One More Spell.
On life dysphoria, knowing where I’m going, and working with what I have.
I was doing really well today. Actually, I’ve been doing really well for a while. The dysphoria has been mostly under control. I’ve been happy. Not perfectly happy, because I am apparently constitutionally incapable of leaving well enough alone, but happy. Happy. Moving. Consistent. Unstoppable, even.
Then two of my friends decided to have gender revelations at approximately the same time. One has gone gender fluid. The other just came out completely. And I am happy for them. I really am. But somewhere in the middle of being happy for them, a tiny voice inside me said:
I want the next chapter, too.
Well, shit. There went Unstoppable. Except that’s not quite right. I’m still Unstoppable. I just know dysphoria really, really well.
Gender dysphoria wasn’t even the first dysphoria I learned to recognize. Age dysphoria got there first. I hadn’t really looked at myself in a mirror for years. Not looked looked. Mirrors were utilitarian things. Is there toothpaste on my face? Is my hair approximately where human hair is supposed to be? Fine. Moving on.
Then I looked. Somehow the person looking back had gotten old while the person doing the looking hadn’t. That was a mindfuck. But age dysphoria opened a much bigger door, because once I started comparing the person I thought I was with the person in the mirror, I started comparing the life I thought I was supposed to have with the one surrounding me.
My marriage hadn’t gone the way I thought it would. Work hadn’t gone the way I thought it would. Family hadn’t gone the way I thought it would. Very little had. That was life dysphoria. I’d felt it before, even during some of the rough patches in my marriage, although I didn’t necessarily have a name for it then. It was that painful distance between the life you’re living and the life you thought you would have.
By the time gender dysphoria regained a foothold, frankly, I was an expert. Age Dysphoria had already taught the introductory course. Life Dysphoria handled the advanced seminar. Gender Dysphoria showed up expecting to ruin my day and discovered I already had tenure. Unfortunately, expertise doesn’t provide immunity.
Body dysphoria and I have been negotiating for a while now, and we have strategies. Outfits help. Jewelry helps. Nails help a surprising amount. I’ve spent months changing the way I stand, walk, sit, and move. I’ve worked on my voice. I’ve learned makeup. I’ve learned what clothes make me feel good and which ones make me stare into the mirror and wonder who approved this particular disaster. Laser helps. Hormones definitely help.
Also, I have boobs now.
Actual boobs. This remains important information. They’re still figuring out exactly what kind of boobs they intend to be when they grow up, but they’re unquestionably boobs. I wear adult bras. Sometimes the girls stay where the bra manufacturer intended them to stay. Sometimes they declare independence. We are working through our differences.
The point is, when gender dysphoria comes knocking, I have things I can do. Paint my nails. Put on earrings. Practice my voice. Wear something underneath my clothes that nobody else knows is there. Stand differently. Move differently. Shave. Look in the mirror and find one thing that feels like me. None of those things finishes the journey, but they buy time. And sometimes buying time is exactly what I need.
Today wasn’t really about my body.
Today was life dysphoria.
One of my students spent about forty minutes today ending practically every sentence she said to me with “girl.” I didn’t notice. That’s the funniest part. My friends call me girl so often now that my brain apparently just filed it under NORMAL HUMAN CONVERSATION and continued with its day.
Eventually she laughed and I realized what she’d been doing. Oh. Ohhhhh. I told her to stop because it was inappropriate. She apologized. That was the end of it. Except somewhere inside me another little voice whispered, “Girl.” Shut up.
Because that’s the problem. I know who I am. I don’t need another outfit to prove it. I don’t need another pair of earrings. I don’t need longer nails or better makeup or a more feminine voice to convince myself that Amber exists.
I am Amber.
What hurts is the life I’m not living yet.
That’s what was different about the life dysphoria that hit me today. The old version looked backward: This isn’t how my life was supposed to turn out. Today’s version looks forward: I know how I want my life to turn out. Why can’t I live it yet?
I can see it. That’s what makes this so damned difficult. I know the life I want. I know the path I wish I could take to get there. Wake up as Amber. Get dressed as Amber. Go to work as Amber. Come home as Amber. Meet somebody new as Amber. Stop calculating which version of myself is appropriate for which room. Stop having modes.
Girl mode. Boy mode. Tactical mode. Although, honestly, boy mode has become increasingly theoretical. At this point tactical mode mostly means skinny jeans, suspiciously nice nails, earrings, a cardigan and plausible deniability. Apparently nobody informed the tactical department.
And here’s the part that’s difficult to admit: the life I’m living right now is my choice. I could make different choices. I’m choosing not to. I have reasons. Good ones. Money. Work. Divorce. Moving. Career. Security. Timing. All those deeply boring adult considerations that refuse to disappear simply because I finally figured out who I am and would very much like to get on with it.
I’ve chosen a slower road because I believe it gives me a better chance of reaching the life I actually want. That’s sensible. Responsible, even. And sometimes I fucking hate it, because knowing why you’re waiting doesn’t make waiting feel any less like waiting.
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That’s life dysphoria. My body isn’t screaming, “This isn’t me.” My life is whispering, “This isn’t how I want to live.” And unlike my body, I can’t put earrings on it.
Tomorrow I have to administer the ACT. For approximately thirty seconds tonight, I considered wearing my dinosaur skirt. Not seriously. Probably. The dinosaur skirt has its own problem anyway: it’s too big now. There are worse problems.
Then I started experimenting with my Halloween costume. I have a black hat. Not technically a witch hat. More of a gentleman’s hat that has recently been informed it is undergoing a gender transition of its own. I put it toward the back of my head. Better. Tilted it. Oh. There I am.
Add the goth dress. Corset. Black petticoat. Boots. Crow skull earrings. Some chains I’m 3D printing because apparently I have reached the financial stage of my life where I manufacture my own jewelry from molten plastic. Witch. Definitely witch.
I even had AI show me what the whole thing might look like with a clean shave, some makeup, and a more feminine shirt. AI took some liberties with my waist. Apparently Artificial Intelligence believes I have been secretly doing Pilates six hours a day. I have not.
But the boobs? Pretty much accurate.
I’ll take the win. And that’s what all these little things do. The outfits. The jewelry. The nails. The mannerisms. The voice. They’re things I can control. They don’t give me the life I want. They buy me time until I can get there.
Which brings us, naturally, to dessert.
I have these cookies. They’re crappy cookies. I don’t particularly like them, but food is food and I am currently engaged in a campaign to eat down my freezer and pantry while spending as little money as possible. Throwing away perfectly edible crappy cookies would therefore be unacceptable.
So I took four of them. I added peanut butter. I added grape jelly. Grape. There are standards. I mashed everything together and formed it into a log.
Then I looked at it.
Oh no.
It was a poop log. There was simply no other intellectually honest description available. Crappy cookies had become a poop log. The universe had achieved semantic closure. I put it in the freezer.
And somewhere between turning an old hat into a witch hat and turning cookies I didn’t particularly want into a dessert I absolutely did, I realized that this is pretty much what I’m doing right now. I’m working with what I have.
That made me think about a song I love, Sonara’s Call the Storm. The woman in the song is spent. She’s tired. Her magic is nearly gone. Her army is surrounded and the elders have essentially given up. She doesn’t suddenly discover that she has infinite power hidden somewhere. She has one spell left. One more storm she can call. And she has to trust that if she gives everything she has to create that opening, the people behind her will be there to back her up.
She has one more spell.
That’s the part that got me tonight. I think I’ve been treating “Unstoppable” as though it means inexhaustible. It doesn’t. I can be tired and still be Unstoppable. I can be dysphoric and still be Unstoppable. I can look at the road ahead and desperately wish I could skip a few miles and still be Unstoppable. Sometimes being Unstoppable just means looking at what I have left and saying, Okay. One more spell.
And I’m not standing there alone, either. I have people behind me now. Friends who know me. People who see me. A community I didn’t have before. They can’t call the storm for me, and they can’t walk this road for me, but when I need them, they’re there. Maybe part of becoming Unstoppable was finally learning that I don’t have to provide all the force myself.
I can’t have the entire life I want tonight, but I can have pieces of it. An outfit. A necklace. Red nails. A different way of walking. A voice that gets a little closer every time I use it. A body that is slowly becoming home. A black hat that apparently just needed to be tilted five degrees. Four crappy cookies. Peanut butter. Grape jelly.
None of it magically gives me the next chapter, but it gets me through this one. And maybe that’s what Happy. Moving. Consistent. actually means. Happy doesn’t mean I never hurt. Moving doesn’t mean I get to take the shortest path. Consistent doesn’t mean I never get tired of walking it. It means I know where I’m going.
Today I watched two friends move forward and thought, I want my turn. I still do. God, I do. But wanting the next chapter doesn’t mean I have to tear this one out of the book. I’ve made my choices. I have my reasons. They’re good ones.
I know the life I want. I know the path I wish I could take to get there.
But wish in one hand and put a PB&J poop log in the other. See which one fills up first.
So tonight I’m going to take a shower. I’m going to shave. I’m going to put on something comfortable. I’m going to eat half of my ridiculous frozen creation and put the other half in the refrigerator for tomorrow, because apparently even poop logs require responsible meal planning.
It won’t cure life dysphoria. It won’t make tomorrow arrive faster. It won’t give me the life I want tonight. But it made me laugh. And I’m still here. Happy, even when happiness gets complicated. Moving, even when I deliberately take the longer road. Consistent, even when I’m impatient as hell.
And still fucking Unstoppable.
And that one more spell? Sometimes it’s a PB&J poop log.
