Becoming a ballerina giraffe with legs as long as my neck

Manifesting the next chapter, finding strength from adversity, and letting go of everything

In many ways the challenges that lie before me are the greatest I have faced.  And yet, I don’t know if I can honestly say that I have ever been happier or felt more free. Wow.

Facing Economic Annihilation

Divorce isn’t cheap.  There are the legal bills.  These are already well above a respectable annual salary for each of us, and sadly, it is totally unnecessary.  No progress has been made?  Why?  Because when you don’t talk to each other, are unwilling to talk or agree, then no progress can be made.  Every marriage should have a pre-nuptial agreement to avoid just this impasse.

There is the cost.  There is also the consequences of a life of high living married to a woman who likes to live large.  A nanny for each child.  International travel and luxury holidays.  She thinks that there is more money than there is.  Always has.  I guess she didn’t believe me when I said that I gave her everything—money, property, everything.  And I would have happily given her more.

What is interesting is that although she has never paid for anything in our collective lives, she has savings.  She has all of our assets.  In theory, I could well find myself homeless.

Instability at Work and Uncertainty of Income

I have a bad habit of getting fired.  You have to have a job in the first place to get fired.  I don’t.  Instead I have a growing collection of side hustles, none of which pay very well.  In addition, I have my professional work which is freelance, and very whimsical in its coming and going.  I never know what my billings will be looking forward.  I can have zero months and great months, and it is hard to know what is coming.

This latter work is what provides almost all of our disposable income, but it is also completely gobbled up by a lifestyle which is too expensive.  The beauty of this divorce is that it is forcing the issue, and I will soon be freed from this burden, this pressure, to have to live to a certain standard.  I don’t give a damn about what people think about my economic status.  She appears acutely oriented towards keeping up appearances.

Part of this has been “bribing” the children with opulent holidays.  Something that has taken place with some frequency over the past years.  Thankfully, she is drawing on wealthy benefactors, including one who she has positioned as a positive male role model for my children, as she no longer regards my transgender self as such an anchor.

Being oddly male

For me, however, I believe that I represent more of the male qualities that are admirable than ever before—isn’t that funny.  Solidity, constancy, generosity.  No game-playing.  I am also unashamedly stepping into myself as being explicitly willing to support and serve a woman.  This dynamic is playing out with one of my closest friends, a divorced woman.  Nothing is happening in that sense, but there is a natural acceptance that a friendship dynamic can also include acts of service—and her understanding that this is the foundation of my life within BDSM, rather than making it weird, has made it normal.

And this has been an important lesson for me in just being me.  My friendships are very important to me.  I am not a “social” person in the sense that I must be out and about or want to go to the latest party.  But I do love deep connection with a small group of people.  And a part of that connection is doing things for them, looking after them, taking care of them, serving them.  And now I know where this comes from, and rather than reserve this for kinky moments in my life, just accepting that this is a core part of who I am, has been really liberating.

I love small everyday acts of generosity.  I was once accused of giving to manipulate, and with all acts of mudslinging, some of it self-sticks—you ask yourself is there truth to that?  But in the end, I have realised that philosophically it speaks more of the mudslinger than the target…as with all things, how we look at the world shapes our experience of it.  If you choose to think ill of people, then they are more likely to be deserving of that assessment—either because they start to behave in the ways that you expect them to, or because you simply look at them that way, and perception is fundamental to reality.

My response is, and will become ever more, stepping into grace.  I know that I am deeply and fundamentally flawed.  I also know that I cannot take grace for myself.  Such things can only be given by others.  Every day offers new failings which are simply opportunities for us to rise above.  We need not be low creatures.  Ask yourself, how to rise above?  How to walk in someone else’s shoes?  How to let go even when you don’t want to?  We don’t need to understand, we just need to flow.

Doors Opening

Being transgender and accepting it, being submissive and accepting it, allowing myself to pursue my passions without thinking about whether they can replace how I make a living, is setting me free.  Engaging with people exactly as I am feels more than good.  It allows them to also be themselves, to express themselves, to be free.  It is another act of service.

A small example.  My children are experiencing their own gender and sexuality with a comfort that has been enhanced by me coming out.  I know they don’t talk about sex, their loves and passions, or other relationship issues with their mother.  They do with me.  Nothing is off limits it seems, because ‘who am I to judge?’ and they know it.  I am still their father, but my friendships with my children are deepening in ways that I couldn’t imagine before.

Professionally, too, people are asking for my help and support.  I didn’t expect this.  My beautician said it to me best, “who cares what you are–male, female, trans, straight, gay, bi—what matters is your brain.  That’s what they want.  And yet, my fear is that if they know me as trans, they might not…but that is my fear.  And in a way, this is a reason for me to take my own medicine—“what we look for is what we find” can just as easily be applied to the self.  If you are fearful, people take advantage.  We are the energy we create.

Embracing Being Queer

I love the word “queer”.  I have been queer my whole life.  In many ways.  The word fits.  Calling myself queer and hanging out with queer people has been very comforting to me.  For the first time I can say that I am meeting people who really and truly don’t judge me.  That can only feel good.

The How of Life

My life today feels a bit like a fire hose without anyone holding it…spraying everywhere…and the weirdest thing about my divorce is that the chaos which surrounds me is being cleared up as a result.  Soon, I will have only one place to live, much less stuff, much less to worry about.

I am a witch.  I don’t know how to use and channel this just yet but am studying and practising every single day.  This is manifesting itself in a kind of healing power that has many components which draw on threads of my life thus far, plus new ones that I have added.

I associate this direction with the feminine.  I cook for people, I teach people how to cook, I write about cooking and food, and now, I am a qualified nutritionist.  Wellness from within.  To this has been added a qualification in medical herbalism, which has brought with it an entirely new depth of understanding of the healing powers of plants.

And now there is energy work, a kind of physical-therapeutic process.  There have been blog posts on all kinds of experiments done on myself: cranio-sacral therapy, reiki, Rosen Method, gyrotonics, yoga, meditation…and now I have found one that works for me, and for which I have discovered an unexpected natural feeling for.  What has been strange about that was my struggle to be present has been strongest when the attention is directed towards me, but when I am able to concentrate on someone else, it has been very easy for me to be totally and utterly present, and to feel their energy and emotions in ways that I still struggle to do with and for myself.  I am also okay with this—though I do know that there is self-mastery that is required here, and overcoming ADD, I am totally comfortable with giving and not being ashamed of that anymore.

What does this mean?  If you are in my life, I want to take care of you, I want to serve you.  I can’t help it.  It is the nature of how I connect to people, experience people, co-operate with people.  It is the essence of love.

My optimism for the future

All of these various threads should make me uncertain for the future.  Losing the anchor of a life companion and best friend, losing financial certainty, losing the solidity of a cis gender presentation, losing my home, giving up white male privilege—all of these things should be destabilising.  Perhaps they are.

But they don’t seem to matter.  What is happening instead is that people are being nice to me in ways that I have never experienced before…being open, being friendly, and being as playfully curious about me as I can be about them.  It is delightful…and if anything, certainty suddenly doesn’t matter anymore.  Because yes, how you we see each other does affect us, affects our energy.

I am a ballerina giraffe.  I’m wearing a pearl collar and dancing a little more every day.  Come and sway to the rhythm with me, beat the drum, and make music.  This is what tastes good.