I sent a photo of my outfit to my dearest aroace platonic wife* of many years and she loved it, but her first comment was “femme Loren is always a bit of a shock, lol.”

I tell her that I know and that masc/butch Loren is quietly dying in here. Every day I think about grabbing a pair of scissors and chopping off all of my hair but I don’t. I keep booking haircut appointments for a pixie cut and then changing my mind and not showing up. I outgrew and then misplaced a binder I bought a couple of years ago and I haven’t replaced it yet and every time I put on a sweater I think to myself “this would look really cool and hot and different if I was a completely different shape than I currently am” and anyway.

“Put your hair up. Get the binder,” J tells me, gently. “Wear it some of the time when you want to. It’s okay.”

The specific combination of heat and humidity is getting to me but I’m desperately craving weather where I can justify button down shirts again.

And – equally important – on the other hand, there’s this – I was a scruffy little kid who grew up maybe a little plain looking and I basically just had access to hand me down clothes that didn’t fit right, and I thought femininity was perfect and beautiful but also completely outside the range of possibility for me. And then yesterday evening Steve got home from a visit with a colleague (work husband) and he walked in on me with a string of pearls and dangly matching earrings and mascara and a shirt with a pretty neckline and my hair tied up in a specific way because, left to my own devices, I had decided to play dress up, just for me – and his face softened and he smiled and me and he said “you look nice!!!??? what’s the occation?”

and – yeah, that made me turn briiiight pink.

There’s an image in my mind of, like – two selves from different points on my own timeline that have merged into something that denies no part of the self expression experience. I am finding that I have trouble finding the happy medium.

_____

• Wife, a word which here means, “trusted friend to whom you are devoted completely and will continue to be for a lifetime”