First Blog Jitters, Jealousy, Dysphoria, Pride.

Nathan: Dig if you will a picture. . .

Nick: of us, on a walk in the woods, passing by lakes over-filled with lily pads and algae. It is Pride Sunday in Minneapolis—so naturally Prince is on our mind—Roe V. Wade has been overturned two days before, and for reasons less related to those two things and more related to having flown on a plane in the last week, we are walking and noticing the sharp pressure in our chest, the numbness of our back, our inability to find our spine. 

Abbott: Omg. So serious. Much literary. All work and no play over here with Sir Nikolas. 

Nick: *gestures generally.* See? This is what I have to work with. 

Morgan: Okay, let’s find the middle road here. This is a together-process. 

Jeremiah: We can be focused without being stiff. Man, that echoes out over many levels of our life but for the moment, Nick, I’m looking at you. 

Nick: *smiles, including his eyes so that when he rolls them it feels loving.* Will it ever be anything except circuitous?

Morgan: Probably not.

Graham: So we were on this walk and we had several different trains of thought in our head at once.

Mack: You might say: many trains arriving at the same platform. A regular pile-up. 

Jeremiah: and a stiff, dislocated body. 

Nick: *nods* and a stiff dislocated body. 

Lilian: Don’t forget the pileated woodpecker! *Several other kids nod enthusiastically.* 

Nick: Yes! We saw a pileated woodpecker on our walk. That’s the first time we’ve seen one. [pause]. Is there anything else you’d like to add about it?

Lilian: No, that’s okay. Not now. *skips off.*

Nick: One of the trains on the metaphorical platform is labeled Pride, and on it sits the memories and sensations that come up around that annual celebration of resistance, and also of proclaiming authentic self. 

Diana: There is this whole other room of conversation about how the professionalized workplace/adult world turns everyone into cardboard cutouts of themselves from roughly 9am to 5pm each day, and how Pride is this reminder that many people feel and desire a weird, queer technicolor life experience that is like: less work, more play (several of our internal kids feel enthusiastic about that—capes and sunglasses have been donned), but that all is too far afield of what we’re trying to dig in to here. 

Nick: Right. 

Jeremiah: Double right.

Dan: What we’re trying to dig into here, is that during the month, and especially the weekend, of  Pride we feel this extra impulse to “authentically” display who we are on the inside on the outside.

Lucia: *coughs* I think what we’re trying to dig into is the fact that Pride triggers the boys’ desire to go back on testosterone and pass. Basically the boys feel jealous of other trans guys who pass or who clearly are on T. You all are jealous of their muscles and their facial hair and their voices. It feels like they get to grow up and you don’t. Am I getting it right? 

Morgan: It’s a little more complicated than that. Not all of the boys see it as a black and white issue. 

Jeremiah: None of the boys see it as a black and white issue, or even a passing issue. It’s a resonance issue. And a pain issue.

Lucia: For you. 

Jeremiah: For me, yes.

Graham: If I may interject. 

Nick: Please. 

Graham: Part of our discomfort is jealousy that other people can’t see who we are on the inside, distinct from the system. They see our body, which is a vessel and a part of us that we all love, and which we have adorned in a way that feels like a pretty good compromise, but there’s still discomfort for the guys, with our voice, with how we look in photos and sometimes in the mirror, and this feeling like, I don’t know, like we don’t get to grow up into how we see ourselves, that being on T and getting to go through more of those puberty changes might help us to feel grown up. 

Lucia: Do you think that’s true? I foresee an extended and perhaps eternal adolescence for you all, related to T. Like, just a lot of boppy joy related to feeling your masculinity—and beyond that your selves— reflected in the body: that sweet resonance. 

Graham: Yeah. That would feel really, really nice. And, we bumped up against a scary- feeling limit the last time we were on testosterone, when Nick and Jeremiah were really pushing for us to all be on board with a more binary-looking transition. We increased our T shot over time, and found the threshold where the changes triggered a lot of grief in the girls: loss of voice, and loss of . . . felt-sense in the body. As a guy that worried me. It wouldn’t feel like me, I think, without us. 

Lucia: Oooooh, you just opened a door into a whole room of conversation about shared consciousness and integration. The animating question there goes something like: “are we real People if we aren’t fully separate?

Nick: TLDR, yes we’re real. 

Lucia: Maybe that’s another blog post? 

Nick: Probably. It’s definitely a question that we’ve spent a lot of time worrying over. 

Jeremiah: It’s definitely a question that you’ve spent a lot of time worrying over. 

Lucia: I would point out, J, that your attempt at resolving the “am I real” anxiety was to try and take over the body and live your own life with the rest of us shoved into a closet somewhere within our mental landscape. 

Jeremiah: Point taken *hands in the air*. Though I would say, isn’t blocking the rest of us out and taking over the front what you did with us during middle school? 

Lucia: SO WE COULD SURVIVE THE THIN TIMES, JEREMIAH. WE ARE NOW IN THE BUSINESS OF ABUNDANCE.

Jeremiah: Omg is that a sense of humor I detect? Loving this on you, sincerely. 

Nick: OK. *hand gesture of finality*. Where I think this brings us to is the idea of the body as a compromise. 

Jeremiah: Oooh and here is where the trains collide. 

Graham: Okay yep, we’re back on track. Pun not intended but I’m totally a pun guy so— 

Nick: *lips thin with dramatized irritation.* Dear reader, we find ourselves returned to the initiating metaphor of this post. The body as a compromise is an idea situated on a new train of thought. Disembarking from Pride, we enter the train cars of Somatic Experience and Healing, not to mention Parts Work. And will we go into any of those topics in depth here? No! It would be a veritable book and I don’t have the stamina for it atm. 

Jeremiah: Baby. Let’s get you some caffeine. 

[pause]

Nick: *stirs his tea dramatically.* Thank you. Okay back to it—

We've internalized a lot of uncompromising sentiment around queer pride, like: “be your true self,” “be who you are,” “don't make compromises.” And we agree, in that it has only hurt us to distort who we are to make other people feel better.

Jeremiah: But how to tell if we are distorting ourselves or simply adapting to relate to the people around us?  

The thing about our plurality is that different selves come forward around different people. Sometimes that feels healthy and sometimes we empathize with others to disarm them. 

Lucia: Appeasement is a useful skill for a visibly gender non-conforming person to have living in this world. Generally speaking, our presence can spark discomfort/curiosity/extra observational energy in people (whether or not they want to admit it). This happened a lot when we were a kid, and we could feel it, so we learned how to walk into a room and deflect people’s worried over-attention to our body and vibe with intelligence, charm, warm smiles, etc. 

Morgan: Or a nurturing, calm presence. 

Jeremiah: Yeah, you’ve done a lot of that “soothe to disarm” work on our behalf over the years, Morgan. 

Morgan: Yea. 

*Everyone looks at Morgan with loving eyes.*

Nick: The distortion vs. adaptive switching question is a false polarity for us, though it’s important to know where we are on the spectrum. This isn’t my job. I tend to lose myself in trying to appease others and I usually don’t notice when it’s happening.

Jeremiah: You champion the fawning game. 

Nick: *raised eyebrow* as do you. 

Jeremiah: You’re right. Our attachment coping strategies probably belong in another post, so I won’t turn this over further. In the middle of your last point you brought up the concept of switching all casual-like. Do you want to address that? 

Nick: No. Not now. 

Jeremiah: All right. 

Lucia: Here’s how we figure out if we’re being adaptive or distorting ourselves in order to survive. We ask ourselves: are we feeling fear/anxiety in our body right now? The more the fear is alive in us, the more it is likely that we’re putting on a face to “survive” a social experience (though maybe we’re just anxious because we’re being vulnerable). Because the need to hide is so habitually ingrained into our nervous system, most of the time when we're around other people we do feel a need to hide (or we just do hide without having experienced the feeling at all) even when the other people are perfectly welcoming. We are presently learning how NOT to hide.

Daniel:  Uncharted territory in our own lives (smile). 

Lucia: Okay, I’m taking over for a bit, because Nick became totally disregulated (anxiety + perfectionism related stuff + caffeine), and because it’s time we get to the point (and I’m good at that). 

David: You are. 

Lucia:  I think what we're trying to say here is we are learning how to relax internally to let ourselves be who we are, and that our Authentic Self is more of a feeling and less of a person. 

David: Oh I like that. Do you mind slowing down and unpacking what you just said there? 

Lucia: Thanks for focusing in with me. Yes I will, sure. None of us is our True Self at the expense of the others. That’s a narrow understanding (for us), aided and abetted in its development in our mind by a visual, linear culture that wants us to be One, Unchanging Thing. That is to say we are not REALLY a nurturing bear (Morgan), anymore than ACTUALLY a longboarding marine mammal enthusiast (Charlie). 

David: So what you’re saying is that we’re not one of those people at the expense of the other, e.g. Morgan isn’t the real one and Charlie the fake one. All of us are real and valid (we are both Morgan and Calvin, and +), and all of us can experience Authentic Self, which is our name for an enveloping sense of love and belonging. Authentic Self helps us to feel open, fluid and settled in our body. It feels like landing in the body as our individual self (or selves b/c we frequently blend), e.g. “Charlie is here at the front right now,” AND feeling connected to the greater System. 

Lucia: Not to mention the Earth + cosmos in all that they contain—and man isn’t THAT a doorway into a Whole Other Conversation.

Daniel: I thought you were supposed to be the direct, linear one. 

Lucia: By the fractal nature of the universe, I too contain multitudes. Lol. But really. Wow . . .  it’s fun not taking yourself too seriously. 

Thom: Can you relate what you’re saying back to Pride?

Lucia: That’s a good idea. Can someone else take over?

Jonathan: Yes, I can. 

Lucia: You sure?

Jonathan: Yep. When we are in Authentic Self our energy relaxes and we settle into the body and are . .  . us, even if who’s there changes moment to moment. And I think externally people perceive that energetic shift but they can't see an image of what’s going on inside just by looking at the body. Each of us does have a self image and we’re quite distinct, and quite different looking from our body.

Externally we live in a visual culture, but our reality—the reality of Lux— is that our body cannot fully, visually represent each of us individually. We have taken steps to make our body feel more comfortable for more of us. Top surgery was a relief. But when we see photos of ourselves, or sometimes when we look in the mirror, that body is not Lucia or Graham or Nick, it is itself: the body connected to Lux, our beloved vessel.

Graham: Yeah.

Jonathan: We feel the pressure of absolutism around Pride—maybe it’s the neoliberal capitalism sneaking in, though I’m throwing that term around without fully knowing what I mean and I dislike doing that—to proclaim who we are in a packageable way! Of course we can say, we’re Many! Woo hoo! That’s easier for us to type here than to say out loud in front of a group of people, for reasons of our confidence and the relative safety of the world. 

But what’s happening now in the system is, everyone wants to be seen for themselves. Graham wants to celebrate Pride as Graham, and Jeremiah and Lilian want to do their drag number (more on that another time), and Nick, well Nick would rather stay home drinking coffee honestly, and listen to our stories when we return.

As I type it all out, I guess there’s nothing external keeping us from expressing all of that. A big obstacle is that we haven’t built up the security and confidence to express it all in our body (vs. on the page) around other people. We are in the process of building up our confidence, which takes gentle attention and time, no rush.

Neil: That’s the truth. 

Jonathan: What I’m also approaching in explaining all of this, is our capital G grief, about not being able to share our queer technicolor insides in all of their specificity with others in real time. Like you can’t see us all jamming out to the music, or all the finely distinct and varied reactions we had to the burlesque show in the park. That happens in brain time, instantaneously, and feels hard to translate. It feels like: we know ourselves, will anyone else though?

Jeremiah: Hence this blog. 

Lucia: Hey y’all I’m back *eating a sandwich.* Lowercase amen to all that you’ve explained Jonathan. I really appreciate it. I popped in to clarify our purpose on this blog. That okay?

Jonathan: Go ahead.

Lucia: As with all things us, there are several (laughs to self). First this is our place to practice imperfect written self-expression. This is not our place to be polished, this is our place to be us. While we are here to explore our unique, plural perspective, we are not here to separate ourselves from the rest of normie humanity or to exceptionalize ourselves. We believe we’re exploring common, human struggles, and while we are emphasizing our own nuanced and complex experience, we hope to be relatable. 

For instance, our internalized, harmful belief that our body should accurately reflect our insides in order to be authentic, is inherently ableist, not to mention transphobic. Part one, it sets us up to fail; dense matter just doesn’t shapeshift as quickly as our internal landscape. Part two, it reinforces the binary cultural idea that only persons with bodies that visually align with cultural expectations of gender are real. 

Jeremiah: Phew! Let’s pause before continuing, because that last sentence that you typed Lucia is really important.  . . . . Bodies are unruly and imperfect because they are natural. They don’t abide by cultural expectations because, as with all things in nature, they just are. And, as with all things in nature, they are made for love. 

Lucia: *looks at Jeremiah playfully.* Leave it to the bodyworker. 

Jonathan: Disabled people, aging people, people with any kind of anxiety about how their body looks or performs, all might benefit from seeing their body as a part of their self, rather than a reflection of their whole self. For us it helps us to take the body less personally, to focus less on what we wish it could do, and more on loving all that it is. 

Jeremiah: I really love that. Thanks Jonathan. 

Lucia: I think it’s time to come to an end on this one. We don’t need to try and say everything in our mind in one go. 

Jonathan: *concerned look* how could we? There’s a lot going on in here. 

Lucia: You’re right. I wasn’t trying to minimize our creative potential, though I can see how what I wrote might have come off that way.

Jonathan: Okay. I just wanted to make sure you weren’t minimizing who we are as a defense strategy.

Lucia: fair enough. I think I was being a little hard on us for being long-winded.

Jonathan: *smiles.* A bit.

Lucia: Well, I’m sorry for that. We are so thorough! And, I’m going to try to wrap this up. What are some takeaways for us from this conversation?

Jeremiah: The point about authentic self being more of a feeling than a person. That’s a really important distinction for us, or for me.

Jonathan: There were a lot of internalized, rigid beliefs stuck together in our mind (or in the collective thinking of those at the Front)  around the concept of True Self. We really were stuck trying to figure out which one of us was Real, and we felt that only after we embraced our Authentic Real Self, and “let go” (read: exiled) everyone else, would we feel safe enough to grow and develop, because we wouldn’t be hiding behind “fake masks.”

Graham: And of course we aren’t fake masks, we are all real and valid. Kicking out everyone in the system except for one person would do a lot of damage. Whoever was left as the True Self would be a thin, brittle slice of humanity. In fact, I don’t think I can over-emphasize the pain that would have come with that move. I’m glad we had good support and didn’t actually try to do it. 

Maeve: me too. 

Aamon: I’m taking away that we still have some work to do, to feel confident expressing ourselves in our body. I think we’re still largely operating with a major rift: that our body exists in the outside world and we exist in the inside world. It’s protective to be sure: we’ve been told for so long that our body determines who we are, that we can’t be who we are because our body says otherwise (e.g. you can’t be a boy because you have female genitals). So we’re both avoiding our body and hiding from other people—

G (little): —who might say some mean things when our shield is down. 

Jeremiah: exactly, yes. Thanks G for your protective impulses and love for all of us. Is there an adult available to you on the inside, so you can be cared for as a kid?

G (little) :*shifts uncomfortably because he doesn’t like being outed as a kid to the audience.* Yea, okay. *leaves.*

Jeremiah: That’s us for now. Happy Pride y’all. We love you. 

Lucia: Thanks for reading. 

Nick: *emoji peace sign*