Marcelle Morency

I think I’ve found a good use for this platform as a place to collect my thoughts that is not Meta but more public than my journal. Hi I’m Marcelle. I used to go by Marc and I came out as trans about a month ago. 🧵🪡

I got to attend the change of command ceremony for an old friend who I first met as a new ensign 17 years ago. As the only civilian guest I was sat in the front. Walking past the entire crew in ranks, casual but deliberate. Head held high, with a slight murmur in my wake. That was an expirience.

It feels like an age ago stepping off the plan mid Sept as anxious as I was resolute as I showed up to work in my transness. It feels like a lifetime ago as I happily put on a skirt after work, and walk to a friend’s farewell party, no makeup outside a little 💄. Confident, clocky, and beautiful.

My nail polish lasted longer than Katie Zachariah. 💅🏻

Standing on the bridge wing of a ship, wind and rain, 50 feet off the pier and closing. Wrapped in a raincoat, calm, focused, years of training and a decade of experience making it look easy. Random thought bubbles to the surface… “You know…it would be really beautiful to be a mother” WTF YO?!?

I was speaking with my girlfriend last night, and she mentioned that I have become more empathetic and it gave me something to think on. I wondered where this was before I came out. That freeness of emotions had been in me the whole time. Where was it before? 🧵

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But over time, the quiet strength of the water, gentle but unrelenting wore the stone down. Little by little through the years until one day, the spring finally prevailed, and the rock finally was shattered, letting the spring flow free.

The water was silty and murky as it washed away what had settled, but the water flowed freely and it slowly becomes clean washing away the years of what was and turning into a river, new in shape, beautiful, and powerful.

I saw a spring and everything that was me flowed from it. Covering that spring was a giant manly boulder. The massive push of all that water made it its way around it, the terrible pressure would not be ignored and found its way around. It had to.

Early on it would happen violently as it pushed its way into beating but eventually the spring flowed carving a path around and through the stone. It felt that the stone and the spring were as they were an immutable reality.

Cersei Trannister 🏳️‍⚧️🏴‍☠️🦋

I’m not coming back from this tour the same person I left. Not by a long shot.

Marcelle Morency reposted

@qadishtujessica.inanna.app

Gender is a performance and I'm telling the aristocrats joke while only wearing 6" heels

Danielle Ryan (Lestat Era)@danirat.bsky.social

gender is a performance and y'all know I love to perform

Every now and then I see these candied hands in the routine moments of doing my job and think of the wildly improbably path that has gotten me to where I am. In those moments I feel so fortunate and could cry.

Woke up with my chest feeling wildly uncomfortable. Like I’ve been kicked in the balls….only in my chest. IS NOW TIME FOR BOOBA START!

Piloted the USNS Oscar Peterson today. She was originally named the USNS Harvey Milk but we can’t have nice things. What I didn’t know was her international callsign is based on her original name. Before leaving the captain gave me a sticker and boy howdy did it stir some thoughts. 🪡

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Being there onboard a physical manifestation of that erasure also hurt. I’m so angry, I’m so resentful, and I’m so tired. I don’t want to be courageous or a first, or even uncommon, I just want to be and not think anything of it. I don’t want to push through fear to be who I am. But here we are.

I cried most of the way back on the tugboat, got back to my office, locked my door and sobbed till I got a headache. What does it feel like to be an unremarkable wild flower in a field? I would love to know.

I think it is allegorical to the attempts to erase LGBTQ history and how we still persist, thrive, and flourish despite it all. Being on that ship as a trans woman harbor pilot was a powerful intersection and testimony to those virtues. At the same time, it filled me with a sadness.

19 Sept

I saw her yesterday. She wasn’t wearing makeup because she was working in the rain that day. Her clothes were boyish because ships don’t care if you look cute. She was tired but wore the satisfied smile of one in love with their profession. I saw her, she was windswept, drenched, and she was lovely.

14 Sept

A friend told me that transition is a time of beginning ms and endings. This past few weeks I have had some very difficult and very personal conversations with my partners. I’m relieved that those relationships are still intact but they have both changed in significant ways.

10 Sept

Winding up a week and change in Tokyo. Getting to travel abroad openly as a woman and the worst experience I had was a little girl whisper to her mom (NGL was cute) has been the 2nd most affirming thing I’ve done and the cherry on top of the best summer of my life. I’m ready to get back to work.

27 Aug

Was up on the roof the other evening talking to an old navy friend. As the sun dipped below the Olympics painting the sky I felt the first sigh of autumn as I watched a bat flutter overhead heralding the change of seasons. This summer has been as vast as it has been beautiful both inside and out.

15 Aug

Spent the week with my Mother. We had written then spoke and it went well. I had expected her to still be getting her head around it all. I expected questions and long talks, and there was. What I was not expecting this level of acceptance so soon, I don’t remember feeling closer to her.

9 Aug

On a recent hike of my local trails I found this beauty from home in a once forgotten historic orchard on the other coast. Finding pieces of connection to where I grew up remind me how connected we are to the land and each other. @djwtwo.bsky.social, I thought you might like this.

7 Aug

Can’t be scared of the goal. But I did find out that I actually have two sizes of needles and just used the horse needle for the shot 🤦‍♀️.

5 Aug

I am cold from sitting in the doctors office and deep in my emotions. The sun warms my skin and the perscription warms my heart. The rest of my life just opened like the Pacific when cresting the foothills, vast and sparkling. Approved to start HRT, I pick up my antiboyotics later today.

28 July

Had the talk about my transition with my boss, my long time colleague, and emailed the in-laws. Everyone in my life who needs to know now knows. Today, for the first time, I know what it means to be free.

26 July

Opted for a dress today. Got my eyebrows waxed, went for a long windy walk, fashioned a giant bell for a hat with my scarf and lived my dream as a benevolent bog witch, freshened up, put on heels, and had a banner night out with what are becoming my Seattle friends. Best day ever.

14 July

Took a new route on errands yesterday and stopped into a cosmetics shop. Figured now is time to learn something new. The gal helping me on the floor helped pick out a color corrector and concealer and finally starting to see “her” w/o squinting. Also inadvertently retooled a Girl Scout uniform 😅

11 July

Woke up yesterday with the intent on a walk though the local trails. Got tied up in an emotional knot and almost stayed in but went out anyway. Met some rad people on trail, learned some local herbology, saw a beaver, and had a lovely ❤️2❤️ with Ms H. Felt like a mess but turns out that is ok.

5 July

Unexpected great w/e. First time out with straight friends of friends. Some odd looks from the guys but felt more out of trying to figure out where do I fit. Gay? Eccentric? Clockier than Pink Floyd’s “Time”? Commiserating with our hostess helping her tidy up was the best part of the night 🤦‍♀️😅

I’d be lying if I said that Im not scared with everything going on in the US on top of the sudden need to rewire an entire adult life. But this feeling of self is a joy I’ve never known and it fills me with so much joy it almost hurts.

I’ve done so much in the time I’ve had so far with my heart tied behind my back. That wild animal is now on the high plains, running beneath the sky for the first time and for the first time she knows exactly what she is. The hard and frightening parts fall away leaving nothing but the unalloyed me.

The out of body experience of knowing who/what I am and not having the language to explain or even connect to it was hard. So I finally stopped running and she was there waiting.

It always feels dramatic when I share this with people but I’ve been angry and kinda sad since middle school but have chosen happiness because the alternative is awful. Even in that choice however there was a veil over everything. I paced in body like a wild animal born to a cage.

I looked harder at why feeling a lack of connection to masculinity was as a matter of fact but engaging with femininity felt like danger. I realized that I had been running way from a me I had wished for so long trying to make it safe, understandable, easily labeled in a blue is for boys box.

I’ve always wanted something softer and kinder for myself and would go white hot with rage and despair when guys over the years would pull me aside and tell me I’m not aggressive enough or assertive enough or the evergreen “Stop being a bitch, man up”.

I looked at the persistence of work I had put in, the care I had shown myself, and pushing though even when it was hard. I realized that you don’t put that effort in unless there is love behind it. I had to pull my car over and ugly cry/laugh, I had finally found love for myself not just tolerance.

Finally things aligned about a month ago before my Bday. Work had been the most professionally challenging I’ve ever had and I was just finally starting to actually relax and be able to sort of uncoil. In that space I had been knocking things around and finally asked the right questions of myself.

It answered a lot of questions but there was still something I couldn’t shake. Like the mental version of a pebble in your shoe. A few years later I had a moment that marked everything before and after on a ride home from work.

The running track in my head had never complimentary but in time I learned how to tune out the negative self speak and eventually realized that this dialogue I had with myself was made up of the voices of the worst people in my life constantly deriding me in the privacy of my own head.

With the pandemic doing its thing I had a lot of time to consider the overlapping circles that my life is made up of and when I got asking what does my own masculinity mean to me I was faced with a big nothing. No deep rooted understanding, nothing I hold on to, It was a biological default.

I had arrived at agender and that gave me solace. In that space I went from quietly despising myself to ok with myself. I didn’t necessarily like the body I was in but it was the vehicle that had gotten me through life so far and that was good enough.

It was innocent enough and she meant no ill by it but once the shock wore off I was lefty angry and with a question. Where does other people’s programming stop and where do I begin?