I've been feeling something odd ever since I picked up guitar... I think I finally know what it is.
To me, learning guitar feels a lot like transitioning did.
There is a version of me, in the future. A me who is more whole. She has worked long and hard to attain the goals she set for herself. She feels proud, and accomplished, and happy about who she is.
I have to become her.
As long as I work hard every day, I will change. I'll accrue thousands of little, incremental, permanent changes. My body will adapt. My understanding will expand. It will become natural. I will make it part of me.
I will become that version of myself.
Definitely relate to this. Played bass for over a decade, but whenever I pick up a 6 string, an instrument I can barely play, I think about future me absolutey shredding through the songs I can’t even wrap my head around today.
I’ve always put so much pressure on myself, which has made these early years of transitioning so hard. But I’m slowly but surely getting there. I set goals for myself every year/month/week and a big one I have in my yearly list is “continue to grow and understand my life as a woman”. This means many things. In the early days, and even now occasionally, I buckle under the intensity of the pressure of existing as a woman. The hostility I feel from the world is constant and intense. For a long time I struggled to do even basic tasks and developed intense agoraphobia. I’m still figuring it out. But these days I’m getting up, showering, doing my hair, getting a cute outfit on, and cracking on with my day. Even that simple routine is leaps and bounds ahead of where I was even a year ago. I’m finding little pieces of euphoria everywhere, just in existing as the person I want to be. And I’m not her all the time. I’m a deeply vulnerable person. I struggle every day to get by. But when I wake up in the mornings, i tell myself to “woman up” and do my very best. I’m still a messy girl, I’m learning as i go.
In many ways, it’s a lot like my bass playing. Even after 12 years of playing, I’m not especially good. I get by, I can hold my own, I can figure out most tracks given enough time and ideally the tablature. My ears suck and I can’t tell a crotchet from a quaver, but despite that I still scored top of my class in music school, because I worked hard, used my strengths, and kicked butt.
I’m still not the player I thought I would be. So I don’t think in a decades time I’ll be the girl I want to be now, but I’ll be a woman who can get by, hold her own, work hard, use her strength, and kick butt.
