MAJs gay bikes [she’s in her fitness era]

Yesterday was my 28th birthday, historically birthdays have always been a hard time for me. In a sense they're markers, milestones, numerals on a clock, and for the longest time, 25.9 years to be precise i felt they were ultimately a signifier of something i had no control over. my life seemed to keep rolling on, counting down and i was left with a feeling of isolation and loneliness which culminated, every year, on my birthday with this sense of fear, anxiety and existential dread that everything i did in the time since the last one did nothing to address that feeling. year after year

as i often did at the time, i found myself staring in the mirror, i was just coming off my third run of anti depressants, my fifth cycle of going to doctors, friends and therapists for help. i'd been here before. five times in fact. every time i would finish a cycle and try to reinvent myself, a new city, a new look, a new hair cut, none of it had ever worked before and after 25 years i was running out of reinventions, cities and friendship groups to burn through. but this time, felt, worse? it was lockdown but if anything that helped, i was on furlough and agoraphobic so sitting inside for months on end was the dream. I had just broken up with my girlfriend, but this was nothing new to me and to be quite honest it was coming for a long time, we were on different paths. there was something else, something superficial but seemingly important enough to make the existential dread feel more overwhelming than it ever had before.

i was losing my hairline.

i'm sure many of you have been here before, man or woman (women get baldness too you know, it manifests differently but it's no less crushing to their sense of self, more so really when you consider the patriarchal male gaze on a womans body that treats her like shit if, god forbid, they're not attractive to a man). when staring at this, fretting about it, the way i saw my body changed. i think for the first time i thought about my gender. now for many people, they go their whole life never thinking about their gender, it just doesn't occur to them, why should it? and for the entirety of my life i thought i would be one of those people but for some reason, looking into this mirror, i was there, thinking about my gender.

to think about ones gender is very different than say, thinking about ones looks. when one thinks about ones looks they might feel a sense of delight or disgust. it usually comes from a place many, very smart, feminist thinkers would explain in sense of patriarchy and masculinity and their sex, some very smart anti colonialist thinkers would base it in racism and colonialism, a savvy marxist might base it in class. you get the occasional, delightful read, that sums it up as all of the above. but thinking about ones gender is quite different, it operates on, to put it in clumsy terms, a plane above all this, not in intrinsic value or weight, but in a sense of consciousness. it's a sense of consciousness that only really gets triggered when you find yourself outside the norm of it and it can operate independently from all the other classical sociological capitals and material pressures.

so needless to say when i was thinking about it. i was quite shocked. being the sort of person i am i tried to analyse myself every which way, inside and out, sure all my friends were queer and trans and i felt alienation from masculinity and my body but, who doesn't? it turns out that when i spoke to some people the "who doesn't?" was... well everyone, or at least over 99% of them. at least in the gender sense as defined above. many, many women thought about an alienation from masculinity and many of my gay and queer friends felt a frustration with it. but none quite resonated with it for gender reasons.

After these reflections the timeline and my consciousness becomes a bit of a fugue state, i can't tell you much about it, other than some key points. i remember crying over text to a friend about how the name hayley felt more connected to me than any other assigned to me, i remember crying in the doctors surgery as he rang me to say i had to wait 4 years to talk to me about dysphoria and that i should check in so i don’t kill myself, i remember struggling to piece together the financials for thousands of pounds in private care while getting my cardiologist and private provider to speak to each other. i did a lot of crying then, that and drinking. crying and drinking was probably why i do not remember it.

that was about a 6 month period, just before my 26th birthday. a couple of days before it i had received a parcel in the post with 3 bottles of estrogel and a shot of decpeptyl. the shot of which my mother graciously intramuscularly injected (expertly i may add, 50 years of diabetes shots and she's better than any medical professional i've had since). Shortly after that shot i found myself in swinley forest, i was riding there a lot then. partly as it was fun, partly as it had a nice bench to drink on. but for the first time in a while i didn't stop to have a can or two, or three, of beer, i stopped to have a cry. it was a loud, ugly and undignified cry. i remember feeling so stupid, noone cries like this do they? it felt theatric. i couldn't stop. this wasn't like the crying i'd been doing before this, it wasn't from a place of despair or existential dread. it was from joy. for the first time in what felt like 26 years i felt a sense of joy. more importantly, i felt a sense of self, a sense of connection between my mind and my body. there was no way for me to articulate this other than this, big, oscar worthy cry of joy.

as i mentioned at the start of this post, that was 2 years ago, i was 28 yesterday. the first photos are from when i went to see friends in cambridge, it was beautiful. of course the riding was good and the weather was warm, but what i enjoyed most was just being in the company of people i admire and love, all of which have known me for many, many years (one almost a decade). I hadn't seen most of them since the crying in the mirror 2 years ago, not properly, not in a meaningful capacity. to be able to sit and chat with them, laugh with them, as me, as a whole person, left me with a smile on the train home that i'll cherish for the rest of my life.

the second set of photos are from today, and well today was equally special. a lot of people in those photos i've met recently or just today. I was a little sun kissed, glycogen depleted and massively dehydrated when i found myself pushing my bike up the final hill alone. i could hear their voices ahead, laughing and joking, but i stopped walking and suddenly i was transported to the forest two years ago, where i let out that big cry. i was instantly overwhelmed. overwhelmed with this sense of love and affirmation for myself; overwhelmed with all the effort I had put into the last 2 years, be it with my transition, my community, or my place in the world. it's something no amount of words will convey, but much like that smile on the train home, it will be staying with me going forward. to finally build a place for myself that felt like home for me, but also other people is something many people go their whole life chasing and there i was living it, feeling it. if you’ve felt it before i’m sure you can relate

Next year is the first year i will be looking forward to my birthday, for more memories like the ones i mentioned here. I'm not sure why i'm mentioning this on a bike forum, seems like i should have a big message about how people should be treated and seen with respect for who they truly are. however all i want to say, is thank you. thank you to all of those i've met over the last few years, thank you to everyone who's helped, be it making me a tea and having a chat, be it offering advice on a bike issue, or even critiquing my handlebars. i look forward to many, many more badly thought out bike ideas with you all

hayley