diamonds from ash

it’s a word i use a lot. marvelous.

life really is marvelous, as in, i marvel at it quite frequently. sometimes the good, sometimes the bad. but at least these days i have the emotional connections and the synapses firing, the ability to recognize and appreciate that things happening really are something of note one way or another.

i can – sometimes vividly – recall a time when this was not so. a time, to put it very bluntly, before i started hrt.

i remember when the world was grayscale and not flooded by color. when everything was muted: not just sights but sounds, smells, tastes, occasional touches. when the only thing i felt with any regularity was anger in various forms – irritation, frustration, rage, bitterness – because everything else had been suppressed and packed away somewhere deep inside. because i could never, ever let it show. for some reason. and since that was the rule, i lost the understanding of how to emote at all, largely.

i remember when life was this way, and it was awful beyond imagining. not that it was miserable, exactly; it was, but not poignantly, not dramatically. not miserable in a way that sparks an answering emotion, that urges you to respond, to revolt against it – but rather, miserable in a way that crushes you like the pressure of a deep ocean, the kind of misery that reduces you to a shadow of yourself. that whispers in your ear to tell you there is no escape from it, that you will always feel this bad, that you will always feel so gray and empty, that this is all there is to look forward to.

depression does not create dysphoria, but dysphoria accelerates depression in its dark and downward spiral. at least it was and is for me. all the more so when there is no name for the dysphoria, no understanding of it or its shape, no words for the inexplicable malaise and ennui you feel simply by virtue of existing. but i have its name now, and it can no longer hide under the cloak of ignorance as before.

and knowing, after not knowing, is truly a marvelous thing.

when your path is illuminated by the light of knowledge, how much surer and safer – and faster! – your steps are. how eagerly you push for progress once you can finally see the way ahead, no longer afraid of what might lurk in the dark unknown.

and how loudly you would scream if ever that light was extinguished.

to have something given to you, only for it to be taken away, leaving you with nothing but the memory of better times, is a particular kind of suffering i do not at all enjoy. and in this current age i fear the loss of the transformative medicine that has brought the color back to my world.

to be clear: this medicine is not a requirement for every trans journey. but it is for some, and certainly for mine. i cannot simply wish away the gray, or ignore the creeping misery of inhabiting a body so discordant, so much at odds with my mind; it is no more possible than to pretend gravity does not affect me. no matter how much i flap my arms i will not leave the ground; no matter how much i armor my thoughts and safeguard my mind, i cannot compensate for a chemical imbalance. no amount of wish, hope, prayer will do this for me. faith alone is insufficient (in truth, it always has been).

all this worry, all these dark and terrible thoughts, and yet: it is marvelous. to be alive, to breathe, to know that i am loved. to see the beauty in the world, the kindness amid the cruelty. no matter how long and dark the shadows grow there is still somehow a reason to wake in the morning and face the day again and again, to see what it will bring.

for life can be unpredictable, and shine even in the darkest moments, in unexpected ways and at strange times.

it is such a marvelous thing, life.