You know how they say big things always come in threes? On March 31st this year I had three big things to celebrate, which is a nice change of pace from last year’s three big things, which were decidedly less fun.
March 31st 2026 marked my four-year Van-iversary.
Four years since my husband and I quit the grown-up jobs that were slowly killing us and invested our theoretical house deposit in two one-way tickets and six months’ worth of rent in one of the most expensive cities in the world.
Four years since we filled our folks’ sheds with a decade’s worth of hand-me-down furniture, expensive kitchenware, second-hand books and records, and a couple of pricey-but-priceless artworks—all the trappings of a couple in their late twenties who finally graduated from undergrad sharehouses to cosplaying as adults.
Four years since we farewelled our family and friends at what will likely be the only “retirement party” we’ll ever have, and flew across the world to a city we’d never been to and where we knew one person. Vaguely.
Four years since we rented the first (and only) place we looked at, a basement suite advertised on Facebook marketplace by a new account with no profile picture. Turned out fine, they were a lovely family, and I’m pretty sure I sealed the deal by complimenting their ugly dog.
Four years in our 500sq foot flat with two windows and a resident mouse called Jonathan. Four years is the longest I’ve lived in one place since I was a child.
And each day of those four years, I’ve woken up feeling a bone-deep sense of gratitude. I can walk out my front gate, head four blocks north down our magnolia-lined street to the park with the pollinator meadow and beach access, where you get a flawless view across the inlet to the mountains, where it snowed on our first Christmas, and where I saw the northern lights. Twice!
Four years that I’ve been able to say I get to live here!
It’s been four years since I looked in the mirror and saw myself buried deep beneath a lifetime of trying.
Four years of gently prying that moldering heteronormative mask out of fingers stiffened with the effort of clutching it like a lifeline.
Four years of deep exhales, of space and safety and community and sliding scale counselling. Four years of freedom and finding a happiness I didn’t think was possible for me.
And that’s just the first big thing to celebrate!
March 31st is also Trans Day of Visibility, which feels fitting as it’s really only since moving to Vancouver that I’ve been able to become visible to myself, let alone others. It’s a day that highlights Trans JOY, so it’s kinda nice to celebrate the joy I’ve found here.
The joy of visibility is so much more than being seen, though.
It’s being asked my pronouns when meeting someone new, or even better, when the other person introduces themself with their pronouns first.
The joy of visibility is hearing a grownup customer tell their kid “go ask that person, they look like they work here.” It’s working in such an accidentally queer workplace that they/them has become the default until otherwise corrected.
The joy of visibility is making the conscious effort to “be the me I want to see”, and finding out it’s actually working. It’s being told that you actually are the visible queer person (Cool Gay Elder™) in someone’s life that makes them feel like they, too, are possible.
But the biggest joy is feeling known and seen by people who just get it. So that means that I get to build my friends’ flatpacks and lift their heavy boxes, and then they call me strong and handsome, and it goes straight to my head.
It’s dancing at the birdhouse and being hit on so respectfully that you forget for a second that you should probably tell them you’re married… and when you do, they’re so nice about it and say “well, what a lucky person” and they wish you well, and somehow that whole experience is one of the hottest things that’s ever happened to you.
This year I went all out: maximum visibility, maximum joy.
On March 31st, I submitted my very trans, intensely personal thesis about nonbinary intelligibility and identity in middle-grade fiction, thereby ensuring that I will remain visibly trans in one pocket of cyberspace for the rest of the internet’s existence. How’s that for something to celebrate!
I am trying to get more comfortable with the idea of celebrating myself. It’s something that doesn’t come naturally, perhaps the result of growing up in Australia, terrified of being the poppy that grows too tall, only to be eviscerated by the same people in charge of doling out the fertiliser.
After a lifetime of moderating myself to be just enough, never too much, believing that any sort of self-recognition is boastful, I’m re-learning what achievements actually look like, to me.
So, aside from the big things, like acknowledging the fact that I’m graduating from my second master’s degree tomorrow (entirely paid for by a federal scholarship, which inherently values the importance of my gay little research!), I’ve been celebrating myself in less obvious, more honest ways…
Like the fact that I allow myself space to be bad at (some) things and give myself room to grow.
Despite gaslighting myself for the past three years, I actually can drive in Vancouver.
I can do nearly 2 push-ups. My goal is five—and has been for the past three years—but this time I think I’ll get there.
I have no idea how much I weigh anymore, and that thought doesn’t panic me. I’m just letting the soft animal of my body love what it loves.
I’m learning to trust my own opinion more instead of being swayed by whoever is talking the loudest at the time, and sometimes I can even sit in the discomfort of holding two different ideas at once.
Sometimes I ask for help when I need it.
Sometimes I am even capable of being deeply honest in therapy.
My grey hairs are really starting to come in and I’m genuinely thrilled about it because it’s proof that I’m getting older
I am healthy
I am happy
I am still here
And I reckon that’s something to celebrate
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