Creating My Signature Curves

The seeds that blossom into identity take root in the smallest actions.

Last Summer, I suffered a debilitating bout of depression as I realized I would never be Assigned Female at Birth. Writing the words now, I feel almost childish for having dreamt it.

Of course I would never be Assigned Female at Birth. Gender transition - no matter how aggressive - will not affect my prenatal development. On that, at least, I agree with my conservative critics.

But more to the point, I will not be given birth again - not until the next life. Certainly that should have dawned on me when I began transition. A scientist who teaches the definition of sex really should have seen that coming.

Instead, I fell into depression and intended to end it all. With help, I made it through, and took a short retreat to soothe the raw nerves exposed by a half-complete gender transition.

As I healed, I needed an action to reaffirm the changes I experienced - a change to remind me daily my identity was more than genetics, more than genitalia.

What occurred to me was to change what had become my lifeblood by then - my writing. More accurately, I decided to change my penmanship.

No. Not Penmanship. That does not suit one in transition to womanhood.

I embarked on a journey of penwomanship.

The artist's transition

For decades, I wrote in block capital letters. It made sense for a chemist, whose lab notebooks could be subpoenaed as legal documents.

It also made sense for a person with no perceptible sense of artistry.

Admittedly, I had played guitar for more decades than I had been a chemist, but I perceived no artistry in myself, and my judgment of artlessness was all that mattered. I was a scientist, a bore - even a boor - with no refinement to speak of, and none missed.

But no…that was the old man…this is the new woman. I was writing, I was podcasting, and I found exciting new pieces to the puzzle I am almost daily.

So I changed to use cursive in my handwriting.

The first few months were torture. How do I connect the letters in words with unfamiliar patterns…even the very word "cursive?"

I struggled…and I wrote. I struggled greatly…and still I wrote. I sometimes discovered a word perfectly formed, and I felt encouraged…so on I wrote.

Today - as I write this article first by longhand, with purple ink and my medium point LAMY 2000 fountain pen - I see more than words, more than skillfully connected letters. I see the woman who grew out of my gender transition.

I see myself. I see Amethysta.

The curves in cursive

More than a year has passed since I first decided to write in cursive. Today, I write more quickly in cursive than I ever did in block capital letters, but I gained far more than mere efficiency.

I gained a new mode of expression, a new way to see myself and define myself. I am surprised to find a change as small as writing style to be as important as it has been.

But as I look back over journals from only 18 months ago, I do not recognize that person. That person is bland, tasteless, a Saltine in unseasoned clam chowder.

My words today are spicy - they scream with piquant expression. I see myself in the curves of letters as well as I see myself in the curves of my bust and hips.

My words today embrace the reader, hugging them, and only letting go when I have enough.

The man who wrote has become the woman who emotes - and my glee in the pure act of pen to paper, mediated by ink and a platinum-coated nib, is more sensuous and intimate than I had ever been in countless loveless one-night stands.

That man is gone. Today I live in cursive.

Sign of the new

The culmination of my grand experiment in developing manual skill is my signature - my signature, not that of the old man.

He developed his signature in the 1980s - a necessary evil mandated by a Summer job and the checking account that went with it. His signature was scrawled. He justified it as being too busy - too caught up in intelligent thought - to spend time with a pen properly.

But I know the truth now. He wrote his name only as stylized initials because he did not want that name - it never fit him. It certainly doesn't fit me.

The signature that fits me is clear, legible - even proud of its existence. My signature has no need to hide, not when it pronounces my identity: one worthy of the pride I feel for it.

But one aspect of my signature changed. The old man scrawled initials. An R, a D, an H - what looked to be a Roman numeral II bestowed in homage to my father's father.

Today, I inscribe only my full first name. My last name need not appear. It is gone. My family heritage fades as my life stretches before me, made complete by chosen family.

I chose to bear that name. I am everything in its signature.

My name wants to be seen, to be read, to be appreciated.

I've been here all along

Over the past two years, I conquered gender transition. So much life has occurred since the Summer I intended to end it all, along with so much death, just…not my own.

I allowed the old to go, to pass on, to be discarded as outworn. It all had to go if ever I were to come into the woman I know I am.

The mirror reminds me I'm not young, not by a long shot. I lived the hard parts of life, the hard parts of gender transition, and today I own the hard-won wisdom that comes with it all.

I looked inside, and I found the love, the responsibility, the obligation, to carry it all off.

My gender transition shines through my written pages and my signature, and I know in my heart I've been here all along. Like the Queen of Swords, I live with knowledge and I recognize in my writing that I never needed somebody to boost me.

What I needed was the confidence and surety that only I can boost myself.

Goodbye, old man - you've served your purpose. Go in peace.