Hey, Kat here. This week I received this email from Tsukuru and I’d like to share it with you, our Good Empire community:
In the year 2000, I went to the Pride in Minneapolis, Minnesota, for the first time as an Lesbian-identified person. I had just turned 29. It was a glorious day. I joined the parade, pushing my three-year-old daughter in a stroller.ย
Well, maybe not THAT glorious. The night before, I drank more alcohol than I had ever drunk in my entire life and nearly choked on my own vomit. As far as I was concerned, I died that night and was reborn. As a brand new gay person.
It was a turbulent time: the year 2000. The Millennium. As a Japanese, I grew up hearing about the prophecy of Nostradamus, that the world would end in 1999. From a young age, I seriously believed that I would never reach the age 29. When it didn’t, I was left feeling oddly empty,ย needing a newย definition.
I married my best friend when I was 24 and gave birth to my daughter a year later. When I discovered that I was in love with another woman, I thought the experience would kill me. With the pain of knowing I would break up my family, the guilt of betraying my husband, my best friend, I thought I could die. When I didn’t, I came out to my husband. We talked about our future, decided to move to Los Angeles and to get a divorce.
It was at a farewell party that a friend of mine threw for me that I drank so awfully much and nearly killed myself.
Fast forward to 2021, I am just about to turn 50. I am a pre-transition transgender person (FTM). Soon I am going to start on hormone therapy. I embrace the years that I lived as a woman. Joy, pain, laughter, tears, anger, confusion, triumphs, and self-loathing…. All of it. I sense that there was a reason why I was born into this world in the month of June. In June 2021, I am celebrating my re-birth.
Tsukuru Fors
(Tsukuru, in Japanese, means “to create.” Fors, in Latin, means “chance.”)