that fresh feeling
I worry that because I’ve been alone for so long, alone is all I know how to be.
I worry that maybe I don’t actually know how to love. It’s been so long since I’ve really had the chance.
I worry, seeing women together, that I’ll never be accepted–by them? By myself?
I worry that I have no idea how a woman should be because I’ve had so few experiences that a woman my age should have had, and that, because so many people don’t see me as a woman, I can’t have those experiences, so I’ll always be fumbling in the dark.
I worry that I’ll ruin something that isn’t ready by rushing into it because I’m desperate.
I worry that I won’t give something a chance because I’m scared of getting hurt.
I worry about how it sometimes feels like, just by asking a woman who loves women to consider the possibility of loving a woman like me, I’m asking her to reconsider her entire understanding of the world, I’m challenging her entire concept of who she might want to love or might be capable of loving, since it seems that being able to love a trans woman as a woman is a radical act that so many people just aren’t capable of, and because love is already so hard to find in this world, I wish I didn’t bring to it all these other things that plenty of people–even wonderful people–just can’t deal with.
So sometimes I want to run and hide.
But I also want to be up for it. I think of how in her great piece "No, That Wasn’t Our Happiness,“ Masha quotes Jeanette Winterson: “It’s a sin this not being ready. This not being up for it.” And how the other day Julia quoted from this post, also by Jeanette Winterson:
In truth, the life that is ours is the one we make, and that includes our partners. If we really have been criminally careless with the love of our life, and driven him away, or let her go – well, then – we deserve to be unhappy, at least until that unhappiness prompts such a change in us that the miracle of a second chance (with someone else) is not thrown away.
I worry, but I want to be ready. I want to be up for the possibility of something.
Someone great sends me a photo. She tells me I’m gonna love it, and I do. It’s just her on a hike, in front of some breathtaking scenery, smiling a sincere and contagious smile. She says not to share it with anyone because she thinks she looks grungy. I tell her I think she looks beautiful.
Notes
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mashatupitsyn said: <3 I worry too.
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