the threads on wasted youth and teen photos have had me thinking about the idea of reconciling past selves. & i think sometimes trans folk think they corner the market on this one, but i know a lot of different people who have various kinds of misspent youths – even if they weren’t so misspent as they think. when i was a teenager, my (by then in his 20s) older brother balked whenever anyone found a photo of him from when he was a teenager – and at the time i remember thinking, “i never want to be like that about how i look now.” (& mind you, how i looked then wasn’t considered socially acceptable by any means.) sometimes i wonder if it didn’t alter other choices i made in life, in order to live a life consistent with having been that punk rock kid back in the day.
but i don’t know. there are other pasts: times i spent as a green, etc.
& maybe i’m feeling particularly vulnerable right now, because quite a few of you out there are reading or about to read my book, which is about me in ways that are more personal than perhaps people would predict.
anyway, a part of me just wanted to say: trans people are not the only ones with pasts they have to reconcile. & i say that to you trans folk just so you know it, & don’t go around thinking that that’s one more burden of transness.
i like to think all the people i’ve been, the aspects of myself i brought to the front burner or pushed to a back one, are all always there, operating all the time. like turning up the bass & turning down the treble while listening to music – some things dim & come back again, some things appear once & never re-appear, other things maintain their frequency and intensity all the while.
anyway. this was just to say, mostly.