Gender Jumper

ganked from another conversation:

I mean maybe it just reflects that gender is contextual performance, and in some parts of our lives we were performing for the audience and some parts we're performing for ourselves.

I changed my name around the same time I started openly identifying as genderfluid, and even though I treated them as separate journeys they intermingled a lot. I have no problem referring to that earlier version of myself (to whit: I already refer to that era in the third person like another entity rather than a deadname, per se) as a "boy", but explicitly BOY: he was young and naïve and ignored his genderfuckery and a lot of other phenomena that have since come to define me.

I also think (and I've heard this from several other nonbinary folks of various flavors) there's something fluid about youth that is expected to become rigid and playless (antonym of playful that I just made up but should probably use somehow...) that is not available to "men" and "women". Gender constructs are socially prescribed, and I've often felt that cultures who are more rigid about binary genders are creating the need for third genders, whereas if a culture allowed for a less rigid spectrum some portion of trans folks may just be able to vibe within those broader, more flexible categories.

TL;DR: a culture can have a finite number of genders or it can have rigid gender boundaries, but it cannot have both. I envision this as a giant, flexible tent held up with two poles vs. an estate with two locked mansions and thousands of tiny houses being built on the lawn.

I had some wins tonight. One silly, one actually really important to me, but I sort of accosted my disabled partner on her way to bed to tell her about them and was really hurt that she wouldn't pause to acknowledge or congratulate me.

I probably have a couple of friends I could pester this late, but that's not really what I need. My friends are always supportive, they're just not always around. My partner is supportive, she just isn't always... present (and it has nothing to do with me when she can't be). But I don't really have extended family any more and the same can be said for community, and I'm so eager to be someplace new and try again...

But I'm also aware that's a lot to put on new people. And a lot to put on myself. And still carries some assumption of stability that may not be within our control.

I've gotten really good at needing very little social support -- not in a way that minimizes myself, just more rooted, durable, and efficient. I wanted a moment to feel excited and not be thinking about how to leverage it into marketing myself.

But I guess it's time to move on and think about how to leverage it into marketing...

*****

As I was writing that last line, she came out and asked for a redo. We're okay. Living with chronic pain is like this sometimes. Learning to be judicious with how much I depend on her has made me a stronger, more sensitive person overall and I wouldn't give that up. She's there when it matters. I just miss having a larger intimate network.

A response to this assessment vis à vis leaders we have personally known.

I had three mentors when I worked in Washington, D.C. They each influenced and inspired me in distinct niches: one professionally, one personally, and one metaphysically, but they all shared similar qualities as leaders (and were, in fact, all directors at the organization). I think what first drew me to them at the time was a casual insightfulness: not only were they learned and perceptive about the shared world in ways that I could not discern at the time, but they were also each very open and diplomatic with their thought processes: you always knew where you stood with them and you always knew why you stood there. I never saw any of them angry or even particularly irritated, just shrewd and prepared. I wanted that kind of poise.

Knowing what I know now, I absolutely believe they were all participatory leaders (which was my result in the Leadership Style Survey) and what I saw then as insight was actually just a honed humility: they knew what they were capable of, they knew what partners and opposition were capable of, and they came to every conversation prepared for both the best and the worst case scenario without being attached to the outcome: they fought for what they thought was best, they listened and negotiated, and they accepted the results. There might have been some compromises along the way, but I don’t think I ever saw them “lose” in those spaces, and indeed I think another way to describe “participatory” leadership is “noncompetitive”, which is a core value we all shared with the organization that employed us. We’re not looking to “win”, we’re trying to help everyone succeed.

I've found myself revisiting one of my earliest quirky, reflexive metaphors several times of late, and flamingsword asked me to explain it. I think I have, at times, called it "The Lifesaver Metaphor", which is more poetic but technically incorrect twice over.

TWO LIFEGUARDS

Two Lifeguards found each other early in life. They had both helped so many people in their brief lives that they saw in one another a shared drive to help others and quickly build a loving relationship out of it. While it wasn't perfect, it often felt too good to be true. "How can another person see me so well?" they each thought.

In celebration of their love, they went on a cruise, but late the first night they both felt overboard. No one on the ship knew they were gone, and since they were the ones who checked on everyone else, who knew how long it would take for someone to notice?

They looked at each other. There was nothing else to see.

Surely my lover will save me, each thought.

They looked at each other. There was nothing else to see.

Almost at the same moment, they spoke:
"We must swim to shore," said one lifeguard. "There are islands all around us, surely we can find land and get help."
"We must stay where we are," said the other lifeguard. "Someone will notice eventually and they will come find us."

They looked at each other. There was nothing else to see.

Surely my lover will save me, each thought.

They looked at each other. There was nothing else to see.

Did they fight? Did they repeat themselves? Did they hurt one another trying to prove something to themselves? Almost certainly.

They looked at each other. There was nothing else to see.

Their thoughts remained in sync: Surely my lover will save me... My lover will save me... My lover can save me...

They looked at each other. There was nothing else to see.

My lover can't save me...

Their parting barely qualified as a goodbye or a break-up, for by this time each was entirely focused on self-preservation.

They didn't look at each other. There was nothing else to say.

One lifeguard swam away. The other lifeguard stayed in place.

And with a little effort, both plans worked: each lifeguard was rescued exactly as hoped. Once they knew the other person was safe, they did not reconnect.

Their lives diverged rapidly.
The lifeguard who swam away continued to find power in action. The lifeguard who stayed continued to find power in staying still. They each helped so many people yet protected themselves a little more than before.

With each passing year, the other lifeguard and the falling overboard and the rescue would take up a smaller space in their memories.

They stopped looking for one another. There was nothing else to see.

A dear friend who seemingly drifted out of my life for the better part of a decade has reached out a couple times in recent years. She asked me for a phone call, and today we made it happen. I thought maybe she wanted to talk about future travels or just kind of generally keeping in touch.
But after a quick catch-up, she hit me with the question I didn't know I so desperately needed to be asked:
"So what happens to your life after caregiving?"
The hour that followed was only the beginning, but when I tell you how much I needed this conversation with this person in this way, it should sound like navigating by the stars for the first time or harvesting fruit you didn't know you planted. Our lives were starkly parallel in those days, and in some ways it divided us. I'm not even sure either of us knew what she was seeking from me until her healing leveled up and she thought to schedule this call and ask this question.
I really needed this. And there will be more in the future.
[Wipes away another tear.]

I've never had a consistent best friend for more than a few years at a time.

( Backstory )

So we finally talked last night, and it was interesting how many of the same words and possibilities we were considering: her therapist asked if she wanted to de-escalate and she said no, but she also acknowledged some baggage with the term "best friend" and elaborated on just how easy it is for her to receive neutral statements as pressure. I told her that the chaos in the air tells me we're only going to have a harder time connecting away from text, and that my efforts to document my mental health cycles are intended to allow people to choose their level of engagement based on predictable dynamics, but I'm not sure she groks how literal I mean these things. I fluently shift between hyper-abstract and hyper-literal communication and it never occurs to me that someone might not be keeping up.

(Echos of Foucault, who must be read slowly because he writes theory in deliberately obtuse ways to foster caution and discourage misunderstanding; my unique style of communication intimidates many because they think it's formal or hyper-cerebral, but it's when I let my guard down and attempt to be casual with people I trust that the other person gets devastated by some offhand observation delivered without tact because I constantly process heavy stuff and fail to anticipate how triggering it can be for friends.)

It was a mutual conversation, but the agenda centered her worries and needs and left little room for mine. B tapped out after 90 minutes, literally starting to lose her voice as I rushed a couple of clarifying questions. I have a few action steps to hopefully nurture things, but I'm in no hurry to lean on her or be casual with my enthusiasm (which managed to trigger this latest explosion because I wanted to say I loved a book but didn't pay attention to punctuation or tone).

My enthusiasm may be the purest and most innocent part of myself. (I credit it to my best friend from 8th-9th grade, who taught me to love learning and be shameless in doing so. I last saw him in 2015, just before he moved back to Europe and a couple of years before I closed a lot of social doors because the people on the other sides rarely checked on me.) In person or over the phone, there's never any doubt that my clumsiness comes from excitement, but its impossible to adequately convey over text. The reflexivity continues.

Had a heart-to-heart with my nesting partner tonight about recurring issues with my best friend. Thematically, it was surprising how much of the process echoed conversations we'd become fluent in long ago regarding romantic relationships: compatibility, natural ebbs and flows, "price of admission," and of course how difficult it is to de-escalate with love rather than just break up and never speak to them again.

And de-escalation looks like what needs to happen here.

This person has been my go-to for 4-6 of the past 8 years, when we went from distant Face-friends to bonding over shared caregiving traumas. Our friendship really solidified when we each started to confront our toxic fam-os and experiment with new boundaries, and deepened further through COVID solidarity, health scares, new phases of queerness, and the nonconsensual detachment of people who were once dear to us.

But sometime last year, she made the decision to stat processing more of that stuff with her therapist, and instead of that freeing up time to share interests or laugh and sing, it led to her calling less. And being more sensitive about when and how I asked to connect. And losing her temper more often for perceived slights (some of them were triggers rooted in childhood trauma, and I never tried to treat them otherwise, but it was like she needed to stay mad at me for weeks, even in instances where we misunderstood each other entirely, as part of her process).

I'd like to think I'd have a higher tolerance for it if she were more self-aware about it, but it's just given me more time to contemplate our incompatibilities: she compartmentalizes everything (sometimes baiting me with intentions and then snapping at me when I check on those intentions) and I'm pretty much the opposite; if I tell her I love something with the wrong emoji or punctuation, I'm talking down to her, but when she specifically says the behavior bothers her because it's something men do and I gently remind her that such phrasing is dysphoric for me I'm just making things worse.

My partner surprised and delighted me tonight when she asked, "She knows you're in love with her, right?" LOL and I thought I was so good at keeping that to myself! But the truth is, I fell out of feels last fall, when after the first of these squabbles I started to ask these questions. At the time, I thought it would make me a better friend -- and indeed, I feel like I've been more chill since, no longer wasting even neuron on some sort of misguided hope that a) we could be together some day and b) it wouldn't be a total shitshow if we were -- but her behavior hasn't really changed. Everything has to be on her terms, and the busier her life gets the harder it is to know what those terms are. She always initiates the schedule, and when she complains and I make suggestions, she gets frustrated and gives up.

(My nesting partner is magical and I'm so grateful we get each other this deeply. We are so lucky to be such a great team.)

All that solidarity and listening she used to offer in exchange for solidarity and listening through her problems? It's just not there, and it's inconvenient of me to ask when I should look for it. When we do hang out, it's more rushed and less deep.

What I don't think she sees and I do is that the chaos factor of the world around us is ramping up, and things are only going to get worse from here. Our best friends aren't just the people we can open up to when we have plenty of space to be vulnerable, but the people we have to trust not to mean us harm even when we're mad or confused by them, because there's other shit to deal with and no time for grudges and meticulous processing.

I have three best friends, and something I realized about this person (and to a different, more contained extent with the other two) is that I envision that nearing the level of platonic life partner. Whereas I think she only sees it as someone who is available to hold her when she's triggered. If, over time, her life leads to fewer triggers (and I'm so grateful this seems to be the case), I don't think she knows how to make space otherwise. I've never met her kids. I've never met her husband. We've never carpooled. To the best of my knowledge, she never knew I was in, nor now out, of love with her.

We just don't process the same way. Our ideals look very different. And in the trenches of 2024, she's not someone I'm going to be able to entrust in my vulnerable moments.

So I'm going to de-escalate, like I should have done last year. I don't know if I'll say anything or just stop trying (which is more cruel?), but I do know that I'm very content with the draw on my other close friendships and I don't feel like it would be appropriate or wise to try to shift the emotional load I used to save for her onto others. So I'm in the market for new friends, especially a new bestie. I even set up a profile on Bumble's friend app, 'cause why not?

Just learned that the person who first coined "neuroqueer" isn't someone whose work I want to be boosting, but I haven't heard any viable alternatives, so I'm wrestling with that.

There is a demonstrated correlation between neurodivergent traits and LGBTQ+ identities, so it only makes sense to have an intersectional term for someone whose neurodivergence affects their interest/ability in performing assigned gender. I doubt she's going to make any money off it at this point, but is that justification enough for continuing to use it?