running and returning
Continuing the pattern of last weekend, i'm taking another bum day this time around. Every now and then i look at my bank balance and try calculate how much longer i can continue to travel without dipping into savings, and a little voice whispers that this ain't gonna last. Sometime in 2022 i will have to start working again, especially once i get my tax bill for the contract work i did in 2021. And i fear and dread it, the return to work. Because it will just be more of what this past month has been - five days a week of mental stress, two days a week of trying to recover from the exhaustion, zero days a week of freedom. Life just slipping away.
The only way i know to spend these weekends and let my brain decompress is dumb, passive entertainment. Watch all that television i put on the backlog while i was too busy being free to care.
This weekend's big hit - so far, considering it's only Saturday morning - was Rūrangi. It's a show that came out in New Zealand a couple years ago, but popped into the international scene more recently when an American streaming service picked it up. It's a drama about a trans guy who returns back to his country town that he ran away from 10 years before, and his experiences reconnecting with the people he left behind.
I think it plucked a lot of my heartstrings, because i lived in New Zealand from around ages 8 through 13, so i had a lot of formative experiences over there. I lived in that small town in dairy country, just like our protagonist. Sometimes i dreamed of running away. But then my family did it for me, when mom decided to move back to Europe. After finishing highschool in Denmark and the Netherlands, i returned with my family down under to Australia at age 17... and it was eventually there where i transitioned.
I often think back to the culture of Australia and New Zealand, and wonder if one of the things that pushed me into becoming trans was the more rigid gender stereotypes that exist there, at least compared to Europe. I know the same thing exists everywhere to a certain degree, but for some reason down there i felt less like i could really be myself, whatever that means.
So i identify with the desire to leave it all behind. When i left New Zealand i felt like it was a chance to make a new life for myself. I changed my name to one of my middle names that was less unique and memorable than my first name. I wanted to disappear in the crowd. I wanted to be a nobody. Unlike my sister, i didn't keep in touch with any of my old friends. I left and that was it, blank slate.
I did the same thing when i transitioned. I completely cut contact with everyone i knew - bar my immediate family and one or two friends - and tried to construct an entirely new social group. In the end i did get back in touch with some people who knew me before, but i went completely AWOL for at least a year in between. No explanations, no goodbyes, no nothing. I didn't want anyone to try to discourage me from the path i was about to take, the thing i thought was going to solve all my problems.
Something i really appreciate in Rūrangi is the depiction of how romantic relationships change when one of the people changed their sex/gender/whatever. It's become a bit of a trend in recent years for gay people to decouple themselves from trans issues, claiming that "the LGBT community" was just a politically convenient coalition and not a real community of people with shared experiences. But, i mean, obviously anyone who had relationships both before and after transition is at least going to have to deal with the perception that they are or were gay. They might face it for the rest of their lives, this assumption that they're either secretly gay and trying to run from it or secretly straight and taking advantage of gay people. You can't disconnect the trans experience and the gay experience, and i'm tired of both trans and gay people trying to pretend it's an entirely separate thing. Gender and sexuality are entwined. It's messy and it's complicated. There is no simple narrative.
Hell, i still don't even know how to describe myself. I don't know if i should even say that i changed my sex (or changed my gender), because of the prevailing idea that we were always - since birth (eye fucking roll) - the same gender, and we just needed to adjust our body and outward appearance to match what was our inner truth all along. Which is a really superficial and shitty way to dismiss the complex emotions that go into the decision to transition. I reject that narrative, because i wasn't "always a woman". I wasn't "born female". I was born male, i had a boyhood growing up, and just shy of my adulthood i decided i didn't want to become a man, so i became a woman instead, and now i am... i dunno. Something in between. Something with a bit of both. A bit of neither. That's my narrative. But it's not everyone's. Everyone has to find their own. Which is why it sucks to try explain transness away as a cultural trend or a social contagion or some kind of deep inner truth entirely divorced from sexuality or an inescapable function of genetics or whatever. It is what it is. Society needs to accept that and stop putting roadblocks up to stop people from identifying as whoever or whatever they want to identify as. Like, who fucking cares?
Did i want to change how society perceives me to run away from who i was before? Maybe. But that doesn't take away from the fact i had convinced myself i would die if i didn't transition. Was that a legitimate fear or just teenage angst? We'll never know, because transition i did. But also it doesn't matter if it was a life-saving move or just a whim. Even if my becoming trans was just another form of running away, it was still my choice. I shouldn't be made to explain myself, or feel guilty for not having the perfect narrative. It's my life. Respect it for what it is.
I do still associate being gay - and being trans - with secrecy, and reinvention, and intense social pressure to conform to one thing or another. Despite being theoretically "out" in all aspects of my life nowadays, i still burst into tears when hearing Bronski Beat's Smalltown Boy, or watching any show that touches on these themes of hiding your true self, or running away from a place where you feel you will never be accepted. It's an emotion that is deep in my core, this sense of existing in a community, but feeling like it's not a place where i can flourish. Some people move to the city to find a new community where they will be accepted and that's the end of their story, but for me no matter where i move i always feel like i don't quite belong. And if i start to belong, i leave, because i don't like that sensation, i want another blank slate. Nowadays it's not because i am afraid of being exposed. I don't fucking care. It's just because i like the feeling of novelty. I like the sense of being a nobody again, being unknown and starting over. That's what makes life fun for me, that's when i feel free. The freest times are the times when i am invisible, when i have nowhere to stay, no obligations, no routines, no patterns. I'm just anonymous. I'm not painted as anything in particular. As a man, or a woman, or gay, or straight, or trans, or a foreigner, or a local, or a raver, or a tech worker, or whatever. I'm just a nothing. When i am a nothing i am free. The moment i'm known, that's the moment i start wanting to run again, because then i become stuck in society's perception of who i should be instead of who i really am.
There was a great monster featured in this season of Doctor Who - statues that can only move when you're not looking at them. When you look at them, they are fixed in place, unable to move, trapped. It's only when they are unobserved that they can be free. That's how i feel.
So my life is a constant chain of me trying to escape being identified. Not hiding, not pretending, just leaving, moving on, passing through. Running, i suppose. I wonder sometimes what it might be like to return to somewhere i was before. I've tried it once or twice, but never for long. I like the feeling of nostalgia, but the moment it becomes routine, i want to leave again.
I want to leave. God.
Three more weeks.
The only way i know to spend these weekends and let my brain decompress is dumb, passive entertainment. Watch all that television i put on the backlog while i was too busy being free to care.
This weekend's big hit - so far, considering it's only Saturday morning - was Rūrangi. It's a show that came out in New Zealand a couple years ago, but popped into the international scene more recently when an American streaming service picked it up. It's a drama about a trans guy who returns back to his country town that he ran away from 10 years before, and his experiences reconnecting with the people he left behind.
I think it plucked a lot of my heartstrings, because i lived in New Zealand from around ages 8 through 13, so i had a lot of formative experiences over there. I lived in that small town in dairy country, just like our protagonist. Sometimes i dreamed of running away. But then my family did it for me, when mom decided to move back to Europe. After finishing highschool in Denmark and the Netherlands, i returned with my family down under to Australia at age 17... and it was eventually there where i transitioned.
I often think back to the culture of Australia and New Zealand, and wonder if one of the things that pushed me into becoming trans was the more rigid gender stereotypes that exist there, at least compared to Europe. I know the same thing exists everywhere to a certain degree, but for some reason down there i felt less like i could really be myself, whatever that means.
So i identify with the desire to leave it all behind. When i left New Zealand i felt like it was a chance to make a new life for myself. I changed my name to one of my middle names that was less unique and memorable than my first name. I wanted to disappear in the crowd. I wanted to be a nobody. Unlike my sister, i didn't keep in touch with any of my old friends. I left and that was it, blank slate.
I did the same thing when i transitioned. I completely cut contact with everyone i knew - bar my immediate family and one or two friends - and tried to construct an entirely new social group. In the end i did get back in touch with some people who knew me before, but i went completely AWOL for at least a year in between. No explanations, no goodbyes, no nothing. I didn't want anyone to try to discourage me from the path i was about to take, the thing i thought was going to solve all my problems.
Something i really appreciate in Rūrangi is the depiction of how romantic relationships change when one of the people changed their sex/gender/whatever. It's become a bit of a trend in recent years for gay people to decouple themselves from trans issues, claiming that "the LGBT community" was just a politically convenient coalition and not a real community of people with shared experiences. But, i mean, obviously anyone who had relationships both before and after transition is at least going to have to deal with the perception that they are or were gay. They might face it for the rest of their lives, this assumption that they're either secretly gay and trying to run from it or secretly straight and taking advantage of gay people. You can't disconnect the trans experience and the gay experience, and i'm tired of both trans and gay people trying to pretend it's an entirely separate thing. Gender and sexuality are entwined. It's messy and it's complicated. There is no simple narrative.
Hell, i still don't even know how to describe myself. I don't know if i should even say that i changed my sex (or changed my gender), because of the prevailing idea that we were always - since birth (eye fucking roll) - the same gender, and we just needed to adjust our body and outward appearance to match what was our inner truth all along. Which is a really superficial and shitty way to dismiss the complex emotions that go into the decision to transition. I reject that narrative, because i wasn't "always a woman". I wasn't "born female". I was born male, i had a boyhood growing up, and just shy of my adulthood i decided i didn't want to become a man, so i became a woman instead, and now i am... i dunno. Something in between. Something with a bit of both. A bit of neither. That's my narrative. But it's not everyone's. Everyone has to find their own. Which is why it sucks to try explain transness away as a cultural trend or a social contagion or some kind of deep inner truth entirely divorced from sexuality or an inescapable function of genetics or whatever. It is what it is. Society needs to accept that and stop putting roadblocks up to stop people from identifying as whoever or whatever they want to identify as. Like, who fucking cares?
Did i want to change how society perceives me to run away from who i was before? Maybe. But that doesn't take away from the fact i had convinced myself i would die if i didn't transition. Was that a legitimate fear or just teenage angst? We'll never know, because transition i did. But also it doesn't matter if it was a life-saving move or just a whim. Even if my becoming trans was just another form of running away, it was still my choice. I shouldn't be made to explain myself, or feel guilty for not having the perfect narrative. It's my life. Respect it for what it is.
I do still associate being gay - and being trans - with secrecy, and reinvention, and intense social pressure to conform to one thing or another. Despite being theoretically "out" in all aspects of my life nowadays, i still burst into tears when hearing Bronski Beat's Smalltown Boy, or watching any show that touches on these themes of hiding your true self, or running away from a place where you feel you will never be accepted. It's an emotion that is deep in my core, this sense of existing in a community, but feeling like it's not a place where i can flourish. Some people move to the city to find a new community where they will be accepted and that's the end of their story, but for me no matter where i move i always feel like i don't quite belong. And if i start to belong, i leave, because i don't like that sensation, i want another blank slate. Nowadays it's not because i am afraid of being exposed. I don't fucking care. It's just because i like the feeling of novelty. I like the sense of being a nobody again, being unknown and starting over. That's what makes life fun for me, that's when i feel free. The freest times are the times when i am invisible, when i have nowhere to stay, no obligations, no routines, no patterns. I'm just anonymous. I'm not painted as anything in particular. As a man, or a woman, or gay, or straight, or trans, or a foreigner, or a local, or a raver, or a tech worker, or whatever. I'm just a nothing. When i am a nothing i am free. The moment i'm known, that's the moment i start wanting to run again, because then i become stuck in society's perception of who i should be instead of who i really am.
There was a great monster featured in this season of Doctor Who - statues that can only move when you're not looking at them. When you look at them, they are fixed in place, unable to move, trapped. It's only when they are unobserved that they can be free. That's how i feel.
So my life is a constant chain of me trying to escape being identified. Not hiding, not pretending, just leaving, moving on, passing through. Running, i suppose. I wonder sometimes what it might be like to return to somewhere i was before. I've tried it once or twice, but never for long. I like the feeling of nostalgia, but the moment it becomes routine, i want to leave again.
I want to leave. God.
Three more weeks.