starchaser

first starshots. find it hard to stay awake late enough to see the stars. i think I still love photo manipulation and what’s possible rather than capturing reality.

Sunrise on a New School Year

sexuality, identity and sport

Why was it that I always yearned for the wintertime, that I only felt myself when it was ski season? Why was it that when ski season ended, I felt like it was more than just my snowboard that I stowed away?

For seven months of the year I feel anxiety about how to act, how to feel happy about myself, and what my future might hold. This isn’t just the regular post ski blahs, I realized. This is me facing a gender crisis, the confinement of an essential part of my identity. When I put away my adrenaline-inducing board, I also hide the male side of me. No longer do I have a way to express and be the male that I am. The male side of me is an adrenaline junkie and has a need for speed, and for seven months of the year he is never satisfied. It’s like someone keeps putting on brakes on him even though he is raring to go.

I always thought that snowboarding kept me sane, although I could never truly justify why. Now I can. It’s just an essential part of me, the same way a girl might feel the inclination to dress a certain way (whichever way that may be.) Doing something different will feel wrong, the same way not meeting that living life in the slow lane feels wrong for me. I’m proud to be gender deviant, and let the best person win who races me.

 

 

The Flame

The flame

oxygen starved, it flickers but does not go out

The flame

it’s the passion inside of us that drives us to push our boundaries even when we don’t want to, that makes us better even when we can’t see it

The flame

once it ignites, it may not always burn bright but it will always leave its mark

The flame

is what keeps us sane.

being genderfluid in a relationship

The things you wanted at some point in your life aren’t the things you’ll want forever.

We stop missing people after awhile.

We have different ideas of what our perfect life should be.

We look for different things in people, even if we feel like we can’t live without that dream or person.

We realize our dreams can take more than one form and that compromise isn’t really that.

There’s joy we’ve yet to discover.

We realize love means letting more pain in.

We realize as we grow up we become more broken but also more well rounded, like a rough rock polished.

We are ever evolving but one thing stays constant: our ability to love.

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I haven’t journaled in a long time. The first three months of the relationship felt like a lifetime, the next three gone in a flash, like an candid photo, exposed too brightly from the flash. 

I’ve explored new emotional territories with my partner. Anxiety and depression, too, have taken me to new territory-made me feel more alone than I ever have, even when I always had someone by my side. The only thing I can do amidst gasping breaths and limitless despair is to repeat to myself: I have anxiety and depression, I had it before you, and I’ll have it after you. And that is all I can really do to cancel out the shadow it casts, by shining my light brighter on my mental illnesses than I have ever before.

At first I thought that being a man’s girlfriend was the reason why I felt dysphoria over the way I was viewed, but the reality is it only made it salient. The problem was always there; no wonder why I was single for 21 years. That was something I chose unconsciously, because the pain of being someone’s girlfriend was never worth the freedom I had as an androgynous snowboarder, drifter. Until someone waltzed into my life, someone I have no way of being sure of, I could never even dream of giving up my freedom. The closest thing I had ever dreamed of was dating a woman. As if being queer and dating a female would make it any easier for me than dating a man and appearing straight. Dating period would be hell for a queer genderfluid person, so why date at all? 

Last year, I didn’t even know that genderfluidity existed. I knew was transgender was and I knew that I wasn’t trans. But what I did know was that a handful of nights per year the gender dysphoria would be so strong I’d lay awake wondering what if I was trans-it hit me hard that I was some freak, because by a process of elimination I figured out I couldn’t be trans, but I couldn’t be cisgender [non-trans], either.

I have to remember that there is only one reason necessary to live, and that’s to create and enjoy art. Even when I feel isolated because of my mental illness, whomever it is that is with me, I have to remember that the reason to live lies within myself. Being able to experience, whether it be joy or pain, is a privilege. It is better to experience than to not experience at all. 

I may not have a penis but I know a thing or two about being a man. It is not really that different from being a woman, and there is too much pressure on them to help to girls. Who’s there to help them? They are more sure they’ll be seen as authority and thus more likely to be aggressive instead of cooperative if this self concept is transgressed. They are just as vain as girls. Their friendships are just as deep as women’s, although they might feel more like their own person admiring their friend rather than “uniting” with their friend into a conglomerate. 

I don’t need a penis to prove that, anymore than I need to be single to claim my personhood. It gets better when I realize that no one is going to object to many of my more masculine pursuit. Imagine the freedom a man has when he finally realizes he can buy whatever he wants from the men’s section after being forced to purchase from the women’s section all his life. Small victories are sometimes all a queer person has. Whatever the world throws at them, they can’t change the fact that they have something that can never been taken away. 

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Foggy Days

Accidentally used 1600 ISO after trying star shots at Tenquille. Shots taken on the way to Crown Mtn. Foggy days fail to dampen my enthusiasm for the beauty of trees and mountains-some of the most beautiful moments I’ve been in are bad weather. After all, snow is bad weather to some but a blessing to others.

Tenquille Lake