BORN AGAIN
A transgender experience.
Copyright: Chrys Romeo 2019
I was born to fly.
I was born to fly that flight surpassing establishments, frames, fixed outdated patterns, that flight breathing freedom and reaching the endless limitless sky. That flight that makes one feel infinite.
I was also born to be born again.
I was born again when I went to the office of social evidence for newly-born to get my new birth certificate with a new name, a new social number and a new gender. I was born again when I woke up from general anesthesia with a new body. I was and I am born again each day when I believe that life is more than dwelling in stagnant patterns, that life is change, improvement and evolution.
I was always certain that I was born to prove that our existence means more than physical presence and who we are does not depend on appearance. I was born to prove that reality has still unexplored depths, that science has yet to discover a lot more from what it is capable of knowing, that understanding comes with accepting the miracles of life and that life is a miracle that we must not limit with our minds or our fears of the unknown.
How does it feel to actually be born again?
You have to forget everything: everything you were ever afraid of, everything you were told that you are or you should do, everything you doubted and didn't think you could do. As with any new beginning, you must forget everything and start from zero. Yet even more than any other new beginning, this one is going to work only if you forget.
You wonder if there would be a garden with flowers, a tunnel with a light at the end, some fluffy clouds. You also wonder if you're going to wake up being a brand new someone. None of these things will happen though.
You will wake up being someone completely new, but you will have to do the work of building yourself from inside out. Nothing is guaranteed and there is no miracle, no garden of Eden, nothing but the white walls around you and the silence of your own thoughts.
There is actually a blank pause of nothingness. You wonder if death feels like that: a state of absolute unconsciousness. No pain, no worry, no awareness either: just an absence of everything.
And then you open your eyes and you know you are someone new. But that is not enough, because deep in your soul you also have to forget everything and start again.
You have to learn to live, and nobody else can do it for you: you have to do it yourself.
The good news is that you're enjoying it, even if it's hard to achieve.
It's not going to be as easy as blinking and making it happen.
Because you have to forget everything first, unlearn your previous experiences and cover the blanks with new concepts, reflexes, notions and behavior.
To be someone new, you have to believe first that you already are. There will be many who won't believe you're someone new and won't see the change you went through, many who won't respect or understand it, so you have to believe so much, believe much more to overcome anyone who doubts you, enough to cover any disbelief between earth and sky and to erase your own uncertainties that you are really who you want to be.
To my surprise, I also fell in love when I was born again. Since life is love, it is not very far from the truth that we are most alive when we love, so it is absolutely natural but also totally unplanned for me to feel love after being redefined, but too early before I could redefine myself in my mind. It sounds like a mess, but love is a miracle that's not to be taken for granted, it's not accidental and it's never unfortunate. Finding love before you find yourself sounds a little crazy, but it is also a love so deep that goes to the essence of who you are and who you begin to be. I stumbled upon a love that I could not erase in time, not give up and also not hope to have for myself. However, true love is usually selfless and hard to erase, so it came with the notion of being a gift in itself, something you contemplate and appreciate from a distance, like the beautiful colors of sunrise that make you feel inspired. I appreciated it in the midst of opening my eyes to find I was someone new. Being able to encounter love was a proof of actually being alive.
I had to understand and rebuild myself in time. It isn't the easiest process: building yourself. You can easily become dependent on focusing attention to the one that you love, because it is just preferable than dealing with the hard task of building yourself from inside out.
The outside stuff is a structure that can be solved by logic, science and the amazing ability of the human body to adapt, reinvent and reformulate itself. The cells react to substances, to hormone therapy, to adjustments and nourishment. They mold and transform day by day, step by step. However, the soul reacts to confidence, beliefs, care, freedom, hope, love and sunlight. That is an entirely different set of elements, necessary to build the invisible. And it also happens day by day, but it is not a steady process and it's much more complex. It starts with learning to walk in your own shoes. Learning to identify with yourself, learning to live in a new way.
It is also not a coincidence that I found love for someone who contributed significantly to my process of reconstruction. Love adds to who we are, it makes us want to be better. It redefines us. It makes us evaluate life from a new perspective. How do you ever find a better love, above that? Someone who reaches not just your physically exposed body, but also your soul. Someone whose smile has confidence, sunlight, care and hope, whose eyes have the freedom of the endless sky, the light of knowledge and infinite discovery. It is a love that's unavoidable, irresistible, unforgettable... and also inaccessible in a hard way to accept. It is still an unexplained mystery why we love certain people and not others. How does our soul connect or feel attracted to a person and not to another?
Love is such an important part of life, that life is less bright in its absence. It is also inherent that love should exist wherever life appears. It's only natural that I discovered a new love with a new beginning. I appeared and of course... I also found love with the new life of being born again. It doesn't even matter if it's a love meant to be by my side forever or for a moment: it already has the attribute of infinity, so it doesn't depend on time, space or circumstances. Even though it is a challenge to integrate such a free meaning in the set of boundaries of structured reality, it simply keeps rising above it, defying the limits, to the sky and beyond.
If you are redefined, it is a challenge for everyone around who has to look at you with a different idea in their mind. Even my own parents had to change the way they thought about me, the way they addressed me, the way they referred to me and related to me. It was a happy occasion, to have a child be born again, even if in an unconventional way. It was a celebration also for my sisters who had waited to see me finally correspond in my external appearance with the person I had been my entire life. It was also made possible by my family, the people who most believed in me and participated to my journey. It was a renewal for everybody in my life. It was a challenge to friends, acquaintances, and for everyone that I encountered in my path. It was a challenge to me, more than anyone else. I had to go through with it, make the decisions, experience the path and take responsibility to become who I really am.
It wasn't easy to decide, to accomplish, to go through every stage of the process. The legal part was as difficult to obtain as the physical one, but as challenging as it was, my determination was greater. There wasn't any moment on my journey when I had doubts about it. I never regretted anything from my decisions: the only thing I regretted was not having changed sooner, waiting too many years for it. I have always known precisely who I was, ever since I was five years old. It wasn't hard to decide I needed this journey. Every new step towards my goal made me feel better. This flight has been written in the sky for me since I was born: the destiny to be born again.
But good things don't come easily, so remember you must fight with determination and perseverance for everything that is important to you.
When you are born again, you look around and you see the world for the first time, a lot differently than before. You are not the same and everything has also transformed: reality moves along with perception. The most frustrating part of it is when you see that some people pretend they know you enough to not believe in your changes. There are a few persons in the world who would rather keep you in a box, because their minds are unprepared to understand who you really are. They will not respect who you are, they will not believe it and will not want to see the truth. They fear the unknown - it disturbs them, it troubles their view of things. They feel threatened by the very existence of someone who decides to be born again. Being born again is not a part of what their minds can envision or comprehend. They fear going beyond boundaries, their limited in-the-box minds are not prepared for it. These people must travel their own journey to reach a better understanding, but you don't have the time to wait for their minds to jump over the distance. You just have to ignore and move on, let them be consumed by their own frames of rigid thinking. It is not my task to convince the doubtful, but to confirm to the believing ones that it is possible. My flight sheds a light over the truth, but only for the people who are willing to look in that direction. For most things to be understood, one probably has to look inside first and build the ability to expand the vision, the mindset, the evolutionary thinking.
Evolution is not a rapid process and for some people it just takes longer than for others. Not everyone was born to understand the idea, the truth and the reality of being born again. Not everyone was born to live this experience. But I was.
I was born to be the pilot of my own renewal. I was born to fly and maybe to help others fly too.
I was born to prove that dreams can come true. My existence proves that anything is possible, that the direction is upward and evolution is inevitably forward, that the jump is higher and higher, that the wish to fly above and beyond is in human nature, that any unattainable ideal is another dream that will come true, that infinity is a part of the human being and life means having the ability to rise up to the sky.
I was born again for it, and because of it. I am born again each morning when the sun comes up and I realize I am free to be who I can be. It is a part of every new day.
And you can feel it too.
It is so liberating to realize you are not constrained by anything this world has invented to keep you limited. It is a moment you feel the power of life is above everything. Almost similar to the second you look in the eyes of someone you love and you know that nothing else is important. Life and love are infinite and forever free.