, I realize today that it didn't just seem that way; it actually was that way: not much has changed since the last meeting I attended. Yet that meeting, like so much else, seems like it happened a lifetime ago.

And they're still arguing. Even though I participated in those arguments, and wrote two course descriptions, I felt as if I had never been part of that committee, that it did what it was going to do anyway, with or without me.

What's even odder was that I felt neither sad nor joyous over what I had done, or that I was meeting with that committee again. The work I did simply felt like some part of my distant past, and the meeting felt like just another repetition of another point in time, and that time was yet another repetition of yet another point in time. That is what people commonly call "the present," which often has nothing at all to do with the moment. The past few years have been, for me, as much about learning--if not alway successfully-- to live in, but not for, the moment.

I will be at the next meeting; I don't think I'm being cynical when I say I don't expect much, if anything, to change. It's all for the same moment, one that seems like a very, very long time ago.