I’m writing this sitting in my best friend’s living room. In the Before Times, I’d make the trip from Eugene to Portland once a month. When I went left PDX in February 2020, I did not know it would be 15 months before I’d return.
Gwen and I walk into a bar. Wait behind the taped-off area for the bartender to be free. He greets us. By that point, my mask has started to feel like I’m sucking air through a sauna and I’ve grown nervous about being out in the world again. We order drinks and then I very smartly ask: Do you have menus? Bartender, on his way to grab said menus: No, we’re one of those restaurants…
I had always wanted a deeper voice so when my voice first started to change, I was giddy. It started early in the process of my medical transition and was soon cracking at odd moments and completely unpredictable and unreliable. I laughed, or at the very least smiled if I had to restrain myself, every single time my voice shifted mid-sentence. I sounded like a teenager going through puberty. Half of that sentence is accurate. I was, indeed, going through puberty but it was my second go-round and I was thirty years beyond being a teenager.
In what ways do tools change how we think? We’ve all heard the expression that to a hammer every problem looks like a nail. But, of course, it isn’t the hammer with the myopic problem; it’s the wielder of the tool.
I am alive today right now – this day and because of that, I have the choice to add to the overall goodness of the world at large. Not because I am compensating for being worthless, not because I must earn my place, but simply because I have it in me to do good and the choice to bring that forth into the world.
I sat on the couch at my therapist’s office, back when we could still go into offices for therapy so I know it was before March of 2020. How much before, I won’t hazard to guess. But it wasn’t all that long ago. I don’t know what the topic of the hour was, only that I had one of those ugly crying moments as I heard myself say “if only I could make the voices…