Of Walls and Gears and Mysteries
So this past week I rediscovered an old love - juggling. To be more precise: it’s not the juggling that I’ve rediscovered... it’s the love.
I’ve tried to reclaim it multiple times over the last ten years or so, knowing that I badly needed more exercise. I’ve picked up my old toys maybe once a year to try and see if I could find the magic again. Last time I made a particularly hard effort to get my ass in gear and get into the habit of it, for my health. But the joy just wasn’t there for me; it felt like a chore that I was too tired to do. Dammit, it used to be such fun throwing things around (and around, and around)! But those feelings seemed locked behind a wall somewhere; the spark just wouldn’t catch.
This time, it did. I’m not sure why, but this past week when I picked up my old heavy balls - a pound apiece, solid in the hands, made for juggling as an upper body exercise - suddenly the spark was there. The joy of feeling my body once more as being strong and sure and quick and capable, responsive to the fluid pattern of rapidly flying objects, directing that flow, in total control of my physical world. Wow. I mean, Wow.
This is huge for me - for someone who has spent the last seven or eight years just sort of slogging through, physically... and often unable to do even that. My health has been terrible, and well it should be. I’ve spent most of my adult life trying to pretend that I don’t have a body, that I never had a body, that I was merely two hands and a brain which only incidentally depended on things like feet and digestion to keep them going.
I’ve heard that this is not an uncommon response to gender dysphoria; the body feels so wrong that one simply shuts it off.
I certainly did. Healthy diet? That’s a joke. I can forget to eat for an entire day when it’s not on my agenda, and then crave every bad thing in sight. Exercise? Ha. For much of my adult life, depression has held me so close that, when I don’t have somewhere else to be, all I want to do is lie in bed and make the world go away. (And most people do not know this about me, for when I am somewhere else, I am also someone else, ignoring that other, darker side with practiced ease... not to hide it from others, but simply to leave it behind for a while. Why would I want to bring that depressing person along with me when I have a chance to play out in the sunshine?)
The results? Let’s see... hovering for years on the borderline of diabetes, a stint in hospital two summers ago for congestive heart failure, constant breathing trouble, pain and numbness and difficulty walking from low circulation... well, you get the picture.
Not exactly a body that is used to feeling strong and sure and quick and capable. But somehow, lo and behold... it’s still there, both the skill and the joy in it. Suddenly, the door is open again for me on that entire realm of experience.
And I’m not sure why.
I mean, I know why, in the most general sense. It’s part of this larger act of reclaiming that I’ve been doing. Unraveling the threads of gender dysphoria is a deep process, and in it one finds unexpected keys to many other locked doors of the self. Not to mention freeing up a lot of energies that were previously funneled into maintaining the facade.
But why NOW, instead of last month or next year? Why this door instead of some other door? What exactly goes on in the mind at moments like this, when gears turn silently and walls slide invisibly apart and suddenly the whole landscape looks different, without warning?
Not that I’m complaining, mind you!
Learning to juggle in the first place, way back when, was also an act of opening mental doors for me - but a very conscious one, achieved by determined effort. I was one of those kids who instinctively ducked when a ball got anywhere near me in a game, who was never comfortable with any physical sport and would have done almost anything to get out of gym class. (I used to joke that I could not hit a ball with the broad side of a barn, assuming I could lift the broad side of a barn!) And so my determination, as a young adult, to learn to juggle - well, it was a very personal thing, a seriously meaningful pursuit. It was the first physical skill - other than playing various musical instruments - that I’d ever even remotely tried to master.
And when I finally “got it" - it was exhilarating. God, I felt like Superman! For two or three years afterward I carried my props everywhere with me, juggled while waiting for buses, on my lunch break, in the back yard at night until it got too dark to see and I risked braining myself with a club. I was good at it, and I loved it passionately. I invented a new four-ball multiplex pattern, alternating sides like a 2-and-1 (I’ve never seen anyone else do it). I had a killer three-club flash (all three in the air at once in fast double-spins, throw-throw-throw, catch-catch-catch, and a wonderful breathless moment in between when there is nothing at all in your hands). I learned to handle knives and lit torches for the sheer joyous skill of it. (Yeah, with a name like Phoenix, you might have guessed I’d love playing with fire!)
I remember... I remember. The work and the play... and the gradual loss of the spark as other aspects of life started to shut me down. Yet now I seem to have somehow, out of nowhere and at long last, found a doorway back into that space of my life which for years and years had been lost to me.
Like many other things that have happened along this path... it’s a mystery.
No... I take that back: it’s a Mystery, in the old true sense of the word - not like Sherlock Holmes, but more like the Eleusinian Mysteries. Not a puzzle to be solved... rather, an occurrence of deep meaning, the power of which is in the experiencing rather than the explaining.
Over a lifetime liberally spattered with such experiences, I’ve come to trust that these moments are signposts, and if I’m smart - no, strike that: if I’m wise - I will pay attention to them. Because they keep leading me back to the sure knowledge, for me, that the ultimate test of whether I’m on a good path or a bad one is in whether my life feels like it’s expanding or contracting. Not every moment, of course; every life has its ebb and flow, its times of blockage and backtracking and re-routing. But I’ve learned - and relearned, and re-relearned, many times, alas! - that no matter how rational, how reasonable, how sensible the path seems to be, if it makes me feel like walls are closing in, I had better re-think it.
And if doors are opening up, and joy is returning... well, just hand me those clubs and stand back, will you? And hey, that’s “Yes, sir,” not “Yes, ma’am”... I’m just sayin’. :)
I’ve tried to reclaim it multiple times over the last ten years or so, knowing that I badly needed more exercise. I’ve picked up my old toys maybe once a year to try and see if I could find the magic again. Last time I made a particularly hard effort to get my ass in gear and get into the habit of it, for my health. But the joy just wasn’t there for me; it felt like a chore that I was too tired to do. Dammit, it used to be such fun throwing things around (and around, and around)! But those feelings seemed locked behind a wall somewhere; the spark just wouldn’t catch.
This time, it did. I’m not sure why, but this past week when I picked up my old heavy balls - a pound apiece, solid in the hands, made for juggling as an upper body exercise - suddenly the spark was there. The joy of feeling my body once more as being strong and sure and quick and capable, responsive to the fluid pattern of rapidly flying objects, directing that flow, in total control of my physical world. Wow. I mean, Wow.
This is huge for me - for someone who has spent the last seven or eight years just sort of slogging through, physically... and often unable to do even that. My health has been terrible, and well it should be. I’ve spent most of my adult life trying to pretend that I don’t have a body, that I never had a body, that I was merely two hands and a brain which only incidentally depended on things like feet and digestion to keep them going.
I’ve heard that this is not an uncommon response to gender dysphoria; the body feels so wrong that one simply shuts it off.
I certainly did. Healthy diet? That’s a joke. I can forget to eat for an entire day when it’s not on my agenda, and then crave every bad thing in sight. Exercise? Ha. For much of my adult life, depression has held me so close that, when I don’t have somewhere else to be, all I want to do is lie in bed and make the world go away. (And most people do not know this about me, for when I am somewhere else, I am also someone else, ignoring that other, darker side with practiced ease... not to hide it from others, but simply to leave it behind for a while. Why would I want to bring that depressing person along with me when I have a chance to play out in the sunshine?)
The results? Let’s see... hovering for years on the borderline of diabetes, a stint in hospital two summers ago for congestive heart failure, constant breathing trouble, pain and numbness and difficulty walking from low circulation... well, you get the picture.
Not exactly a body that is used to feeling strong and sure and quick and capable. But somehow, lo and behold... it’s still there, both the skill and the joy in it. Suddenly, the door is open again for me on that entire realm of experience.
And I’m not sure why.
I mean, I know why, in the most general sense. It’s part of this larger act of reclaiming that I’ve been doing. Unraveling the threads of gender dysphoria is a deep process, and in it one finds unexpected keys to many other locked doors of the self. Not to mention freeing up a lot of energies that were previously funneled into maintaining the facade.
But why NOW, instead of last month or next year? Why this door instead of some other door? What exactly goes on in the mind at moments like this, when gears turn silently and walls slide invisibly apart and suddenly the whole landscape looks different, without warning?
Not that I’m complaining, mind you!
Learning to juggle in the first place, way back when, was also an act of opening mental doors for me - but a very conscious one, achieved by determined effort. I was one of those kids who instinctively ducked when a ball got anywhere near me in a game, who was never comfortable with any physical sport and would have done almost anything to get out of gym class. (I used to joke that I could not hit a ball with the broad side of a barn, assuming I could lift the broad side of a barn!) And so my determination, as a young adult, to learn to juggle - well, it was a very personal thing, a seriously meaningful pursuit. It was the first physical skill - other than playing various musical instruments - that I’d ever even remotely tried to master.
And when I finally “got it" - it was exhilarating. God, I felt like Superman! For two or three years afterward I carried my props everywhere with me, juggled while waiting for buses, on my lunch break, in the back yard at night until it got too dark to see and I risked braining myself with a club. I was good at it, and I loved it passionately. I invented a new four-ball multiplex pattern, alternating sides like a 2-and-1 (I’ve never seen anyone else do it). I had a killer three-club flash (all three in the air at once in fast double-spins, throw-throw-throw, catch-catch-catch, and a wonderful breathless moment in between when there is nothing at all in your hands). I learned to handle knives and lit torches for the sheer joyous skill of it. (Yeah, with a name like Phoenix, you might have guessed I’d love playing with fire!)
I remember... I remember. The work and the play... and the gradual loss of the spark as other aspects of life started to shut me down. Yet now I seem to have somehow, out of nowhere and at long last, found a doorway back into that space of my life which for years and years had been lost to me.
Like many other things that have happened along this path... it’s a mystery.
No... I take that back: it’s a Mystery, in the old true sense of the word - not like Sherlock Holmes, but more like the Eleusinian Mysteries. Not a puzzle to be solved... rather, an occurrence of deep meaning, the power of which is in the experiencing rather than the explaining.
Over a lifetime liberally spattered with such experiences, I’ve come to trust that these moments are signposts, and if I’m smart - no, strike that: if I’m wise - I will pay attention to them. Because they keep leading me back to the sure knowledge, for me, that the ultimate test of whether I’m on a good path or a bad one is in whether my life feels like it’s expanding or contracting. Not every moment, of course; every life has its ebb and flow, its times of blockage and backtracking and re-routing. But I’ve learned - and relearned, and re-relearned, many times, alas! - that no matter how rational, how reasonable, how sensible the path seems to be, if it makes me feel like walls are closing in, I had better re-think it.
And if doors are opening up, and joy is returning... well, just hand me those clubs and stand back, will you? And hey, that’s “Yes, sir,” not “Yes, ma’am”... I’m just sayin’. :)
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