Thursday, July 12, 2012

Do we ever know

For the first time in a long time, I am teetering on the edge of a cliff, and it is scary, but not for once in a bad way.  I'm not worried about my family disowning me. I think they won't. Not anymore. They did that once, and we've grown together, and are beyond doing it a second time, although it might come as a shock.  I've recently reconnected with my sister, and she might not be ok with this, that thought is scary, but scary-sad, not scary-terrifying.

I am used to standing on the edge of the abyss feeling like I want to throw myself in. I am used to struggling with feeling suicidal, a lot.  I didn't realize how much, until I suddenly don't feel suicidal anymore.

I remember figuring out I was queer, feeling terrified that someone might know - telling the first person that I 'might' be - the relief, the joy, the satisfaction at finally having words for all of me.  I never imagined feeling so tongue tied again.

I don't really have any always statements, I've been around a long time, and have used most of my non-gender-conforming stories to prove my queerness, or my dykeness, or something else already...
...I used to wear men's clothes as a teenager; spent most of my adolescence dreaming androgyny like most 80s punk/mod aspiring fatties (but the boobs got in the way); I did 80's preppie christian drag, which was pretty asexual, and then quickly went to a school with a uniform before having to form any more fashion sense; I had an epistolary romance with a girl in my grade 5 class, where I pretended to be Boy George's Jr., and she herself, until we got caught, etc...

Where it got confusing was the imagining of 'junk.'  I don't hate mine, it works fine, but I'd prefer the other.  It was the imagining of sex roles that confused the fuck out of me - see, I imagined myself on the bottom, like every good girl; except, I thought, with a woman on Top... but then I tried a man on Top, and that was hot too, and butch women are hella hot... and then, well, me with a cock, being validated as a boy with a butch woman on Top is pretty much heaven, and that's when my brain fell apart.

Because my cock not a sex toy, in fact it's not a toy at all.  And then the boy energy didn't leave...
Other people started seeing it, and validating it which was scary - no, I thought, I'm a grrl... and then I thought about it some more, and all of the carefully constructed walls started to crumble.

Here's the heresy - I don't hate my cunt. It works well, and it has given me a lot of pleasure over the years, but all of the language I use to refer to my sexual desire is generally penis-based... "I have a hard-on for x", "jerking off" etc.

I understand that for a lover of women the ability to make someone "wet" is a signifier of their prowess, and that regarding my physiology, it's a sign of how hot I am for them, but applied to me, it sounds wrong, and has the power to ruin sex if I don't re-code "wet" into "hard" or "hot" or some other gender neutral or cock-related language.

I'm scared to be a boy because I'm not the right kind of boy. I'm girly. I like pink, and shiny things, and sparkles, and glitter, and probably still even heels.

I'm scared of losing my chosen family, even though they're the most awesome people in the world, and I can't imagine them deciding not to love me anymore over this.

I'm scared of losing the woman I'm finally letting myself fall in love with... because she sees me, and I'm not awful to her, but I'm not exactly what she thought she wanted either.

I'm scared of losing my femme bf-bf.  If I'm a boy, then what happens?

I'm scared. 

I haven't felt scared of how people will react to me being me in a long time. 
I remember this.