The Pure Lands

I was around the age of 22. New to sobriety, I was lost and scared, feeling the magnitude of my aloneness in the universe. As I sat on my bed, legs crossed, back resting on the headboard, I thought about the whole "higher power" bit from step two of Marijuana Anonymous and got to praying. This isn't a foxhole atheist story - I didn't pray to a deity, but to an ideal, to the embodiment of all the qualities I aspired to. A message addressed to the void. And in the process I felt a little prick of what I've come to understand as a religious, the kiss of the divine.



Every Buddha has their own Pure Land. Achieve enlightenment by popping pills. How to start? Most of the time, I'm too material for spirituality. Which I state as a disclaimer for how uncomfortable I am explaining this thing that I deep down need to explain. There's a moment, when taking my estrogen after once again escaping the clutches of testosterone, where I get that feel. Like I'm tuned into the heartbeat of the world, like there is a candle burning inside of me, impossible to extinguish. Something I don't have enough words to explain away. Something too powerful to ignore. In some way, that is how I know - not surmise, but know - that I'm a woman.

I recoil to say it, but it has a tinge of holiness to it, this whole process of trans-ing your sex. Like giving birth, it is painful and gross and dangerous - but still retains the essence of the ineffable, the irresistible power of creating life. In this moment, I want to shake every person who sees transition as superficial. How could they understand? "We know our gender as a revelation."