Flannel Weather

Grateful thoughts on finding a way back to myself amidst the freeze

Hullo my lovely readers

A brief content note for discussion of chronic pain and its management and treatment, gender identity… and gender euphoria!

I am so touched by your truly lovely responses to last week’s letter, including from biologists who reassured me that the metamorphosis of dragonflies is an incomplete, and therefore recurring, one.

(I have vague memories of that from early school and it’s nice to know that my remaining queries about the completeness of the story version are reasonable.)

Thank you all.

This week’s letter stays with some of the themes – most particularly those of resurfacing, autonomy and sense of self – though more connected to gender identity than disability or neurodivergence.

Or, explicitly, to being non-binary trans.

I have written a fair amount recently, in my briefer letters and more poetic offerings, about ‘adjusting to autumn’ and the shifts to starkly colder weather in the Northern Hemisphere. This is largely due to the impact it has on my chronic pain and how I need to manage it (even with the blessing that, this year, I still have some Botox left in my system).

Simply put, my body isn’t built for seasons.

This letter, though, is about a more positive part of this time of year in the UK as a wheely (really!) non-binary person. It’s a grateful homage to the clothes I both have to and want to wear.

Have to in the sense that layering up is necessary but physically tricky and tiring.

Want to because, in spite of their physical challenges, I crave and cherish the way they make me feel on a psychological and emotional level.

Especially in a year characterised by the newer, additional pain of my ongoing shoulder injury issues (although, having lasted longer than six months, that’s now technically chronic in its own right). Because I haven’t been able to wear my any of my beloved dungarees with anything close to the regularity I’d wish.

(This is where the autonomy comes in. The rare bliss of autonomous browsing I wrote about last week linked to libraries and my precious dragonfly necklace is also a factor in my collection of dungarees; which spans all seasons, embraces the quirks of my body and brain and is comfortingly androgynous.

[A sidenote here that non-binary people don’t owe anyone androgyny. Gender being a social construct means that gender expression and gender identity aren’t the same thing, and indeed fluidity is a huge part of querying, queering and questioning the binary construction of gender, for everyone regardless of identity.

So, in referring to clothes as ‘comfortingly androgynous’, I’m articulating the purely personal sense of security and selfhood I find in seeking such neutrality.])

And, without my dungarees, this personal sense of security and selfhood has been noticeably absent over the past few months.

But, now it’s decidedly colder, amidst the bits my body is struggling with, my mind is settling on that score.

Thanks to the fact that, as the title of this letter notes, it’s flannel weather. For the resurfacing of the blankets I put on my bed… and another collection of clothes I chose and am helped to put on my body.

Flannel shirts: warm, welcomed by and gentle on my senses, and wonderfully coherent with how I consider myself and my expression.

Of transness, queerness, disability and neurodivergence.

Not apart but together.

Aligned.

[Image description: a photo of Jessi - a white non-binary person with short brown hair and brown eyes - sitting in their powered wheelchair in front of the door of their kitchen. They are wearing blue denim Converse shoes, blue trousers and a red-and-blue checked flannel shirt over a dark blue blue fleece top. They are grinning gently at the camera. / End image description]

In my book (libraries again!) that’s certainly a cause for seasonal celebration.

Thank you so much for reading, take care of yourselves and one another, and love and solidarity until next time,

Jx