Every autumn the ground begins to grow cold and harden. He used to watch leaves fall from the trees, feel the air snap with a new chill, and lament the shrinking days. He didn’t sow now, he harvested and gathered his resources to prepare for the dark half of the year.
He didn’t shake his fists at the turning of the seasons and gnash teeth at his failure to stop the earth revolving around the sun. At a cosmic level, at least, he uniformly relinquished control.
Control.
It’s the source of so much anguish, enervation, and malformation. He thought he could control a narrative, a relationship, and a way forward when fear fell upon him. He could avoid the discomfort and anxiety and dread if he just avoided a thing in question, called it what it isn’t, or reductively logicked it out of existence. When did he become an illusionist?
Control is an illusion we cast when we cannot accept the truth.
It’s the reason the ice caps are melting yet we continue to leave the lights on and spew metric megatons of exhaust into the atmosphere. It’s the reason our bodies are wasting away yet we continue to eat, drink, and smoke with abandon. It’s the reason he lived for nearly 40 years in the guise he was given at birth yet felt something just wasn’t right. He couldn’t see through the illusion. He didn’t even know it was one.
But she could.
She’d been buried deep in the earth, down so far for so long, but in the stillness and peace of rural Scotland her voice could be heard. She screamed he was an illusion and the sound was like the wind, the sea, the birds, the mountains, so he soldiered on confused by a growing unease.
He sensed something wasn’t right. The mystery grew. A resolution seemed impossible, but in the pages of his novel and the journeys of his Scottish travels the voice grew louder, more insistent. Almost truly a voice. He struggled through esoteric pursuits and spiritual investigations. Searching, always searching. For when the voice grew quiet so, too, did his engagement with the world around him.
A year ago, today, she burst through the earth and he met she. The illusion collapsed upon itself, and in the utter, stark truth of that mental rubble there was only room for acceptance. There was nothing to be controlled. There was nothing to be denied. There was nothing to be argued or cajoled or bargained.
I am a woman. I am transgender. I am in the process of transitioning. And I am sharing this information here because I am proud of myself and Traveling Savage will, of course, continue to be a resource for all who seek to travel to Scotland.
I am filled with overwhelming gratitude. I feel so fortunate to have had the ability to undertake a kind of extended vision quest in Scotland. I want to thank the fates and the furies, the gods and the winds, and myself for having the endurance to not give up the search for the truth. I am so thankful for the love and support of friends and family and acquaintances as I have shared this news with them. The past year has been a time of intense challenge and healing, and the road ahead is sure to be fraught with challenges and obstacles, but also exultation and exuberance.
And it’s me on the road now, not an illusion of me. There’s so much more to say. I’m still learning how to say it. So let me start with an introduction.
My name is Aelyth. It’s nice to meet you.