I’m 38.
Stallone was 38 in 1984. Schwarzenegger in 1985. They were really still at the beginnings of their career and successes.
This is silly but comforting, given the feelings I was having that I’d missed my chance to make a fulfilling future for myself.
Last September I shared that I was likely not going to renew with the fertility clinic, after ten years of storing material there. This is still the case. I’m still messed up about it.
I ran out of time. If life was longer, then I would have had time to work through my trauma and how I was a piss-poor girlfriend, save money for IVF and a house amidst prices tripling, find a partner with compatible desires in the limited dating pool for trans folk, etc.
I did a lot of that, just didn’t get all the way there, and now I’m too old. Two decades of adulthood sounds endless when its ahead of you, but when its behind, it’s much more finite. Different starting points and challenges unique to some circumstances make a big impact.
My friends either have kids, or are child-free by choice, so I don’t have anyone to talk to about this.
I’m trying to vision a future, and I don’t know what that looks like. My recent search history includes “finding purpose after infertility”, the closest proxy I can think of. Is this what a mid-life crisis feels like? I’m sure I’ll look back at this as a turning point.
Hey future me, give me a clue, won’t you? I feel lost over here.
Over the past year, I’ve continued updating “A bibliography for trans history in Canada” in the Advocacy section. It is now at 500 entries. Check it out!
For the last six months I’ve been working on the screenplay for a trans adventure movie/play. I just completed the first draft.
The story is about two French-Canadian trans people as they attend the World Lumberjane competition in the UK. At one point these absent-minded characters get lost, and are seen close to the axes on television. This kick-starts a new moral panic that devolves into “Rapid Onset Violent Transgenders”. The rest of the story is the characters trying to get home and all the ridiculous things that happen on the way.
This first draft isn’t good. The writing is juvenile overall; it’s preachy; the dialog is too similar between characters; the end too abrupt; etc etc. Furthermore, the humour in this screenplay relies on the absurdity of this anti-trans moment, but reality just keeps outdoing anything I come up with. We’re in the third week of January, and there’s already 321 bills in American legislatures this year to purge society of trans people. My hometown saw unprecedented organized transphobia. Politicians are jumping on the trans thing being more transparent than ever about eliminationist objectives:
So I come up with absurdly terrible stuff for this screenplay, and then these transphobes just outdo the fiction. I revise my work accordingly.
My current intent is to get to a second draft. I don’t know how long that will take.
2023 included trips to New Orleans, Nashville, the Grand Canyon, Vegas, Montreal, Sudbury, Paris, Marseilles, Nice, Cannes, and most importantly the Midland Butter Tart Festival.
It also included facing off transphobes multiple times, as they harassed young families and performers at the NAC, harassed three schools in the west end, harassed attendees at a small pride event in Vanier. I also went to the trans march in Montreal and pride in Ottawa.
I went off-roading for the first time, and took to the water with my kayak. I saw a number of shows. I went spelunking. I lost 35lbs. I built up my little library of queer and trans history. This was also the year that I found out I would never have kids, and started grieving that. I also broke up with my partner and lost three friends.
I have a small list for what I’ll get up to for 2024. I can’t see a future anymore, not like before. But I can see one year ahead, and I’ll take it.