What I am has never had a name, but only a question: why do I want to be a woman?
If you have ever felt that the body you live in does not tell who you really are, you know what I'm talking about. If you have never felt it, these pages will show you what it means.
First, an inadequate body and the shame of what I felt, then nights in feminine clothes with makeup smeared by tears and days with a dull face in a jacket and tie. The feminine part in me, instead of disappearing, asked for life. I realized I was suffering from gender dysphoria and decided to undergo transition
Due to a series of unfortunate circumstances, I was forced to abandon therapy: I was left with only a life as a man (killing the woman who was in me) or a life as a transvestite (destroying the life as a man that I had built). It was a period of desperation, accompanied by dark thoughts about death.
I met Nei Gong, the Taoist practice that refines internal energies into something more subtle. I focused on who I wanted to become, not on who I was: a fire was generated that transmuted me, integrating my feminine part with my masculine part.
Since then, I have been able to live many years as a man and some days as a woman, and I have learned a lot from this condition. I started writing stories in which my experiences emerged: discrimination, love, sex, love, blood, love.
Maybe you also know that fire. Or maybe you will know it by reading these stories.
Those memories were what was important that my heart had recorded in materiality, but they were symbols that could be integrated into a fantasy saga, reflections of what had already been experienced by our pioneers in the last century, and finally, they were the reason why I faced Nei Gong.
This is how I am today, after passing through that fire.
In the following pages, you will find the path I have taken — and maybe a piece of yours.
A name is not chosen: it is discovered. Mine is made of three wounds that, put together, form a signature. If you're wondering what it means, here's the answer.
In Greek, koilía (κοιλία) means "belly" (in the Gospels it indicates the maternal womb, for the ancient Greeks it was the center of emotions and impulses). In Latin, coelum means "heaven", but there is also assonance with the verb cēlare (to hide) and with the noun celia (joke, mockery). Finally, it was the feminine variant of Coelius and the name of the family of an ancient Roman family, the Gens Coelia. Coelia is at the same time the feminine place of conception, the point from which vice originates, the seat of the sacred, a secret hidden from others, a joke of fate, and a trace of nobility. It is pronounced Co-è-lia. By separating the "o" from the "e", I force my lips to move from prostheses forward in a ring shape until they widen into a smile. That moment of consciousness between two moments of life reminds me of the breath before crying, the wait between two slaps received, the loss between two internal orgasms, the pause in the blues where all the truth is concentrated.
In English it means "slash" or "cut caused by a sharp and linear motion". It is used to describe fashion (a dress cut) or violence (throat or wrist injuries). For me it is the symbol of the trauma etched in the flesh, the entrance gate of life, the slit through which light enters in inner practice. Coelia Slit is "belly" and "incision": it evokes birth, death, trauma, sex. Suitable for writing with a scalpel. And if you are reading these pages, maybe you also have a slit somewhere. Maybe that's where you came in.
In English it means "blackthorn thorn". Slit is the cut, Thorne is the thorn that remains inside us. What has cut and entered the flesh. What still hurts because it has remained inside, despite the cut healing. A pain that does not pass, because it has now become part of me.
