At Ease With Uncertainty

There's a platitude that the only constant in life is change. Nothing is certain; everything changes. We all know this, and yet it's a hard fact to live with. We want to be sure of things in our lives; when uncertainty rears its head, we get anxious.

Uncertainty about my gender -- who I am, and what to do about it -- has been a source of anxiety to me for over a year now, but especially in the last few months. Since making the decision to start HRT, I've been angsting about even more stuff than before, though you'd think the opposite would happen. Am I "all the way" transgender or "just" genderqueer? Am I really trans* at all? Do I really need to transition medically? Am I ever going to "get there" with transition?

When I made the decision on January 14 to start T, I thought I had all the answers. I was a man. I wanted a male body. It wasn't long, though, before the doubts started. I wrote about feeling like I was in a no-man's land, having left the shore of femaleness definitively behind, and yet not having reached the shore of being perceived as male. I didn't know who or what I was. Eventually I started to question whether I actually was a man. I still wanted to look like one, to be one physically, but I didn't feel like one inside, or outside. I felt like I couldn't be female, but I didn't know if I could be a man, either.

Oftentimes, this stemmed from noticing something about my body or my appearance that rang the "female" bell in my head. You wanna be a man? Uh, nope - your waist and hips say otherwise. Or your chest in that sports bro says otherwise. The way you're walking, or sitting. The way your voice comes out high when talking to your kid, or on the phone, or speaking in Chinese. (Yep, although I'm doing all right in English, I still haven't learned to speak Chinese with male intonation >.<)

I can't even tell if I'm comfortable being perceived as a man, because most of the time, I think I'm not seen that way. I don't want to be seen as a woman, and knowing that I am (for instance, when I hear female pronouns or words like "ma'am") rankles me. I prefer to hear male pronouns and male forms of address. But does that make me a man, or just more masculine than feminine? Is my way of "being a man" sufficient? Is "being a man" something I want to do?

I just want to be myself, but at the moment I don't really know who or what my self is.

Part of that is because gender, once you open yourself up the idea that it can be more than just binary, is far from clear-cut. There is no right or wrong other than what your gut instinct tells you - but I'm so unused to trusting myself that I can barely make out what my gut is saying. (Even when it's hungry, I have a tendency to ignore that feeling, too.)

Part of it is that my gender -- my understanding of it and my expression of it to the outside world -- is in flux. I am looking more and more masculine, but I'm not at the point yet where I'm broadly perceived as a man, or even by myself. I feel a disconnect with femaleness and an affinity with maleness, but I'm still learning about both these things. I don't understand women and I don't know enough about men.

And so, I've been having a lot of moments where I don't know where I'm going, or if I'll get there, or why I'm doing this.

But you know what? It's okay.

For the past week or so, I've finally been feeling okay with the uncertainty of my transition. I think I've learned to "hold the questions" -- a phrase that I think comes from Pema Chödrön, but I can't find the exact quote right now. It doesn't mean to stave them off but rather to sit with them, to let the questions be and not seek after answers, to accept uncertainty. After all, nothing is certain in life.

Not even the self. I am not the same person I was in high school, in college, when I was 25, or even five minutes ago. The only way to be yourself is just to be. Yes, the human mind likes to label and categorize. I would feel more rooted if I could proclaim "I am transgender!" or "I am a man!" with absolute certainty. Letting myself drift in the vagueness of "genderqueer" and "masculine" doesn't feel secure. But that's reality. Nothing is certain. Everything changes.

And I think I'm finally learning to relax and go with the flow, at least as far as gender is concerned.

Because more important than the other shore, which I may or may not reach, is what's going on right here, right now, where I am. Where I'm being me, making myself in each moment, just by doing what I'm doing. It's okay to just be, without even knowing how.