Mar. 2026: Pink little butterfly

I skipped the February update because there was just too much going on inside of me that I didn’t feel like writing about at that time. The primary thing was that somehow the gender issue progressed to essentially repeating the sequence of “stages” that I underwent the spring of my sophomore year of college, except just more rapidly and without intense bipolar mood swings. I went from having the OCD fixation and fear that I might be lying about my gender, to feeling a depressive guilt that I was lying, to then oscillating between confidence and doubt about my identity. In my sophomore year, this then eventually lead to a mental crisis intensified by bipolar, resulting in my first ever psych hospitalization. But this time, instead, something else happened.

During my Spiritual Counseling class, we were discussing the theory of Internal Family Systems. In one class, the professor was talking about disowned parts. While she did so, a little girl self emerged from within me and urged me to put on a dress. I put on the dress, and for the rest of class, she was just beaming. I felt so light and at ease, as if something had been released in me. My classmates even noticed a difference.

But then, at some point, the little girl self — whom I also call “pink little butterfly” because that is how she is like — saw a drawing I drew a week prior, while at the retreat in San Francisco for the Spiritual Counseling class, and wanted to rip apart the drawing. This drawing was of myself as an infant swaddled in a purple blanket. I drew it out of an inspired and restful state because of an activity that we did. The infant felt like a symbol of my nonbinary self and my need to be gentle to this self. But the little girl wanted to destroy the purple baby. Why? It seemed that to her, there was no room in my psyche for both her and the baby.

So I pleaded with my little girl self, saying that she could take all the space she wanted in my psyche, but just don’t destroy the baby. It was hard, but also telling. Firstly, this seems to illustrate the root of my gender struggle: two parts of me that feel at odds to each other. My little girl self is not just distinctive in gender, but she is also thoroughly unserious, frivolous even. She laughs at gender norms and says “why not, it could be fun!” She exists as a counterbalance to the part of me that normally narrates myself, that uses that narrative power in the manner of a philosopher-poet, courting suffering and chasing beauty. And she really is little; she definitely has some relation to my fourth-grade self who tried to be a “girly girl” for a year and a half until they lost interest, but I think that she really originates from before my school years, before I learned to be so serious (if there was such a time!).

Here’s the other thing though: the existence of the little girl self within me strongly validates my overall nonbinary experience. That I could feel her presence as some “other” part in me that “took over” meant that there was something else as well, something utterly contrasting. I find that my relationship to gender is so complicated, but that complexity is exactly what makes it queer. It’s not the standard narrative of trans identity that is told in the media, but non-standard narratives like these are more common than one might think. Especially among people who are also neurodivergent.

I don’t quite know how I “disowned” this part of me more recently, as I actually have been aware of little girl/pink little butterfly for a few years. Perhaps she just wanted to articulate herself a little more strongly. (She has in the past demanded attention very loudly, only to fly away once I attend to her.) I could try experimenting more with feminine elements in how I present myself. Yet I have been finding that sometimes I just need to imagine a space within me for little girl self to dwell freely, without my having to put on a dress or otherwise perform femininity. I get the sense that androgynous me and pink little butterfly want to be separate from each other rather than blending in some way, and I just have to be more flexible with when each one wants to express itself.

It’s hard for me to do these experiments though while living at home with my mother. She does not permit anything too transgressive of gender norms. But if I am suddenly feminine, she also pokes fun at me, for example saying to my father that I’m making myself so stinkin’ pretty with makeup (that’s the direct translation of the Mandarin). And she also keeps buying clothes for me! I feel like I should have more control over my closet regardless of how I present. (Like, let me choose my feminine clothes too — perhaps especially those, as I am pickier with them and only want what would actually feel really good to wear.) I think she buys things for me because 1. she’s always scouting for good deals and 2. she might think that she is a better judge than I am for what is nice-looking given my track record of transgression.

The gender stuff was affecting my ability to engage in my class relating to Carl Jung, due to the anima/animus concept having triggered me. But after emailing my professor about it and having a chat with him, the issues seem to have resolved. I still have to catch up on a lot, but at least all this that got brought up during my crisis in January is settling down. I feel nervous that I might jinx myself by saying that. I doubt that I will ever fully escape my psychological burdens. And it feels so vulnerable sharing all this to you all here, as some part of me still irrationally worries that there’s something wrong with my experience (or that someone else might think there is). But I’m feeling better for now. And the spring is beautiful and warm (hopefully consistently now?) and I haven’t been too (hypo)manic either as I sometimes am in this season.

I performed my interactive solo show, The Legend of Yuliang, for my church to mark the Lunar New Year. It went well, but differently. With interactive performances, different audiences cause different results. This audience seemed more nervous about in-the-moment creativity, and I had to adapt one activity and somewhat abandon another. Another performance date is in the works for this summer, and as I prepare to present this again, I’ll definitely give some thought to how audiences with different characteristics might respond differently.

My mother came with me to San Francisco where I attended the class retreat. We had been discussing the possibility of my traveling alone, but after my recent hospitalization, she decided that she needed to go with me. We spent a full day sightseeing, which was fun, although I didn’t understand why we had to go both under the Golden Gate Bridge (on a boat) and over it. It’s not even golden, it’s red! I did get to see Chinatown though and encountered some street musicians, who let me try out their traditional Chinese musical instruments.

The class retreat was full of deep conversation. We had six spiritual counseling dyad practice sessions over three days, three sessions in one dyad and role and three in another. So I was the counselor to one person first, and then I was the client to a different person. I can be insecure about my social and oral communicative skills due to being told I didn’t have “emotional intelligence” as a child, but I found in these sessions that I have strengths to offer. This makes me just a bit more optimistic in my dreams for how to put these skills to practice.

I have been regularly attending karate classes since January, and just last Thursday, I earned my yellow belt! I earned it a month earlier than adults are usually given to earn it (children are given twice the adult amount of time for this first belt promotion). I honestly feel like I could have used some more time to practice — as evidenced by my board-break test, where I think I took four tries to break a wooden board. But the instructor kept saying that I was a very good student and was learning very quickly. And I have been putting in effort outside of class to practice as well as to condition my body overall. When I started, I could do four push-ups and zero sit-ups, but now I can do twenty push-ups and nine sit-ups. (I don’t know how I suddenly figured out how to do sit-ups. I hadn’t been able to do one since mid-elementary-school, and it seemed to be a problem of coordination rather than just lack of core strength.)

Is there a part of you that asks for a little (or a lot) more attention right now? What do they look like, sound like, feel like?