In which I habitually overload

This is my last semester at Duke, finally. I matriculated in 2007 but then took a year of medical leave, so it feels like I've been here forever. And yet I feel like I've hardly done anything.

I definitely feel like I've been busy my whole time at work, never enough hours in the day to get my work done. I've had a full course load every semester, and I've been working on an honors thesis for nearly a year. I'm a member of a Greek organization; even if I'm not the most active brother in the world, I hold an officer position. And I've been working ten hours a week at my job for two years. But I feel like at Duke, this is just average -- I feel like I should be able to squeeze in at least one more thing on that list.

There are a lot of things that I love to do, that I wish I'd been involved in throughout my Duke career -- I could have continued doing graphic design at the Chronicle, or I could have stopped by my scholarship office twice a week for the visiting lecturers and the brownies, or I could have edited a student publication, or gotten my own writing published, or actually attended more than three total BDU meetings in my life. These are all things that I would have enjoyed, that would have helped make my life more like the kind of life I want to live.

Instead, my biggest extracurricular is "stressing over LGBT issues." Not advocating for LGBT issues, or raising awareness, or anything externally productive -- just the internal emotional stress of navigating the world as both trans and queer.

It's a little like the 'second shift' a lot of women have to cope with -- when they go through their normal workday and come home exhausted, only to have an entire second workload of childcare, housekeeping, cooking, scheduling, etc. dumped on them without pay or acknowledgement. Except, I only wish this stuff happened in a separate shift. Instead, it's happening right at the same time as everything else I'm doing, like when somebody says something in class that totally freaks me out.

Managing my freak-out so as not to disrupt the class is work. I mentioned to a friend today that being LGBT sometimes felt like an extra class I was taking, making every semester an overload without even the advantage of getting an A at the end of the semester, and she asked me what took so much time. My first response was to complain about all the time I spend at the Duke Hospital dealing with my endocrinologist, but this is part of the answer too -- navigating the world while LGBT requires extra emotional work, which has an opportunity cost. Any time I spend dealing with a freak-out is time I can't spend listening to my professor, or taking notes, or thinking about what I want to have for lunch. Either I do those things later, taking time away from sleep and relaxation, or I don't do those things at all.

Similarly, every hour I spend arguing with my parents -- that's an hour that a non-trans alternate universe version of myself was able to spend reading a book for fun. Also: talking to friends about arguing with my parents. Doing research. Crafting extra versions of my resume to give me options in outing myself. Long coming-out conversations. Some mornings, I even resent the time it takes to take my T and bind; all I can think is that the time I spend applying gel and waiting for it to dry every day, is time I could have spent doing anything else.

Now, I have my life running fairly smoothly now. I doubt I've spent more than a few hours total this whole semester dealing with this stuff. But I have surgery in my future, which is time and money a cis guy could spend going on vacations. Not to mention the fact that my entire gap year is 100% happening so I'll have time for that surgery, and otherwise I'd be going to grad school. And the medical leave I took freshman year-- that was crisis of identity that consumed my life for an entire year an a half. A non-LGBT version of myself would have been allowed to go to Oxford that summer.

I don't necessarily regret all of these opportunity costs. I don't think I'd be the person I am if I hadn't had those experiences, especially the year off. I made it to Oxford eventually, and I find time for all of the most important things in my life. But I feel like this kind of emotional work can lead to a more subtle kind of discrimination against LGBT individuals: if we have to spend a lot of time and energy just dealing with the basics, we're at a disadvantage when compared to people who didn't have the same distractions. My resume, quite frankly, doesn't look as good as the resumes of my straight, cis peers.

I still kick ass, so I'm not too worried. But it makes me think about what a better world would really look like, and makes me wish I had time for just one more thing so I could make that world happen.

Gay Time

The past few months have been incredibly stressful for me. I was in a relationship, then out of a relationship, dealing with housing problems, adjusting to life off campus, trying to figure out what I want to do with my life, trying to figure out *if* I can do something with my life, the usual identity crisis that I never seem to figure out, and more things that perpetually swim around in my head. I've had my good times, my bad times, my amazing times, and times where I wanted to crawl into a cave and fade from existence. On top of it all, it's my senior year. I've got one more chance to do things right here, to get involved, to reconnect with old friends. So, I sat down with myself and asked myself, "Self, what do you want to do with yourself this year? It's your last year. You only get one more shot. What are you going to do?"

After first answering myself by saying that I'm going to Disney World, I thought for a minute and my big revelation: "Self, I'm going to be gay."

"Good choice, my friend."

I didn't start coming to the Center or LGBT events until my sophomore year. It was a very different time back then and decided that I didn't want to get involved with the community. I had my fraternity. I had my a cappella group. I had the FAC program. Gay was never a major identity for me anyway. I didn't need the community. I thought I'd be fine without it. As time went on, I would randomly show up at a Fab Friday or pop in to use a computer for 5 minutes but it didn't become a regular thing until junior year. Even then, I'd come to Fab Friday and that was about it.

And so, I just went through the first 3 years of my college career being openly gay but not being gay. I'd go to a gay club here and there but that was about the extent of it. And for a while, I was fine. I was happy having a short emergence into the gay world and then going back to my normal life. But, recently, things have been different.

I've had this gnawing feeling in me that something just wasn't right. Something was missing in my life and I needed to find out what it is. I got tired of my same old routine. In the midst of just going through the emotions of life, I lost myself. I didn't really know who AJ was anymore. I can tell you what he's majoring in, what music he likes, and what he's involved with on campus. But I couldn't tell you anything about AJ.

So the soul searching began. What in the world is wrong with me? What aren't I having fun with my brothers like I always used to? What am I doing wrong? I'm not doing something right. Then, it hit me.

Me. I'm not doing me the right way. I've always associated the Center with being a very flamboyant, overly radical, just super-gay gay. That's not exactly my style (I do have my moments, honey). I ended up just staying away from it. Finding friends outside of the Center. It took me all of this time to realize what I should have known all along: The Center is what you make it. Going there doesn't mean that I'm being extra gay. It doesn't mean anything. There were people that I once resented because I thought that they labeled me as not being gay enough or thought they looked down on me for not making the Center my second home. And I was wrong. I was drop dead wrong. I was basing my view of myself off of what I thought others would view me as. Just revealing my insecurities about myself.

And so, I chose not to really acknowledge who I am because of that. I knew and accepted my gayness but thought that my gayness was not the gayness that was at the Center. This stupid ideology led me to not really have many gay friends, thinking I didn't need friends like them. I wasn't one of those gays. I don't need to be surrounded by gays all the time. I have a life outside of being gay.

All of that came back to bite me in the butt when I realized that I was neglecting myself of a world of all these awesome queers and allies. I was rejecting my community and that simply just cannot be.

It's with that in mind that I've deiced to be gay this year. You'll often see me planted at a computer doing work (Facebooking) at the Center. You'll see me be one of the first people to show up at Fab Friday and one of the last to leave. I've decided to have regular parties at my apartment for the gays and allies. It's time for me accept the community that's been here for me all along. It's time for me to be gay.