These Sacred Chains
by Solana
I am descendant of an Áss, and so in that sense we are on opposite sides of a fence, but He is descendant of the sea, His father's mother a queen among giants. Our relationships with one another is just another chain, and one that cannot be escaped.
Writing this is hard, because I'm either gripped in the throes of a rage, or spent from throwing myself at the bars, lulled into exhaustion and apathy. It's the kind of feeling that is best expressed through ranting and growling, but I will do my best. Because I need to make these feelings known and forever, locked away in a backup server in some nifleheim-imbued bunker, and you deserve more than one more hail and a template paragraph of praise.
I felt you, early on. How could I not? I am a miserable creature, bound and caged. Except they didn't need a dwarf-forged chain for me. One birth, one human, one biologically male infant, and a chain was forged about me that only death could break. No matter how much I wanted to gallop about on all fours, to feel hooves against the ground, to express that part of me, I would never physically feel it. It's something experienced in dreams, something I feel faintly when leaving my body, an infuriating echo of what should be. From the moment of my birth everyone already knew and decided what I was for me. They called me a boy, and when I told them I was a girl my own 'father' told me that I was sick, that I needed to beg God to fill me up and make me whole. That was my first conscious brush with impotent rage, staring at the dashboard with tears in my eyes, seething, burning up with everything I'd been asked to bottle up inside.
How many fights did I get into with boys who thought different meant 'weak'? I can't even keep count of every office visit, every parent teacher conversation with worried looks and concerned faces. I never threw the first punch, but that wasn't what they cared about, they cared about the savagery of my response, the lasting harm I would have inflicted if I'd just been stronger, not a kid, not human. They cared about the other child's lasting harm, but no one spared a thought to the lasting harm done to me, with every cruel taunt, every time cowards teamed up on me, made school and my home and my life someplace 'unsafe'. No consideration was spared for 'that'.
How many times did I run away from home? I can't keep count of those either. I can only remember the time I took my friend with me, after he begged. When the sun started to set and we were in the thick of the woods, he sobbed and begged to go home. I snarled at him, called him a coward, and left him behind. Because I was going Home. I was going Home, gods damn it. But I couldn't sever that chain either, the commitment I made, the responsibility to protect someone weaker than me. The next time I dreamed of a mountain looking down on our town, I climbed it first thing in the morning, no preparation, no equipment, just a thirteen year-old desperate to go Home, scaling a slab of rain-polished granite. And you know what happened then, I have to believe you felt it, when I slipped, fell, and lay broken against the boulders, sobbing and screaming, from rage and misery as much as pain. I could barely feel the pain, I was in shock. Even with the hole in my leg, even if I didn't have the strength to keep climbing, I had the strength to survive and keep on living.
When I thought the pain couldn't get any worse, puberty happened, and my body started to change again. Again, without any consent from me, with no control. I sobbed and whimpered alone in my room, the door locked. I had always been poor, roomed up with my two male siblings. I thank the gods for giving me a place of privacy during that time, somewhere I could thrash about on the floor and slam up against the walls, as if striking the walls of my cage in this world would somehow set me free, break my bonds. I slept, endlessly, I left my body to go running, to go exploring, to make friends and bask in the light of an engorged moon. But I was still bound, by a thin silvery cord that always reminded me - you need to eat, you need to wake up, you need to drink.
I would shave, I would wax, and I'd still feel the little human hairs taking root, growing, parting the skin in itchy infuriating fashion. I contemplated suicide endlessly, dreamed of severing the bindings anchoring me to this life, this prison, but I have been caged for so long that I cannot see outside the cage, and begin to believe it's all there is. Even the daily escapes, the momentary freedom from my body, they felt like dreams, and I couldn't be sure that severing the binding would lead to anything but oblivion.
So I made a deal with myself. I promise to try hormone replacement therapy, and if the pain was still too much - then I would end it. It still hurts, it's still agony, but it's a pain I can survive and move forward through.
As soon as I came out, again people were prepared to tell me what I was. They called me 'Third', they said I was too aggressive to be a 'normal' girl. It didn't matter what I said, it didn't matter that when I left my body I was entirely female, without a bit of maleness to my appearance or presentation. That I'd gone on adventures and experienced things just like any of the girls in my class. No, to them I would always be in the middle, third gender, you can't heal those scars, no one will ever let you forget you had the misfortune to be born with a penis. I didn't wear pink, replace my wardrobe with dresses and speak softly, passively. It didn't matter that 60 years ago, pink was a boy's color. It didn't matter what I said. In order to be given the same position as the other women, I would have to be 'more' of a woman than they were, no room for errors or aggression, or I'd be letting slip the man, the manly elements, that were clearly always going to be a part of me.
Except, it's the lioness who does the hunting, the she-wolf has no care for passivity, and the mare pays no obeisance to the stallions, these things are true only in captivity, only when imprisoned, and I will never allow myself to be imprisoned any more than I already am.
It took time, understanding who I am, where I come from, my 'Home' with a capital h that I'd been chasing since childhood. The great bridge, stretching across worlds, leading to a place that, wasn't perfect, but was 'mine'. The chains tying me there were spun not of iron, but of Hunger, Memory, and Kinship. I joined communities, and again, whenever I shared my pain the other people quavered at it, the implications, the inevitable outcome of all that hurt. "But the flesh is sacred." They'd say. "Your body is sacred. Learn to love yourself. Learn to love your body, it is a gift from the gods."
This was, if anything, more painful than the previous offenses. In their voices I could hear the source of their worry, I'd heard it before, when I came out as a woman. "But if 'he' is a woman, what does that make me? How can I define my own womanhood? How can I define anything beyond the flesh, what I can see and touch?" Then as now, the world isn't shaken up 'nearly' as much as the person 'thinks' it is shaken up. The anxieties over gender were gone, replaced with a different concern - if the body can be a prison, what's the point of life? What's the point of life in this world where things are so, so solid, and unchangeable?
So they dismissed my pain, encouraged me to love the source of my pain. To accept it, as a part of me. Wanted me to change who I am, what I am, until the chains would not gall. It's only a binding if it keeps you from going places you'd like to go.
Rot, is sacred. Vicious storms that take away everything you love, is sacred. Death, is sacred. You don't need to love 'any' of these things, you just need to treat them with respect. What they don't understand is that destruction is sacred, too. And more importantly - 'I' am sacred. Me, with a capital m. My pain matters, too. Thrashing and screaming in your shadow taught me that destruction can be an honorable thing. Rage and indignation, too. I don't need to force myself into the same bed as my body, embrace it, like a battered woman hugging an abusive lover, whom everyone around her compels her to forgive.
I am a descendant of Heimdall, and considering it's been thousands of years - probably one of millions. Millions of human beings with a little bit of the all-father's blood in them, a little bit of that Aesir nature, watered down to the point where even their genes don't take precedent. There's nothing special about me, except that pain, that homesickness, the sensation that this isn't what I am, and this isn't my world.
But just like before, it doesn't matter what I say I am. It's up to the lady of Asgard to determine whether that is, in fact, my home, or if I'm one more human who should instead be questing for Valhalla, or the hall of a patron god or goddess. She sends servants - not even her handmaidens, or full on gods, but Aesir women all the same who poke and prod and ask questions for her. "How does she respond to this? What does she think of that? What will she do when you take away ----"
I won't break this binding, not yet. The body 'is' sacred, just like a whole bunch of things I also don't like. Thoughtlessness is one way to dishonor something, insult it. Killing myself in burst of pain would more than dishonor myself, it would dishonor you - you, who are bound by a riddle. You don't have the luxury of breaking your bonds with raw emotion alone, as if you can win just because you want to so badly. Destruction must be mindful. I can't sever these bindings until I understand what it means to sever them, what it costs myself and others. I don't know the answer to that, and maybe one day I will, and I break them myself. Or maybe I'll push myself to my limits and beyond, no matter how long it takes, until one way or another, I get to go home.