Thirty-Four, and Sixteen

An Aaronversary of Becoming

Hi friend,

As you must have heard by now, I celebrated my (50th) birthday back in March. However, I don’t want to begin this story (again) with fifty...

This special and fragile li’l essay is about two of the numbers that exist inside the privilege of turning fifty...

Thirty-four. And sixteen.

Maybe you’ve experienced your own version of this sort of transition or change?

For thirty-four years, I lived as another version of my Self. It’s an identity that I now, oddly and (sometimes) awkwardly, refer to in the past tense...

Although past is not quite right, because she is not gone. She is not erased. She’s not a discarded, failed draft of myself that I tossed into a (cosmic?) trashcan.

She is still here and NOW in this room. In this new body and new labels that I wear everyday, mostly hidden (again!) in a new sort of closet of my own making, for my own protection and yet, another privilege I have. She’s in the unique handwriting I have. In the very same artist’s eye that still knows how to compose an image before I ever raise a camera or open any design software.
It’s an updated version of the same strategic, creative mind that still sketches new ideas, captures patterns, maps information, and builds visual identities.

She simply isn’t the only version of me writing my life story anymore.

And now, there are sixteen (NEW!) years lived, seen and experienced, slowly, gradually, progressively—increasingly more and more—as Aaron. Through the lens of a more male-presenting and masculine version of all the previous physical expressions of my-Self...

This May, I’ve officially lived sixteen years in this new iteration of my self. Previously, a version that only I could see.

Sixteen years with a new body (still-and-always emerging), and new name and new voice (both lyrical and literal).

Sixteen years navigating the slow, strange mercy of seeing myself, for the first time again and again; especially when catching a new reflection in a dark window or bathroom mirror or the shiny side of a spoon at brunch by myself.

Thirty-four and sixteen.

For a long time, I thought becoming more of who I AM meant trading one version of my-Self in for another. Not a gentle transition, but rather, a sort of transaction; A for B, or like, flipping a light switch or signaling the start a new star in an invisible instant.

I could not imagine the actual slog and muddiness of change or how slow the gradient of transition actually moves through time.

It’s not like the Old Self is handed over a counter and exchanged for a shiny New Self that’ carefully wrapped in tissue & placed in a fancy, New YOU box...

THAT’s not at all how it works.

What there was (what there still is)—is...

“AND”...

AND is not glamorous;
AND does not make for the simplest, clearest story;
but the AND is where my unique truth lives...
I am both, before AND after.
Then AND now.
I AM both, Amy AND Aaron...

It’s not the same experience as all other transgender people, but it is my own, unique experience and truth...

My first thirty-four years were a complete life.

And I don't want to breeze past that fact anymore or overlook it (or even subconsciously, HIDE it) anymore.

I lived those years, and the 34-year-chapter representing that version of ME was not a rough draft of the person I would eventually become...

It was a sacred seed for who I have grown to be.

Those years held friendships I still treasure. Growing skills, talents, perspectives, and work I still respect and utilize. Loves I still cherish and losses that shaped me. Inside jokes that still echo raucously in my memories. That first season of 34 years and the seed it nurtured inside me held bright mornings and dark bedrooms and bad haircuts and sometimes, good photographs and (so many) ordinary Tuesdays I hope to remember, forever...

It was a real life.

They were her real life, their life, and MY LIFE. And I owe her the dignity of talking about it and sharing more about it out loud.

SHE was the one who survived long enough for ME to arrive.

She was the one who kept making new things and sharing old truths and noticing the beauty inside the chaos of uncertainty and still, taking another step into the dark road ahead, again and again.

She continued building inner-worlds where she could live and new words for things she could feel before she ever fully understood what it was all about; before she knew that we were slowly, surely building a bridge of understanding (or maybe, inner-standing?) for our-Self and maybe, for others, too.

She loved, and she worked and she rested. She adapted, and played, and she certainly under-and-over-functioned.

She disappeared in so many places, and she was so focused on making herself useful in so many ways while being and becoming so many things that seemed... impossible.

She carried truths she did not yet have language for.

And somehow, even without the right words, she kept leaving me clues...

There were clues in the art and in the photographs and in the deep ache underneath the professional voice and career veneer.
She is the reason I’m still here,
writing this and the reason I get to write in a voice I can finally hear.

She was, and then he came, and now I Am.
She, he, me. All three are true,
and none of me will apologize for the rest of me.

The sixteen years are a complete life too.

Sixteen is old enough to drive in this country. Old enough to fall in love badly.
Old enough to think you know what you’re doing (when you absolutely do not).
Old enough to have a bedroom full of idyllic posters, half-formed dreams,
and a heart full of songs you’re (almost!) brave enough to sing...

And in some real way, THAT is, still, where I am.

Sixteen years into Aaron. AND Sixteen years into a life I built on a foundation I mixed and poured myself (and I’m surprised, sometimes, to find that it’s still holding)...

Sixteen new years that contain a chosen name (or rather, the name that chose me, through my mom—again).

Years that contain new pronouns that have been used gently and generously by old friends, and what a gift that is—truly!

They contain the slow relief of seeing that new reflection and FINALLY not having to brace for the impact of disconnection...

Those years also hold: leaving behind the certainty of a day job for the uncertain, untrodden path of creating a dream job; the death of my father and sister; acceptance of a new role as caregiver; a physical and spiritual move back to East Texas; building an art studio and losing it to a fire.

A mother who has done her own remarkable work of becoming and in learning to know me and remember me as this, whole, holy version.

These newest 16 years contain students and teachers and clients and collaborators, and a thousand tiny acts of self-definition and determined creation.

They contain new friends who have only ever known THIS version of me. And old friends who have witnessed multiple chapters and stayed and stayed and stayed, and who have grown into newer and greater versions of themselves, too...

They contain a community I’m determined to build around this persistent conviction that our inner life is not separate from our “real” (outer) life. IT IS our real life, and we ARE the art/work, itself.

They contain personal essays and phone photographs. Vulnerable online offerings and workshops. Half-built websites and unfinished books, still in-progress.

An evolving creative voice that keeps waking me and walking me toward the microphone (even—and especially— when my voice trembles and shakes). And especially all those ordinary, taco Tuesdays with soul-full-friends who now, sometimes, feel like they’re a lifetime away... But this life is not a singular event, and it’s not a collection of before-and-after photos.

This new chapter, too, is its own full life.

Complete with dishes and deadlines and dog hair. Emails and coffee. Grief and laughter and the miracle of being annoyed by such ordinary things, and living inside such an ordinary body (that is finally feeling more and more and more, extraordinarily, like home)...

Those first thirty-four years did not get returned anywhere...
Nothing was refunded or discarded.
Those years are still here with me, everyday.

My body remembers (its truth and its destiny)...
This body, that is now fifty, has been continuously the same body.

It did not get exchanged, and it did not start over from zero.
It carried her, and it carries me, and it has never once stopped showing up for the complicated labor of being a physical body in this physical world.

I’m so glad to finally be able to love and accept all of me, parts and pieces, in perpetual search of peace.

For a long time, I wanted a hard line between...
Before/After.
Her/Him.
Then/Now.
It was easier that way; easier to explain to others.

But the hard line was never my truth; it was just the easier story to tell.

My real story is all about the “AND”—and the in-between.

The AND holds all chapters of my life.
The AND refuses to be erased;
the AND lets me say here, in total,
without flinching or cringing or shrinking who I really AM.

Because, my life is never been about deleting anything,
and I am not disappearing parts of myself to feel more whole...
I am an ADDITION that has never asked anyone else to shrink, either...

And if you’re reading this and trying to make sense of your own new season of becoming or your own version of TRANSITION, whatever that looks like for you, please hear this, from me to YOU AND from my heart to yours...

You do not have to delete anything about who you were before to be or become who you are now becoming.

You don’t have to disown any of the years that came before.

You do NOT have to pick any version of you as the most “real” or true.

They are all real, and they are all you.

You are doing the best you can with what you have and with what you now understand, about your-self AND the world, both inside AND outside.

So, I turned fifty whole, holy years old, but what I REALLY feel on this birthday and this 16th Aaronversary is, that: I grew thirty-four years in one life to give root to these sixteen years in another.
One body has carried both (and all) of me...
She was. He was. I Am. They ALL are real and true.

I’m still here and still becoming.
And definitely, still Unfolding. 🙃

Much love, more soon,
Aaron