Boundaries

As I write this, I anticipate I have less than a week to go before shedding all semblance of a male identity.  I contemplate this momentous change with a mixture of excitement, apprehension, and impatience. I am mindful of boundaries.

Boundaries are strange, invisible dividers.  It's very mysterious, in a way, how they work.  A boundary marks the point in time when two people become lovers.  On one side of the boundary, they are very careful with each other, with how they touch, how they behave.  On the other side, the rules completely change.  Boundaries separate strangers from acquaintances, good neighborhoods from bad, one country from another, day from night, waking from dreaming.

We are told that a boundary separates male from female.  A boundary that, some say, that is impossible to cross.  I know that this is not so; I have been crossing that boundary ever since I was a small child, and so have many others.  This boundary sometimes seems totally imaginary to me, but I know it has some sort of reality.  In the same way that a boundary between two countries is made real by structures, laws, languages, and custom, so too is the boundary between men and women.  Many arguments can be, and have been, made to the effect that this boundary is totally arbitrary and in no way based on reality.  One could also make the case that the boundary between England and Scotland is similarly arbitrary, though you're likely to have some angry Scots on your hands if you bring it up in the wrong place.  My point is that although these boundaries are artificial, they have a kind of reality nonetheless.

And so I prepare to cross the male-female boundary for the last time.  On one side of that boundary, I am expected to wear particular clothing, to speak, move, and look a certain way.  On the other side of that boundary, all those expectations change.  On this side, I have a particular name and gender according to various governmental and private organization; those things change when I cross the boundary.  The things I am interested in and am capable of doing are also expected to be different on each side of the boundary.  In this last, I am afraid I am going to largely disregard those expectations.  I hope that, once I cross that boundary, I never forget I spent much of my life tiptoeing back and forth across it.  It can be crossed, moved, chipped away, widened and narrowed. If I never cross it again, it will not be because it's a real barrier, but because I choose not to.