🌸 as above, so below.

my close friend calls it the “divine feminine.” as she describes her deeply-held belief in a Goddess, the pain and transcendence of being a religious woman, i can’t help but agree that there is divinity in femininity.

i’ve been using a different word for it. i often describe myself as “chasing” an “ideal femininity.” that there is some kind of Spirit im trying desperately to embody. i try on clothes, i paint my nails. i speak and gesture a certain way in conversations. i consume some media and avoid media i see as masculine. all rituals, all attempts to align whatever kind of feminine spirit is in me with the “ideal/divine” spirit i believe in.

but i don’t think i’ll ever get there. i read about the gut-wrenching pain of girlhood. poetry about how to be a woman is to bleed and suffocate under the weight of the world. pregnancy and pornography and patriarchy and puberty….every woman in my life carries a suffering that i would never be able to bear.

and i am complicit in this suffering, ive lived for 23 years as a cis man, i have caused pain in relationships. i inflict pain thru words and actions and inactions. ive hurt others without realizing. i wish i had known how much i was hurting others. but how could i have known? how could i have possibly empathized with their pain?

do i really think that putting on a skirt for a day will allow me to understand that pain? how would growing out my hair and shoving hormones in my mouth help me embody anything even remotely close to womanhood? do i seriously think wearing a name tag with she/her would accomplish anything? i don’t feel right anymore. i don’t embody anything or anyone. i don’t feel pride. i just feel like i’m cosplaying this farcical caricature of femininity. it feels pathetic, to try this hard

i don’t understand this pain, i never will. i don’t bleed, i never will.

and everyone is just so pretty and i am not.

i think it’s because i want the hours of feeling like a girl to go on as long as possible. because i know that when i sleep, i’ll have to wake up the next day and live as a boy again.

there are times when i look in the mirror and see myself dolled up and i truly do love what i see. i love what i see with a force and a light i’ve never felt before. i’ve never loved myself more than in those moments.