Alex Cregan

A Beginner’s Guide to Building Your Own Chrysalis

1. Most people who tell you they were always certain are lying to you. Some aren’t, but some have strayed so far that they’ve mistaken the myth for the magic that is this – you can shapeshift. You can slough off this skin, snakelike, and slip into another… And another, finding starlit suits to fit your form perfectly, or a better form, a better you. You don’t need to be confined to this, a vessel that doesn’t serve you in the slightest – Most don’t feel stuck, trapped by the way their shoulders sit, or the way their voice hums, high and off key. Most don’t hate their bone frame, chest, disparaging their capacity for blood, for genomes, for chromosomes and parasites… But you have always felt that way, haven’t you? You have felt like you were crawling around in your own body for years, your edifice slowly breaking, makeshift hermit shell shattering. So, now you need to build your own.

2. Shelve the word the first time you hear it. Shelve the feeling — the way your heart feels like sparking static, like caffeine buzz and hummingbird wings. Shelve how you want to sing in harmony with those others like you, with this other you, with everything and everyone that has made you Not Completely Alone Anymore, Not Entirely Alien. Still, shelve it anyway. Shelve that tender, blooming, bursting feeling, the unity in mind and body you spend your entire life missing. Shelve it, shelve it with a deafening thud, with white knuckle trepidation, shelve it with glossy eyes and trembling hands. Shelve it ‘til you’re terrified, shelve it ‘til you’re numb. Instead, choose the softer word, the safety blanket, the world with an escape clause inbuilt so if you get too scared, you can always crawl back home.

3. Learn to be alone. Learn to exist in a space. Study yourself inside and out. Learn your own blood type, heartbeat, hungers and thirsts. See the parts of yourself that disgust you. Learn to be okay with that. Every part of you still craves a rock hard chrysalis, a jaw sharpened on blade, doubt shattered on pavement, teeth like knives and howling. Instead, accept this stage of softness. Accept the stage is sometimes yours, and sometimes not. Sometimes you can slip between cheap props and blank curtains and other times you’re caught. Centre stage, script in hand. Learn not to squint in the glare of the spotlight, not to notice when they sear through the cocoon’s outer layer. Instead, you’re making tea, the kind with peppermint and the smallest touch of honey. You think maybe it’ll fix you, your brain, your sickness and desires. Get away from it all. Read a horoscope. Read another. Read another. Reject all of them. Drop them and a match in the sink and watch them burn. Sip your tea. Scald your tongue. Be Happy.

4. Run Away. Come back. Run away again. See yourself each and every time you pass by this place. Each time different. Each time wrong. Each time differently wrong. Examine from that distance the curve of your spine, the weight of your flesh, the shape of your exoskeleton, the length of your hair. Spit in the face of God. Spit in the face of man. Spit in the face of everything that labels you her, her, her, inside and out. I mean, you’d know, wouldn’t you? If it were that. At the very least, you’d know by now, but you should have known out the womb like every other man. Every Other Man fit the mould. If it were you, the least you could do would be to become the pinnacle of androgyny. Not staying as you are, your voice a rat’s squeak, you faerie fanatic, you freak. So, deny it. Keep running. Run and run ‘til you trip and bleed on the rough concrete. Sob and sob until you’re shaking, lightheaded, until you’re breaking, or fainting. You will try and try, every part of you screaming ‘Don’t stop’.

5. The part no-one ever talks about is the clean up. The failures, the restart. It’s the least pretty part, and it's hard to face that sometimes things just… fall apart. It doesn’t need to be a solo venture, you don’t need to do it alone. You can be gentle, you’re allowed to be gentle. You’re allowed to be happy. Still, start slow. Pick yourself up from the ground, Pick up the pieces left behind. Sew up the edges – solder them if you need to. It’ll be rough, but take things slowly. Treat yourself gently. Take your time, as much time as you need. You have an eternity.

6. Try it out, just to see. If it doesn’t fit, it’s fine, honestly! There’s always a way back, a way home to the way things used to be, but you know as well as I do what’ll happen. Something will open in your chest. You’ll find a skin, a voice, a name that fits right. You’ll breathe, really breathe for the first time. You’ll feel the ground beneath your feet again. You’ll laugh for the first time in decades, or centuries… It will be scary. I won’t lie and say it won’t, but you’ll do what you need to. You’ll cut your hair at all odd angles, you’ll slouch and nod and won’t say a word. You will wear it like a disguise until it fits like a body, like a chrysalis, like a home.

7. It will take some weaving, it will take some time. You need to find the perfect threads, with the right colours and feels. You’ll learn the correct ways to tie off knots, the right strings to bring together and the ones to snip away. You will be under careful guidance from others with their own projects, their own tapestries. Crafts like this are tedious, but mindful, everything having its own purpose. Learn from those who walked before you – the ones with your kind of weird, your kind of broken, your kind of crazy. They will warn you of the mistakes not to make, but you’ll probably invent new ones anyway, ones that get slow blinks of confusion from everyone around and that’s okay. Everyday is a new day walking this old path trying to create a better future, trying to craft a better story. So, continue weaving.

8. Wait. Keep waiting. Spend what feels like lifetimes waiting. You can’t step into your cocoon. It's not ready. Backtrack, rewind, rebuild. Read Frankenstein, Queer Theory and the Social Model of Disability. Read Liberation Theology, Read About A Trans, Disabled Future With You In It. Listen to the sounds of the crickets at night, listen to the sounds of a cuckoo crying. Learn the feeling of a shrike’s thorn, of a fox’s whine. Claim every messy part of nature Yours, Mine. Use these new pieces to build something better. Meet people, meet people who love you, tend to the garden where you’ll rest after the toughest times, In which you will emerge new, true, better. Hear the clocks tick, hear the bell chime. Feel deep within that you’re running out of time. Still, learn every word that rhymes with your true name like it's a new species you identified. Trip over explanations, over clumsy metaphors hot glued together the night before. Give the cardboard, standard explanation, that you always knew when you of all people know just how untrue it is.

9. Remember the truth, the child you buried deep below that loved faeries and ballet shows. The part of you that wanted to be a witch, or an archeologist, or to fly so high into the sky that no one could catch you. Be honest, dear. Be honest to your peers at least. Talk about the messiness, the slate grey in between, the ghost of yourself haunting every new you in the gathering, preparing, making of a dream. Know now it was always within you, even if you couldn’t see.  Tell everyone. Tell everyone the plan, about the chrysalis. Tell them you’re happy. Finally fucking happy. That You and She and He are one and breathing… Actually, truly breathing.

10. By now, your chrysalis should be complete. Make yourself at home in your new, ever-changing

Eternity.