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... I don't really know where to start. On May 28th, 2013, my identity was laid bare for me to see. It was not a slow, growing light that filled me with warmth and joy; It was an avalanche coming down around me, washing out my footing and filling every vacant corner of myself with confusion, fear, and coldness. The person I saw in the mirror was not me anymore. Well, it's more accurate to say it never was me. But now, seeing with eyes all of my own, it washed down on me.
My understanding of the world around me multiplied geometrically. I had at an arm's grasp the understanding only gained by living trapped in a man's body for 26 years, bearing all silently, aching to escape. The unpredictable mood swings? Me trying to find my voice. The odd leaps from one interest to another? Me, using his limbs to run and encouraging his torn hands out of a fist and into a caress. Suddenly, I could speak, and he understood. He understood why the bitterness and failure of past loves. He understood what they meant when they pleaded with him in words he could not comprehend.
It began when I decided that I was going to give up apologizing, compromising, and bowing down for 40 days. I decided to take a vacation to go be with myself. I've often heard that we are to do what we love, and I wasn't sure what that was, so I decided that 40 days of doing exactly as I wished were in order.
.On day one, I took a vow of silence. It was an unpopular move with everyone who needed from me. My mother, my employers, my partner. A one day vow turned into ten. I would not even get to day two...
..On day two, I emerged from my womb, a bathtub filled with hair and shaving cream, a newly bald and bloodied woman crawling from out of the clawfoot bathtub, sealing the door behind her, pushing her own afterbirth into a room which she has no claim to. Exhaused, I wept and waited for our partner to return home, to help us, to tell us that it would be okay.
...On day three, I quit my job. They used my care and love for others to make me do more and more work for less and less pay. I demanded a raise for the last time and was denied. I told them in writing that I shant return to work without being properly remunerated.
....On day four I left without knowing where I was going...
.....On day five, I was in in police custody...
......On day six, I was in a mental institution...
.......On the seventh day, I rested...
My choices were not popular. I nearly died for them. Both of us nearly died.
I began to understand many things about myself. Why I medicated myself so heavily as a youth. Why I could never quite put a finger on my gender or my sexuality. Why every time I was turned away at a door or given a harsher touch because of my perceived gender or sexuality, it cut me in a way so deep as to be unreachable without a paradigm shift. I knew how the person inhabiting this body could be both deeply spiritual and devoutly atheist. I knew how I could identify with both cis and trans, man and woman, and how those lines immediately and swiftly began blurring, blowing away like the jet trail from an airplane.
We are still a work very much in progress. It is a very difficult road to walk when you hold fear so close: Fear of being judged a defective person, doubted and cast into the realms of madness or worthlessness. Or, on the other hand, the fear that no one will believe that you even exist. The latter is the far worse option.
Here's me existing on a mountain ridge.
To live our lives in current, we have split everything in two. Like the most amicable of divorces, we both care deeply for the other's survival and will do anything to ensure the other lives a happy, healthy, full life, even though it means we must part ways. We split the heavens; He gets the day and I get the night. We split our temple into pieces; He gets the jawline, the right hand and arm, the biceps, the chest, the feet, the thighs, and the stomach; I got the left hand and arm, my own walk and language, my hips and calves, eyes that look beautiful with eyeliner, hair that in two years will be a flowing, silken security blanket. He got the most obviously sexed parts, but I use them from time to time.
Like most situations in this world, the man got more than his fair share. He is stronger, more entrenched in this body and in this world. He can take what he wants and there is little I can do to stop him even if I tried. He gets most of the friends, the ones who have stayed around after these rocky times. While everyone is comfortable interacting with him, I am abandoned by all but a small few, and for that I am grateful. I have lived 26 years behind this mortal and shambling cage, and though I remain momentarily confined behind the stubble and the genitals and the smell, I have found my voice, I have a friend, and as god as my witness I will not be held back!
My dualistic nature was revealed to me. I was, and am, two people, not one. We posses everything two people would except for the additional body: Two ways of walking and talking, two ways of problem solving, we respond to chemicals differently, we respond to people and animals differently, we love differently, we fight differently, we fuck differently. The way we bathe, eat, cook, sleep, clean, care, dance, sing, play, build, plan, write, climb... it has always been on two different wavelengths. Day and night, yin and yang, fire and water, air and earth. We are flowing and we are solid. We are yielding, even as we hold our ground. I exist not as one solitary note, but as an octave; two pitches vibrating in harmony and discord but given the same name.
Therefore, let me give you our names, so you may call upon us correctly, and acknowledge us as equals.
He is Nicholas Robert Dehning
Born March 26th, 1987
Star sign: Aries
She is Savannah Atamansha Marks
Born May 28th, 2013
Star sign: Gemini
Address us separately, or address us together. We each give our own answers.
We all take non-gendered pluralized pronouns (we, us, them) when being spoken about in general.
If anyone reading this is or knows anyone who identifies similarly to us, please let them come forth in the comments or message me. I know there are some paths we must walk alone, but I refuse to believe this is one of them...
Woah, okay, heavy stuff for tonight. Here's a Macklemore video.
If that's not your speed, here's George Carlin talking about stuff.
- Savannah
