Who?

It's been a weird few months.

I guess, in honesty, it's been a weird few years, and what's more the first years of my life that have ever truly been mine. My twenties were a vortex in which all I could do was survive, and even on that count I fell terribly, tragically short on a dark day six Octobers ago. There was no time for self-examination. Instead I plodded on, dutifully doing absolutely whatever I had to do to stand on my own two feet and thinking of little else until, after more than a decade of whirlwind conflict, achievement, and despair, I found myself, all of a sudden, alone in Alaska. I really couldn't even process it.

For so long there'd been nothing but struggle. I was, to use an educator's parlance, seeing only to my physiological and safety needs. And then when the offer to come here arrived, it was so unexpected that the journey began seemingly without my initiating it. A job prospect in Southern State had fallen through in February and with three months left in the spring semester I found that a teaching position in Alaska, for which I'd interviewed basically on a lark, looked a lot more attractive than it had a few days earlier. I switched my bank accounts, packed up my life, and landed in Iceport three weeks later. My government housing on the tundra was the first home I'd ever lived in that was mine.

I did weirdly well in rural Alaska, better frankly than most other people, and I'm not entirely sure why. Maybe it was the dysfunction of my own childhood, or awareness of my own shortcomings, but the deeply strange and often difficult dynamic in the villages was something I didn't have much trouble dealing with, even if the social isolation got me down.

That first assignment, in White Venice, didn't last long. The lack of running water was a bridge too far for me, and White Venice was in several ways just not my cup of tea. Instead I wound up spending an eventful--and at times heartbreaking--year in Gori, where I lived in a beautiful little apartment next to a big-hearted woman with deep compassion and open ears. And I had time to sit still.

That's a remarkable thing when you've never had it, and it leads your mind to places it wouldn't--or wouldn't dare--otherwise go. I was twenty-nine and working late at the school one night the first time I logged onto a trans chat room under an assumed name. Which is not to say I'd never acknowledged the thoughts before. Once, years earlier, I confessed to a therapist that I always felt I should have been born a girl but that one had to be pragmatic and that I'd make my best go of it as a gay man. Said that blithely. Like living an entire lifetime in disguise would be as mundane as going for a walk through the park. I was twenty-four then. By twenty-nine a lot of things felt different.

I found myself poring over memories, reliving and dissecting all of the forbidden thoughts and elements of myself that I'd worked so hard to hide during my adolescence. The female role-playing in games of make-believe with my brother. The cheerleading routines in the front yard. The daydreams about marrying a boy from my third-grade class, which must have been wrong because they featured me in a dress up on a sunny hill with him smiling at my side. I felt so perverse when I indulged that fantasy, but couldn't help returning to the thought. And then there was the time I was nine, when I realized that the voice and the face in my head were both female, and the shock of shame and alarm that sent through me. I had to fix it. I had to make it right.

So I tried. I practiced walking like a boy. I drilled myself into talking without my hands, lowering my voice, reconfiguring my mindset, adjusting my daydreams to make their star male--young and elegant and vulnerable, feminine in every way that counted, but somehow male. I worked to make myself less of what I was. And to a really awful degree I succeeded, because here I am, thirty-one, unsure of who I am or where I belong or what's authentic.

"I've always felt female inside," I said during a recent conversation with my therapist, whom I'm able to chat with by phone in light of my unusual living circumstances. "But when I think of actually acting on it, the next thought is, 'You're insane.' I mean, I've been in this male body for thirty-one years. It just seems so out there. Like, 'Are you seriously thinking this? This can't be real.' I just don't know who I am. And I feel like a fraud."

"You know," she said. "That's really common."

My therapists, my friends, my confidants, my rivals, my peers--everyone, it seems, save my lovers--have been women or girls. I never really thought about why; it just seemed natural. Which is not to say I don't have male friends, but they've been a lot fewer and farther between. Women just seemed to understand me better, and I them.

"You're like a girl," one of them sneered at me in second grade. "A prissy one."

You're telling me, honey. You're telling me.

The fact that I've long been a natural caretaker has not made any of this easier, and has caused me anxiety in adulthood as my behavior and my sex seem increasingly out of alignment. As a teacher I'm nurturing, compassionate, funny, fair, firm when needed. Some of the kids make me melt. More than once, I've looked at a few of those in deepest pain and wished I could take them home with me, even though there's no way that's possible. One day last school year an eighth-grade girl slipped up and called me "Mom" in front of the entire World Geography class. We all laughed at it, none louder than me--"Honey, you're so confused," I quipped, to more gales of giggles--but that child was on to something.

And I've always been like this. As a little kid I enjoyed taking care of kids younger than me. When Pie was born, sixteen years ago, my non-existent ovaries practically exploded. I was the babysitter who never needed to be asked. I was endless kisses on a forehead and endless bedtime stories and a face that was always happy to see her. All those hundreds of back massages, never repaid (the rapscallion). I carried her around on my hip, me a boy of sixteen, as I did chores around the house. And only later did I realize how deeply, deeply weird all of that was. Weird, anyway, for a boy of sixteen. But maybe not weird for an older sister.

My obviously maternal disposition has served me well as an educator--and allowed me to cheat, as I'm basically a female undercover in a heavily female field that looks to hire men--but made me feel out of place, too.

Why are you like this? I've wondered. What kind of man are you? What must everyone think?

And I wished I was a woman standing up there, soft curves wrapped in a cashmere sweater, makeup helping my hazel eyes pop, silver earrings dangling against easy blonde waves, because so much of who I am would just make a lot more sense if that were the case. My manner with men, too, is an odd thing: always respectful, always professional, but light and with a hint of flirtation. It's the kind of thing that would be catching in a pretty young woman. It doesn't quite have the same effect when I do it.

"Can you describe Morningstar to me?" my therapist asked. "What is she like?"

I thought about it.

"She's strong," I answered. "She's sure of herself. She's funny. She's intelligent. She has kind of a black humor because she's been through some shit, but she's come out on the other side. She's flirtatious. She knows how to have a good time." I paused. "She can take anything that gets thrown at her. She knows who she is."

"Well, BB," Gender Therapist responded. "Have you not just described yourself?"

Have I? This must be why she gets paid the big bucks, because that is an absolutely fantastic question. Has there been another BB in here all along? Has Badass Bitch just been waiting to escape?

"Maybe Morningstar wants to step out," Gender Therapist suggested. "Maybe BB has been protecting her. Or maybe this is all a fantasy that you need to put away so you can be a wonderful, kind gay man. But I think that if you let Morningstar out, she may not want to go back in."

Somewhere in my heart that feels true. The idea of Morningstar being out here, where the whole world can see her, where colleagues and friends and strangers and children and men can see her, is almost intoxicating. If I'm being honest about it, part of the reason I've had so much trouble finding a husband is because I've always wanted to be a wife.

But there's a lot of complexity between here and there, you know? I'm not sure how to take that first step.