Two people walking through the woods, away from the camera
Expansion’s Catalyst (for Syl)
I don’t remember our first meeting. Nothing you used to wear has taken root in my mind. It was the way you held your heart out in front of you, ready to share.
You had long brown hair and eyes that seemed to look deeper into me than I knew possible. I kept noticing you. My attention pulling in your direction like an ocean current. We weren’t quite in the same place. You were a work-scholar, taking classes, paying to be tucked into the California coast for a month. I was an employee. But we’d both chosen this place where ocean waves battered rocky shores and phone booths and a drive into town was the way we stayed connected to the outside world. A place where silence was easier to reach. Where nature invited you in and asked you to stay a while.
I remember when you started questioning your gender. A hushed conversation next to a rowdy game of volleyball by the lodge. I walked with your through your confusion and it called to me, but I didn’t know why then.When you shaved half your head on the front lawn for all to see and everyone called you brave.
You didn’t understand quite why.
There were so many women who came up to you and said you looked amazing, wanted to do what you did but were too scared. They didn’t understand.
This was not a choice. This was your breakthrough.
For me, it was a catalyst.
There were some things that still didn’t feel safe. Like the fact that I’d only ever had sex with a cis man who knew nothing and cared for nothing but his own body. Later, in a quiet tea room you told me that you wish you’d known. You would have shown me what it feels like to be cradled in the arms of someone who cares about your body, your soul, and your pleasure, instead of someone who takes without seeing you.
My love, you were the one who made me realize that gender is not a requirement. It’s not something you can never change. It’s not something that lives inside of you and can never come out.
The word woman only fit when I felt a little bit seen. The spaces that were built for only women held me as safe until I realized I was something more. Something unwanted by some, misunderstood by others, and assumed a woman by most. Raised as women we were trained to hold each other in different ways. From birth we’ve been told what we are good for. Nurturing. Looking beautiful. Supporting others in getting shit done.
I’ve been all of these things and I’ve been none of them. These days, it depends on the way the light catches on dew drops in the mornings. If I stay one thing long enough, I start to shrivel and die from the inside out. I didn’t know that before you.
What if we are none of these, even when we hold womanhood in our hands. What if the system we live in measures us as unworthy and unwanted, or worse, useless, because we expand beyond its restraints.
But I nurture the soil I pot my plants in. I nurture this body that I am stuck with. I nurture the animals that keep me company, the love that fills my home, the partner who tastes like sunshine and cherries.
No husband. No children. No status or wealth. No career or fame. Is it enough?
I nurture my hearts. All the hearts that have grown inside of others because I left a piece of me behind. Like a worm, who can split in two and become two, my heart can split and grow. Even a sliver can blossom if you hold it carefully enough.
My heart has been missing pieces, but it’s grown them back. That doesn’t mean there aren’t scars. I know the place where my heart can fracture so that you take a piece of me with you.
You have a family now, on the other side of the world. You have children and a partner and a smile that goes for days. And I am so proud of all the ways you have become you.
If it weren’t for you, I might have stumbled through years not knowing myself. Although I’ve sliced myself open on thorns and roots, I know how to heal. I learned a little bit from you and a lot from Fox. I know that we all hold so much inside ourselves, the duality of having a soul that cannot be trimmed to fit the space that the world wants us to. I hope I get to meet the ones you love some day, the one’s who’s heart pieces have fused with my own and become something more powerful than I could ever imagine.
Thank you for coming into my life.
Thank you for leaving in the way you needed to.
Thank you for still being you out there.
I can feel the tug of my heart when I think of you.
Maybe you can feel it too.