Trans Musings

Emotions are complicated. I've never been particularly good at understanding, or feeling, or expressing my own emotions. But the emotion I perhaps have the most uncomfortable relationship with is anger. I was an angry child. Not in the sense that I was angry at the world, or upset all the time, but in the sense that I had a very short fuse. My sister knew this, and delighted in finding ways to trigger my very explosive rage.

Tell me if you've heard this one before: A person is born, and assigned a gender, but from the very beginning they never act as expected. They only wanted toys and activities associated with the opposite gender, and at a very young age, some time between, say, 5 and 13 they express to their parents that they are actually not the gender that was assigned to them, and they will not be happy as their assigned gender.

Last Sunday was my 1 year anniversary of starting E. It's a big milestone, a year. 365 days. 12 months. I had hoped that I'd be able to articulate some kind of sublime summation of the last year. To contextualize it. And of course I could say something pithy like "It's been an incredible journey", and while that's true, it's obviously not the whole story.

Transition did not save my life. I was not depressed, I did not feel like something was missing or wrong, I did not need to transition in any sense of the word. I "merely" wanted to. And this has caused me no end of worry as I fretted over whether I will be "found out" and told I wasn't trans, or worse, that I would grow to regret my decision and hate the "mutilated" body I inhabited.

Getting my first tattoo has been an eye opening experience for me. I've wanted to get a tattoo for as long as I can remember, but I never did it because I could never decide on something that I wanted permanently on my body. What was something that mattered so much to me that I could never regret it.

I think I had a lot of similar thoughts about transition. Sure, I may want it now, but what if I decide I don't in a few years?

I like being trans. I like being girl adjacent.

At least that's what I tell myself.

But if I really was trans, if I really was a girl, then how did I get to be 30 years old and not have any significant gender trauma? How did I barely think about it for decades?

"Is it going to be worth it?", she asks with a tinge of sadness, her voice ringing out in the quiet late night air.

The question had been asked before. A hope, perhaps, that the pain, the uncertainty, the fracturing of a potential imagined future would be worth something. Would mean something.

I can't answer.

I was talking the other day with a few folks about when they consider their "new birthday" to be. A popular one, of course, is HRT day, and another is cracking day. I started cracking 11 months ago, and I've been on HRT for over 6 months, but neither of those days feel as monumentally significant as it seems to be for others. They were exciting and scary at the time, but I don't know if I could consider them to be life changing moments. I made some comments to this effect in the conversation, then later changed my mind and deleted them.

A tiny echo from the back of my world
Says can I come out, can I make myself heard?
A soft whisper drifting all through my house
Asks politely to forget all my doubts
A quiet voice in the back of my head
Pleads just once let me out to lead instead!

I watched a video earlier this week from a detransitioner and it's been messing with my head.

I think I want to be a girl. I think I want to wear feminine clothes. I think I want to be perceived as female.