The best reason for transition, as I understand it, is “because I particularly wish it.” I had not been in the habit of thinking very hard about my own feelings about my womanhood until the day I asked myself if I had any opinions about my gendered future. I was more than a little surprised to find that I did! — 49: 666-668
This fondness for disavowing old mission statements and replacing them with new ones was, in fact, the most characteristic habit of my drinking days, where every morning brought with it a fresh announcement, a new resolve, a declaration of profound and immediate change, even if the declaration was only broadcast inside my own head and crowded out by more pressing matters by the time I reached the front door. Now I know what I need to do to get out of this fix. Now I truly know myself, and in knowing myself I can master myself, and by mastering myself I can start building a brand-new future this instant. Getting sober had less to do with finding a better way to more effectively stick to a new resolve and more to do with permitting collapse and abandoning resistance. — 102: 1431-1437
I never know how to refer to previous incarnations of myself in a way that honestly acknowledges the present without sacrificing the past. There is truth, sometimes, in saying that — 117: 1646-1647
In the fairy tale an incomprehensible happiness rests upon an incomprehensible condition. A box is opened, and all evils fly out. A word is forgotten, and cities perish. A lamp is lit, and love flies away. A flower is plucked, and human lives are forfeited. An apple is eaten, and the hope of God is gone.… To be breakable is not the same as to be perishable. Strike a glass, and it will not endure an instant; simply do not strike it, and it will endure a thousand years. Such, it seemed, was the joy of man, either in elfland or on earth; the happiness depended on NOT DOING SOMETHING which you could at any moment do and which, very often, it was not obvious why you should not do. —G. K. Chesterton, “The Ethics of Elfland,” Orthodoxy — 135: 1873-1878
Just as top surgery was about something more than merely removing part of my chest, sobriety required more than simply quitting drinking and carrying on otherwise as if nothing had changed. It required imagination, and imagination necessitates acknowledging that the future exists on its own terms and in its own right, and might even reach out and make demands of the present. — 211: 2909-2911