His words ignite countless thoughts and feelings all at once. It's crazy to think I'm a man though, right? Me? Who would ever look at me even if I go all the way with all the medical stuff and actually that seriously?... What about my family? My sisters? I mean it's too late to really do anything about it anyway and I've already lived my whole life like this so it's pointless to try to change it now. It's just more lies and excuses I'm trying to hastily paste my ruins together with. I need to remember everything. I need to feel it. This truth that I've been circling around rages against my doubt, but before I could be swept away again I'm distracted by Sinclair's earnestness.
"I know a really good doctor," He says with all the confidence of a guy who not only knows what he's talking about, but believes he's of immediate help. There's a significant pause as the information he's just given me almost gives me the wrong idea. "Not for myself!" He corrects. Sinclair not only is seeing me, but he accepts it. There's so much more beneath the surface to him, as I learn when he confides to me about his parents. "You can't tell anyone though," He says. My head is spinning.
The Lovells? Do my parents know? Something starts to spout beneath my fear, and I realize it's hope. It continues to grow up through the cracks, blooming fast into an image of a future that I didn't realize I'd been missing. I'm feeling a sense of lightness in my body again, but it's different this time. New. I'm still here with him, albeit overwhelmed with the information he's throwing at me, and I'm in quiet awe that I could feel this weightless and still connected.
Sinclair turns our awkward cafe meeting into my first foray into manhood. Everything else I've learned about men has usually been from being the object of sexual desire or disgust, but that's too much to tackle in a single evening. His idea of showing me the ropes is at the gun range, but I still feel a bit lost in the dig site of my girlhood. The long-neglected and abandoned desire for masculinity still needs to be unearthed under the rubble, and it's not in the smell of propellant when I first start to break it free. The irony of Sinclair being a master archaeologist for helping this be discovered is not lost on me. He slips into regarding me as one of the guys faster than I'm able to even process that I confessed it to him at all, and by the end of watching him walk me through firearm basics I think I start to finally feel it. There's a future that we're all fighting for right now, after all. For the first time in a very long time, I take a calming breath in and try to picture myself in it.
Death has been a lifelong companion of mine, and I'm not sure if it's due to the influence of it's magic or from the years of trying to keep on the sidelines, but slotting myself into a picture of the future has always been tough. Death commands instinct and instict is very much of the current moment. Death has occupied much of my past as well, wrapping itself around my memories and sensations often enough to where I reached out to it willingly. I thought I was running from Death but really it was just becoming a deeper part of me this whole time. I couldn't see a future because I wasn't letting myself actually live in a genuine way.
The girl that I was, with her nervousness and inclination toward hiding in plain sight, protected me the best that she could. She accepted the hits as just part of being a girl, but now I find myself wanting to reject that idea completely. When I see people like Zeta and Iris choose womanhood time and time again, delight in it, find their own paths through it, I feel like I could finally... relax. Watching them move through womanhood only reinforces the difficulties I had with my own; it was never mine to begin with. The more comfortable alternative for me is also the most terrifying to contemplate. Too many unknown moments ahead, but there's not really any choice but forward.
In time, I'll start to realize all of those pieces that never made sense are going to be clearer. I'm going to have to keep remembering them. The girl that I was is going to hate every moment of it; her method of protection was to repress and forget. Alongside trying to learn what kind of man I am, I know that I'll also have to learn the ways my repression led to so much unavoidable pain. All the missed chances, all the times I said and thought I was fine--I'm not sure if I'm ready to mourn it yet, but mourning is always in the wake of Death.
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