Trip Thoughts

Last week I drove around an hour and a half into the suburbs of the city just over the state line for a work thing. Back pre-COVID I drove into and through that area all the time, but since early 2020 I’ve only been around there once in summer and this second time now. It’s funny driving the very very familiar highways again after all this time.

The last time I did a work trip of this sort was pre-COVID, something like six plus years ago, and it’s interesting to think about how things have changed. I was well into transition then, but I had not done any sort of body modification so I had a weird honorary-woman status that went really well for me but was always a bit unpredictable and I was always nervous about how people might react to me. So I remember deciding what to wear for one event, wanting to be nicely dressed up like some sort of serious professional, but also wanting to be careful to not be too weirdly visible, avoid attracting too much attention. I was never very good at estimating how that might work out. I certainly could see how women dress for such things, but there were not exactly examples of professional dress, feminine version, but for people with beards. That was just me.

So I decided that I’m not obligated to be maximally bold at all times, I wore pants instead of a dress, tried to be a little less visible. And then in typical fashion for trying to be less conspicuous, had a relatively baffling encounter with the cleaning guy apparently being very surprised to see me washing my hands in the men’s room. And then two women organizing the event would be on stage wearing bright floral-print dresses and I felt like maybe I was drabber than I needed to be, although again aware that it worked differently for them.

These days picking out clothes feels a lot easier. It feels amazing to be able to just do the usual things other people do and have that seen as just totally ordinary.

I’m also gradually unlearning the lifetime of social anxiety now that interacting with people goes so nicely and so easily. Everything is nicer but traveling to some event and meeting people is just so much easier now. I’m also starting to understand how now as a woman I’m usually much more an actual part of a group discussion, get real turns to speak, am no longer trying to slip in a few words here and there in gaps hoping I won’t be too disruptive but trying to at least participate in some way.

Have to wonder what it would have been like to live all these last decades like this.