Girl, interrupted
This week I went to Exeter to give a keynote presentation at the Mentally Healthy Schools Conference. This was an outstanding event, exceptionally well organised, and I met so many wondeful people that I was beaming all the way home.
I journeyed up the night before. I stayed in a nice hotel. And I visited a rooftop bar in the evening to get a lychee martini, take in the evening sights, and meet anyone gregarious enough to match my energy.
I spoke with a bartender, flirted a little. My martini was strong enough to resonate around my extremities and emboldened by its spreading warmth I exchanged glances with a man in a distant booth a few times until his companion joined him - a little awkward. And never a confused stare in my direction, no poorly disguised scrutiny of my features, no whispers of confusion or the mocking chuckles I once heard so frequently early in my transition. Instead I find the consistent affirmation of a world that sees me. And under its gaze I am made manifest.
I haven't felt this well, this able to participate in my life since I was first diagnosed. With this adventure I realised that I’m even restarting a process of self discovery that was badly interrupted by Multiple Sclerosis.
When you transition, you have to learn who you have now become. The activities, interests, preferences you had denied yourself for so long because they weren’t ‘typical’ for someone the world thought was a boy, now suddenly become open to you. But without the trial and error, the testing the water, the repeated failures archetypal of puberty, you are somewhat adrift on this new sea. And you must now chart a course. The direction you want to sail depends on desires, interests, fears, that are all suddenly new to you. What you want, what you are capable of, the person you have become, you now get to discover.
Even something as familiar as touch is suddenly a new ocean to chart. Before transition I’d not be able to tolerate physical touch, feeling it alien and even threatening. Early in transition when women would put a hand on my arm or shoulder I’d flinch in response, unable to interpret the act accurately. Now, I’m discovering just how wonderful it is to be touched affectionately. Given that, I begin to wonder whether I am, in fact, quite a tactile, affectionate woman.
Transition changes your emotions, too. Before I transitioned I’d rarely cry, as though I had forgotten how, and trying to force feeling felt like I was as likely to rupture a blood vessel as squeeze a tear from a duct. But now with estrogen coursing through my veins I find that I am emotional. Shrinking (an incredible show on Apple) will make me cry pretty consistently. So now whether I enjoy crying, whether I want to cry and so enjoy the acts that make me emotional, is one that only discovery can answer.
With all the foundations of who I am as a person suddenly profoundly unfamiliar I had to learn my own characteristics. At the same time I needed to learn who I was in relationship. Could I be a good female friend?
Did I know how to be?
I started to internalise the complex language of social interaction as a woman. Learning the sophisticated social rules of femme friendship, making mistakes and constantly improving. It was joyous as I began to learn to spot and respond to subtle social invitations, to even make a few of my own.
I was right in the middle of my discovery when a monster I had not noticed in my peripheral vision leapt upon me.
I was barely conversationally competent in my new womanhood, let alone fluent, when MS set off shaped charges throughout my nervous system.
Multiple sclerosis is like any monumental life change. The context of your life diverges from familiarity so significantly that you are forced to become someone new. I wasn’t someone who liked extreme sports. I was too scared to enjoy rollercoasters all that much, let alone activities that were genuinely life threatening. But MS suddenly forces you to live your entire life on a razor’s edge between life and loss. Being constantly close to catastrophe is terrifying, but for me the choice was between either shutting my eyes and wishing against inevitability for this ceaseless ride to end, or throwing my hands in the air and screaming. I now know fear, I know what to be truly afraid of, and because of that I now fear nothing else.
I wasn’t the kind of person who enjoyed working out, but now here I am climbing St Catherine’s hill pushing my wheelchair in the middle of a 10k roll around the city. MS has made me love friends harder, accept invitations instantly, plan adventures immediately, and just throw myself at life with both hands, knowing that one day I will look back on these times as the ‘good old days’.
But MS didn't just change who I was going to be, it interposed itself right at the moment when I was learning who Cora was, as a woman. And now I need to learn who Cora is as a woman with MS.
So now I find myself sipping a martini in a dark booth in a quiet hotel bar, flirting with the bartender, exchanging glances with someone across the room. I presented in Exeter to a room of 70 people about ‘flourishing through fire’, with the option of telling them I was trans if I so chose, or of keeping it secret. I went out with a new friend to a cocktail bar last night and we chatted and laughed for hours and at the end of the night I hugged her, realised my headphones around my neck were getting in the way of a closer hug, took them off and offered another. Rolling up St Catherine’s hill I met a bunch of people admiring the Rocinante, thinking of her immediately as the mount of an adventurer. And with each interaction I see a version of myself reflected back to me.
And each and every time I find that reflection entirely unfamiliar. But with each interaction I’m learning a little more of the language in which I can narrate my new life. And I'm meeting the characters that will come to define it.
I know roughly how this story ends, and I know that ending will be tragic, as are many. But the ink isn't dry. And in writing this next chapter…