Entangled in the Culmination Narrative

It doesn't feel like a time to grow something new and yet I feel like I'm languishing.

I feel like it's easy to say, "Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell" (Edward Abbey) and to talk about "spiralic" growth or cycles, but this just feels too trite. It feels too simple. Partly because it doesn't acknowledge how barren the winter feels but partly because these shapes are so simple. What about the narrative shapes book, Meander, Spiral, Explode? What about explode? What if you think you're in the stagnant part of a cycle and then actually you explode?

I am so, so, so tired of metaphors of transformation, in part because as a trans person, I AM one to a lot of people. At a diversity talk I once happened to attend, the person welcomed people of various identities, then welcomed "nonbinary people, who remind us that we transcend beyond our categories" or some such. As a trans person (just to clarify, I'm not nonbinary myself), I'm not here to remind people of anything.

The metaphors that have been used to describe who I am and what my life has been have been stifling and toxic. Trapped in the wrong body. Body doesn't match sense of oneself. A gender "journey."

This is why I am so careful about the metaphors I use for my life now. I try them on like clothes, feeling the texture of the fabric, the fit, the uncomfortable seams, the potential for chafing if worn too long.

So I don't know what to say about this time in my life, this time when I am without a metaphoric container for my creative life. It's "winter." Maybe things are "hibernating," or "roots are starting to sprout under the ground where no one can see them."

But like... maybe not? Maybe that isn't what's going on at all, and any attempt to frame things that way is just going to make me more confused in the long run? More unprepared for what happens next?

Because the other thing is, I have been so profoundly un-held by my stories of who I am and where I'm going. I've been in a state of existential vertigo for years now. I thought I wouldn't have a kid, then I did. I thought I'd never have another hospital job, then I did. I thought I'd work full steam toward a book, and then I didn't. I thought I'd just keep growing my Substack forever until I had enough platform for a book deal, and then I didn't.

Is there some other metaphoric frame one could use, one that creates at least the vaguest sense of scaffold for a life, without imposing certainty where perhaps none can be found?

They are doing some construction on my building and the whole building has been "shedded,"--apparently that's the word for those sidewalk sheds with the scaffolding--and ropes run up and down the building, presumably for the safety of the workers who are dismantling the railings on the building's balconies.

Can I have a safety rope if I don't agree to being in a mountain climbing metaphor?

Can I have a tether, even if I can't find the right container?

I'm thinking now of sending a grounding cord, the way one can send a grounding cord into the earth with one's mind and feel the energy traveling back up. The sense of there always being an umbilical cord back to the earth.

(Umbilical cord, of course, ceased to be a metaphor when my son was born. Long after his cord had ceased pulsing, turned limp and white, the midwives gave me the scissor, and I cut it. It wasn't the tidy, sure cut of the metaphorical cutting of an umbilical cord, it was awkward, the texture and resistance unexpected, like calamari. So perhaps I need a new metaphor here as well.)

I thought stories would contain me, the way a glass contains water. I thought they would let me pour my life into different forms. I'm not sure I think this anymore. I'm not sure what I think instead.

One of the most violating things that happened to me during my pregnancy was that I told my story to a pair of student journalists who said they were working on a story about health disparities impacting LGBTQ+ pregnancy. I had a lot to say!

Then they poured my story into a container I found vile. They lied and distorted and twisted until I became as close as they could make me to the stereotype of the trans person accessing health care that cis people build careers on--confused, afraid, without strategies or support. They took out every word I said about healthcare systems redesign. They took out every word I said about strategies trans people can use when dealing with doctors. They took out the parts where I advocated for myself. When I asked them why--and this is the kicker--they told me these comments were "not relevant to the story."

They told me they were proud of this piece. They told me they had received lots of positive feedback on it. An 11-minute audio piece in which the trans subject is never depicted solving a problem or even having an opinion. I had thought that, even if one didn't know the extent to which they lied and distorted, one might notice that it was odd to have a piece in which the subject is so utterly stripped of agency. A piece in which a subject is depicted encountering challenges without ever contributing a single thought or idea toward a solution.

It seems I had been too credulous in my assumptions about cis people's ability to think critically about portrayals of trans lives.

(Unfortunately, because this piece was a thesis project, it is now archived in an academic library and appears alongside my decade's worth of academic publications in a search on Google Scholar. This sickens me. I haven't yet felt into what I want to do--do I want it taken down? Do I want it to stay up so it becomes a liability for its writers later on, if I choose to comment publicly, or when it inevitably doesn't age well?)

Why do I care so very much about how I am presented in the public and professional sphere? It goes beyond my rage at this distorted portrayal of me, which is harmful not just to my own public image but also to any trans person who now encounters this story in which trans agency is erased entirely. Who may mistakenly think that this is truly the experience of being trans and pregnant in the world.

I've taken down my website because I feel, quite honestly, narratively exploded in terms of my offerings in the world.

At this point in my career, it's become increasingly common to encounter people who express amazement that I have done so many various things. "You were an IRB administrator?" "You wrote a workforce development curriculum specific for trans people?" "You've published quantitative analyses about physical injuries from car crashes and gunshot wounds?"

And that's even leaving aside the spiritual aspects of my life: "You did a residency in a Zen center?" "You read tarot?" "You have an ancestor altar?" "You pray the rosary but you're not a Catholic?"

Where is it all supposed to come together? Or is the mistake thinking that it is? That it's supposed to somehow culminate?

I am, admittedly, a bit susceptible to the self-help genre, and it is, of course, appealing to believe that somehow all of this is going to come together into my unique offering, my "special sauce," the right work opportunities, the right ways to make money, the solution. That the right coach could help me repackage all my messy bits into something unique and authoritative that would get the dollars and accolades flowing.

But again, this narrative shape of culmination is one that I keep trying to abandon, yet keep stepping into like a deep sidewalk puddle that never dries up.

(In terms of metaphoric challenges, I was going to say, "like a pothole," but quite honestly, I don't usually step into potholes very much. I do, however, seem to hit them while driving, day after day after day, even when I know they're coming, but there's something that feels inelegant about a driving metaphor here. I also considered "sinkhole," but again, I don't routinely step into sinkholes, although I'll never forget the multistorey sinkhole that opened up at an intersection of my old neighborhood in south Brooklyn, the wooden scaffolding they erected to hold back the sides of the sinkhole giving it just enough shape to look like a negative-space building, a building in reverse. The sinkhole gaped there for nearly a year, surrounded by spotlights and heavy construction equipment. On summer nights, my then-partner and I would get ice cream cones and check on the progress, fascinated like small children with the heavy equipment, the enormity of the project.)

I was saying, though, that I keep stepping into a culmination narrative that I don't intend to.

(Now I'm reminded of when I was a girl, in high school, and had my first girlfriend. We kissed on a streetcorner one frigid winter day and a man, turning his head to leer, stepped off the curb and submerged his leg to the knee in icy, dirty slush. The satisfaction we felt then, the fleeting sense that something was right with the universe.)

Am I now the one ogling something--ogling, I suppose, the idea that somehow, despite all evidence to the contrary, I might expect some sort of culmination, some sort of coming-together of the disparate pieces and projects of my life--and stepping off the curb into icy slush?

If that's really the question, then my next question is obvious: How can I stop?

(Again, already, with the fix-it project.)

In Zen, we used to "see the thought and let it go." Again and again and again. It was the practice.

Let go of the culmination narrative? Let go of the idea that this is all supposed to lead somewhere?

Honestly? I can't.

My Zen practice helped me to focus, to get to know myself better. It also led, in some ways, to guilt and repression, and an inability to discern what I truly wanted.

Maybe letting go of the culmination narrative isn't the answer either?

Other solutions are also offered by the self-help canon:

"Hold it lightly." "Yes, and..." "Be gentle with yourself."

Fine, but--also not fine? None of those feel like quite the right piece right now.

So maybe I'll set it down quietly for now, my entanglement with this culmination narrative, this idea that maybe somehow it's all supposed to come together, it's all supposed to make sense--my story, what I'm doing in the world, what might happen next. Set it down quietly not in the way of setting down permanently, but perhaps more in the way of laying a sleeping baby in the crib, ever so gently, yet knowing he will start squalling again soon enough. Knowing this is as it should be.