Beyond: One Soul, Seeking Another

This is a messy post, a jumble of thoughts and feelings preceding my departure for Thailand tomorrow.

This morning, as I was on a bus on my way to pick up some X-rays–the last little thing I needed to do in preparation for my departure for Thailand tomorrow–my phone shuffled up the song “Beyond.” Random Access Memories was the album of my 2013, and in it, I saw a story of emotional awakening that mirrored much of my own journey over the course of the year. An earlier song, “Within,” is all about being trapped inside yourself. As I wrote in May, “Within is where I’ve spent most of my life. Cowering from the pain of gender dysphoria. Curled up into a ball. Wandering the landscapes inside me. But in such isolation, can you ever define yourself? Can you come to know who you are?”

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Something Felicia said.

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“Beyond" is the escape from within. The entire album is concerned with connection, with love, and on "Beyond,” we hear:

“Remember: love’s our only mission.
This is the journey of the soul." 

As I prepare to leave for Thailand, I remember how I wrote in my post Happily Single in November:

I spent seven years alone, single, basically wanting nothing. What kind of life was I living? What can such a life mean? Now everything that is just for me feels hollow. It’s as if one day I felt the weight of all my lonely days and years stretching out behind me and saw before me a montage of meaningless mornings and meaningless nights flashing forward through the years and decades ahead. I realized that even the tremendously self-involved process of transition would have been utterly pointless and meaningless if it didn’t bring me to a place where I was better able to connect with and love others.

So yes, I’m going to Thailand alone, but only because I believe that the journey of my transition is necessary for me to connect with others in a way that’s deep and real and true. I escaped from within but I found myself alone. And I understood that the whole point of fighting so hard to get out of the cage in the first place was to connect–really, deeply connect–with others. Maybe with one amazing person in particular. In No, That Wasn’t Our Happiness, Masha Tupitsyn writes:

Life is regrets that we live with or don’t have at all. Life is people we should miss but don’t. Should love but don’t. Love but don’t love, as in taking loving action. Love as how you love. Love that we find but let go of for no reason other than because we don’t know how to be worthy of what and who happens to us (Deleuze). Because we think so much more will happen to us. Because we think there is no difference between this and that. Him or her. Because we no longer think any experience or person is singular (my mother). Because the world has run out of goals. Because it is the death of grand ideas. Because we think we have so many chances, we don’t even want chances. Thinking of something or someone as a chance is a very romantic way of thinking to begin with. There is a debt involved. Readiness is required. Try finding someone who thinks that way. Try. Try. Try.

I thought of C as a chance, even though she probably wasn’t, not for me, not really. In any case, I don’t think I have many chances at all.

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Something I said.

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I’ll have a lot of time to myself in Thailand. I know that sometimes we need to focus on ourselves for a while so that we can be the sort of people who are ready and capable of loving others. I don’t know if more time to myself is what I need, exactly, but I like to think that even though this is a solitary trip, the point of it, like the point of everything related to my transition, is love.

I can’t stop listening to this track. I think it makes a fitting theme song for this particular stage of my journey.

Make love, y'all. Thank you for reading. I’ll see you on the flipside.

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