“I feel nervous in a way that can’t be named
I dreamt last night of a sign that read, ‘the end of love’
And I remember thinking
Even in my dreaming it was a good line for a song

We’re a family pulled from the flood
You tore the floorboards up
And let the river rush in
Not wash away, wash away

We were reaching in the dark
That summer in New York
And it was so far to fall?
But it didn’t hurt at all
And let it wash away, wash away.” ~ The End of Love, Florence and the Machine

Uncertainty and self-doubt are vices that I’ve never dealt well with. I’m not sure anyone does. When you’ve grown up in a religious culture that considers doubt to be a bad thing, it tends to be particularly unsettling. Unsettled is how I feel. I feel this sense of unsettled urgency about my body right now. I don’t have any answers right now for the how and when of top surgery. I just know my body feels this urgency so strongly sometimes I can’t see straight.

During a rough day battling with dysphoria on Monday I wrote in my journal:

I feel like I need some action steps to move past this but I’m not sure where to begin.

Dysphoria feels vague and deceptive. It both affirms my transness/non binary ness and reaffirms that my body still doesn’t feel like me. And that’s on a good day.

It’s more cunning on the worst days. This week there have been a lot of worse days where my dysphoria makes me cry and feels like the elephant in the room is both shouting at me and lying on my chest reminding me that it’s still there.

It’s an ever present ghost wandering the halls of my mind, waiting to take me out. Sometimes I’m not real sure writing actually helps me but here we are hoping that something does.

Buying new clothes always helps–clothes that feel more me.

I have been treating my breasts like an inconvenience that I can pretend doesn’t exist just to cope and I don’t want to hate it. It just needs a different home other than as a part of my body that feels alien. If only I could look on the outside like I feel on the inside? If I could snap my fingers and make these foreign objects disappear. I can pretend I don’t have a chest but to what end. Binding only helps so much and that can’t last forever.

It feels like an impossible dream. It feels like a fairytale Disney makes a princess movie about. Like I’m not supposed to want to be myself. How dare I be so bold as to want to be free? And yet, I have support from my wife, my therapist, my pastors, my community. So maybe the impossible dream isn’t so impossible after all?

The wisdom of Disney movie grandmothers has been something present on my mind. Moana’s grandmother sending her off on a journey across the sea when everyone tells her not to go. Like if someone could please tell me what to do or at least give me some direction like a queer ancestor I can pray to or something. I could use that.

Maybe if the stars could align just right so this would all make sense. But nothing is ever that easy or that clear. So for now, I live with that uncertainty and look for ways to make those seemingly impossible dreams become reality.