Between

This summer has been one of the moments when it feels like the whole world is holding its breath, hasn't it? Our country is ravaged by disease, torn by political division, savaged and beaten and gasping with blows from secret police. Right here. In America. We told ourselves it could never come and that, if it did, we'd rise up in heroic rebellion like our Founders. Banners flying and blades gleaming.

Instead, a few of us have risen up. But a little under half of us have justified it, rationalized it, dismissed that it's as big a threat as it seems, or even outright embraced it as something we've wanted for a long time. We're learning now who would have supported the Nazis early in their rise. It's our aunts. Our friends. Our neighbors. Our grandmothers. People we never would have expected. People who seemed so nice.

"They shouldn't have rioted. They're getting what they deserve."

What to do with that?

It all reminds me vaguely of Russia. Beginning in the late Soviet era there was an unspoken agreement that, so long as they did nothing to oppose the state, ordinary people could live their lives in peace, and that bargain has endured into the present Russian Federation. No one discusses politics there. At all. The sharp absence of that topic is one of the most striking things a visitor notices when moving even in highly educated circles, but the Russians have compensated. They develop intricate, rich personal worlds, and that is where they live their lives.

So this summer, I turned in. 

Lost myself in beauty and pleasure and friendship and reflection. Rekindled the loving embers of old friendships, fed logs of camaraderie into relatively new ones, and decided, in a moment of hurtful clarity, to let an ancient one slip away into the wind. I've known him since I was eighteen, and I don't let people go easily. But it was time. Some people, as Black Dress Girl recently told me, are ships in the night. But some sail beside you for years. Decades. What feels like it will be forever, until one day you look at the coordinates and realize you'll cross over different horizons.

Relationships have been at the heart of my thought process lately. After all, a corollary to "Who am I?" is "Who will love me?" Maybe it's my age. A biological clock, if a thing like that can exist for a man. A man. Ha. Is that what I am? A natural part of the transgender experience is vacillation between heady self-assurance and cratering self-doubt. "I am a strong woman (who should start hormones)" on the one hand and "I am batshit insane" on the other. But whatever I am, the part of me that melts when faced with puppies and babies; the part that enjoyed, even when I was a child, taking care of those younger than me, has of late been fairly well occupied with thoughts of domesticity. 

Is it just the old loneliness becoming particularly acute? Thirty-two years is an awfully long time to go with only one Gavril to break up the solitude. Which has always been the issue with me; I'm a sparkling conversationalist, a lively wit, a vibrant extrovert who moves from one professional success to another, amassing money and adventures and friends and doing it all with a profound sorrow nestled inside. A hole in my heart that should be filled by...what? Who? Not that I expect a man to solve all my problems. Wise Woman was right when she said that you're best able to be a partner when you're satisfied being alone. But having someone to come home to would make the nakedness of the sky feel a lot less crushing. 

This loneliness is so prodigious, so warping, that I sometimes wonder if an honest assessment of my personality and gender can even occur in the face of it. The last year or so of my life has been confused on that end, and in all of my ruminations on masculinity and femininity the only conclusion I've arrived at for sure is that a final decision will need to wait until I am in a settled and supportive environment. Happily, I am closer to that, though there are a few destinations at which I could actually arrive and none of them is yet a clear frontrunner.

The possibilities are three.

Way back in October 2019 I applied for a job with International Organization, then was informed in January that I'd advanced through the extremely selective application process and been invited to an in-person interview in Marble City in March. The coronavirus intervened, of course, and that interview, while still guaranteed, has been indefinitely postponed.

"You know," one of my mentors in the organization told me. "You could apply for the domestic branch of I.O. The work is similar but it's all based in the U.S., so the hiring criteria are a lot looser. That's a second foot in the door."

And now, many months later, I've made the roster of I.O.'s domestic hiring database. A job in this field would take me back to the Southern State region, let me do rewarding research and communications work, and open countless other professional doors. 

Then there's the third option: just staying in Arctic State.

"That's not a bad gig at all," I told Miss Violet, a teaching colleague who became a fast friend. She visited me in person later in the summer, but on this occasion we were on the phone as I paced about my cavernous kitchen. "I could get my special education certification and move to Iceport. And there's so much room to move up in Arctic State. Eventually I could make my way to a principalship and earn a ton of money. There could be a really rewarding career up there. It's high wage and low pressure. I mean, who gets to have that? It's not something to casually turn away from."

"Right," she answered. "And the important thing is that you have good options. Even if you go to work for I.O. and decide you don't like it, Arctic State is still going to be there."

"And I just got my five-year certification, too. So I have some flexibility to leave even for a couple of years and then jump right back in."

"Mm-hm."

What is absolutely undeniable is that my internal exile must end. I wouldn't exactly call this a cry for help, but I'm hurting. Most days are open wounds, and what keeps me going is knowing that the way I'm living now has an expiration date. Even if I am closer to civilization this time 'round.

You see, my new job, in the little village of Via Borea, does something that none of my other Arctic State positions have done: it connects me to the state highway system. Iceport might be seven hours away and Aurora City over a mountain, but both are there. If it ever gets to be too much, I can hop in the car and go. That was never on the table before.

For right now, it's enough. In about eight months' time, though, I have decided that I will be doing one of two things: preparing for a job with I.O. or beginning a certification program that will allow me to move to Iceport in the fall of 2021. Man or woman, teacher or public liaison, BB or Starlight, I burn too bright to hide away in the dark. And I can't long endure it. 

It's the damnedest thing. For years I dreamed of independence and of money, and then both came in spades only to carry this terrible catch. I have, to be frank, a lot of shit to figure out, and the bizarre trajectory of an adulthood that launched me straight from my mother's house to the ends of the Earth is facilitating that figuring-out inadequately.

Things may never be totally "normal" for me. Iceport would be more or less conventional (if cold), but a career with I.O. would likely be nomadic and involve a life lived across several continents. Both, though, offer the opportunity of membership in actual communities, however strange the context, and my hope is that a lot of stubborn puzzle pieces will begin to fall into place once that's achieved. It's a step I've long needed to take, and I'm eager to initiate it.

My life, my proper life, deserves to begin.