33 Snowflakes

It was a moderately late night last night …

And I was making my way back to the interstate from the rural jail where I had been meeting a client.

Snow was starting to fly and scattered specks started hitting my windshield with the freezing rain sounding like pellets as they hit the roof of my car …

It was very dark on the two lane road I was navigating, so much so that I wouldn’t see the snowflakes until milliseconds before they hit my windshield.

It felt as if my only contact with civilization was through my satellite radio …

Which was playing a set of songs from the last 10 years.

Beginning in 1979.

Each song seemed to be a flashback for me …

And though I was recalling details upon details of life I associated with each song,

I didn’t see me in the memories.

It was as if each memory belonged to someone else.

I’m not sure I liked that feeling.

It scared me.

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12 Comments

  1. I’ve started having a problem looking at any more recent pictures of me as Joe Hairdy. Younger ones I’m okay with … but with those from say the last 10-15 years … I struggle. I hate my picture being taken now when I’m attempting boy (totally contrary to when I’m just me and having found a camera I didn’t like) … though I do have one picture that I’m part of that to this day … I carry with me everywhere. It’s tattered, torn and folded … and I can’t remember the last time I even looked at it … but I keep it with me and often check to make sure it is where it is supposed to be … when I’m feeling particularly uncomfortable with myself, it’s a security blanket for me and reminds me that at one point in my life, I was a good person … and I can remain that way.

  2. Hi Claire !! wb !! Thanks for getting my Smashing Pumpkins reference … 1979 is one of my favorite songs … the bass totally grooves me.

  3. I can relate to your feelings, too. I’m still in early stages of transition, but I’m far gone enough now that even old photos from this summer look to me like a different person. That said, for me it’s more a visual thing, in that I can see the difference, whereas when I hear something from long ago, I remember how I felt back then, but it was still me. Do you feel strange, too, when you see old pictures of Joe?

  4. i love that song, 1979. and thirty-three, from the same album btw.

    it’s funny how specific memories attach to certain songs. i love listening to them over and over. i love knowing that i felt a certain way, even if it was near anguish, and that i can recall and cherish that memory forever. although i live largely for the present, my life continuity holds me together, and i struggle, in spite of traversing gender presentations/expectations, to maintain my cherished memories, my past.

    i can totally understand why disassociated memories would be scary for you–it would be for me too: it’s like losing yourself.

    ..claire

  5. this is what i’m talking about when i say transsexuals are a fiction writer’s gold mine…
    there is just so much to work with
    that’s not available anywhere else…

    if it’s any consolation,
    i weep over memories of fictional characters…

    so you’re no crazier than i am…
    wait, that’s not much comfort, is it?

    :p

  6. You might want to think of it as two separate people, but you aren’t. You aren’t having a brain transplant. I don’t know about you, but my memories are mine. They don’t belong to anyone else. I’ve always been me and I remain me. My sense of self didn’t change. What changed is I haven’t had to pretend to be a guy for a very long time.

  7. And I’m curious…

    Did your client say…”Hey! I thought you were a guy! I don’t want any stinkin chick for a lawyer?”

    πŸ™‚

    Is it bowling night tonight: Can I come huh-huh-can I can I? I wanna hang with the usual suspects!

    Makenna

  8. It was an odd experience … it wasn’t unpleasant memories I was recalling necessarily … what made me feel uncomfortable was a sense they were no longer my memories, but someone else’s … I’m the sum of my experiences, I don’t want to lose my memories and the sensation that I was eavesdropping on someone else’s life made me feel eerily empty.

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