Death (to) (and) Gender: Musings
Listening: "Deepest Space" by Doll Brawl
Reading: The Animals in That Country by Laura Jean McKay
Watching: Dinner in America by Adam Carter Rehmeier
Wanting: Nocturnality
The sweet spot era has begun. Post three and onwards are only accessible to those of pure heart and mind. Weeded out are the mildly curious in favour of the Real Ones. Topics of deep-and-dark secrecy will be hereafter discussed with the same unrestrained freedom that select (deluded) Americans still believe they have. Welcome!
Death and gender are the two major topics that I fight my brain to think about. Thoughts of these terrible two are self-defensively directed to fleet above the surface, dipping underneath only when my flock of anxious thoughts are temporarily shepherded out, until they grow too antsy, until they kick and gnaw, splintering the wood of their pen and fleeing once again, bolting to separate cerebral corners; marking their turf, they set up camp.
When I manage to catch and contain my sheep-thoughts for a long-enough window, I reach the same bleak conclusions every time. Something along the lines of: I will never know, (death) and no one will ever tell me (gender).
I. Death
As an atheist, my disbelief in a god and afterlife feel like fixed variables. I don't long to find out what will happen after I die; I don't believe there is any what to find. The fear, the spiral, comes from the logical inability to picture nothing. I will never know. My brain short-circuits each time I go through the same steps as the time before:
- It won't be a plain, white expanse.
- It won't be a pool of black, not even the kind where you can't see your own hands in front of you.
- It won't be the flickering-fushia, blood-vesselled colour of the inside of my eyelids (see: "eigengrau," btw, super cool).
- It won't be a place of blind thought (even though there is nothing to see, I could still be aware of my existence, observing my own thoughts).
- It won't be.
- It won't be.
- It won't be.
I find an almost negligible amount of comfort in the fact that there was "nothing" before my birth, because, of course, I cannot remember it (LOL)! I like to think (was going to write, "like to say," but not sure if I've actually said it) that I am not afraid of death, I am only afraid of dying. The seconds or minutes before my death, during which I know that I am about to die, and am powerless against it—this is what chills my blood. Slipping into nothing, slipping into never again. Haunting.
My best friend and I have always talked about two types of people: those who live in their bodies and those who live in their heads. We've concluded that both of us are life-long tenants of our heads. Thinking and observing. This is what I spent my childhood doing. Playing, sure. Writing. Reading. But thinking and observing. I would sit in quiet and absorb as much as I could, making the effort to learn how "normal people" interacted—answered questions in class, ordered food at restaurants, made phone calls, plans with friends, and small-talk. Now, less of this, but a writer always lives in their head—I organize and cherish my thoughts. I cozy up inside my mind, I've made a 21-story blanket fortress here, I am incomparably comfortable.
Death does not care about your fort. It is absolute disintegration. Instantaneous demolition. Every mind lost is its own burning of Alexandria, ten-thousandfold. Of course this is inconceivable. All that is lost.
I think about one of my favourite songs: "In the Aeroplane Over the Sea" by Neutral Milk Hotel.
And one day we will die
And our ashes will fly from the aeroplane over the sea
But for now we are young
Let us lay in the sun
And count every beautiful thing we can see
I am sitting in a Tim Horton's and intentionally overhearing a conversation between two elderly women. They are looking at photos of their respective grandchildren, shared on Facebook.
"I look at this a lot."
"Right."
"Because I'll never have this again."
"You're right."
II. Gender
When I think about gender (mine, that is, not the broader construct itself), there is the perpetual question of missing out/giving up.
To be clear, my loud-and-proud stance on gender is aligned with gender constructivism. Like, of course gender is ultimately fake and of course trans people are still valid and of course I will respect any non-bigoted opinions surrounding personal gender identity and expression. Like, duh.
My gender expression is a skewed pendulum, swinging between masculine and feminine and whatever is in-between, dependent on god knows what. My lack of attachment to my physical appearance is evident in my rainbow of hair colours, plethora of hair lengths and styles, sheer spectrum of my wardrobe, and radically contrasting makeup styles. Somehow, even when I feel comfortable in my current phase, the pendulum swings radically in the opposite direction, and I feel the visceral need to either chop off all of my hair in the mirror at whatever hour of the day the thought strikes, or to wear hyper-fem makeup complete with exaggerated lashes and eyeliner for the next few weeks straight. Whichever phase I'm in, I sometimes feel like I am giving up on my "true" self, or missing out on the feeling of full commitment to one or the other. Alas, no one will ever tell me.
I like to think of "lesbian" as extending to my gender identity as well, which simplifies as well as complicates things. Simple, because it's an easy cover-all explanation. Makes sense to me and is enough to satisfy the "What do you identify as?" questions from others. Complicated, because even though it makes no logical sense, I still feel a nagging feeling that I am cheating myself out of a life as a devoted masculine or feminine lesbian. There is something about masculinity that feels inherent to me, and I am nearly certain that if I liked the way I looked while presenting masculine, I would stick to it a solid 90% of the time. But I love the image I can create with makeup too much not to use it. It's not only fun, it's a statement, a community marker, a look. Even if it feels like I'm in drag 24/7.
If I look at my face too long in the mirror, I start to picture what I would look like without any extra fat. Hollow eyes, gaping cheeks. And then without any skin at all. Veins and muscle. Why am I concerned with the "gender" of veins, muscle, bone? And yet.
The final line of In the Aeroplane Over the Sea:
Can't believe how strange it is to be anything at all
Thanks for reading.
Abby