On Transition, Part One: Feelings
Oh yeah, it’s getting personal
Programming notes:
- I tried to tweak the RSS generation for this to include full text, but I’m a little foggy on if that messes with readers, so resubscribe if something is off.
- This is part of one of a two-parter, but part two is already out, Back to the Future style.
- This is long, personal, and naval gazing, so buckle up, since it’s pride month and I can do what I want.
- CW for talking about dysphoria and transition.
- My partner Brooke also wrote a post about gender and transition, so go read it after mine, as her blog is nothing but amazing articles in my biased opinion :)
As I write this, I came out as transgender roughly a year and a half ago. So, in celebration of pride month, I wanted to talk about how I realized that I needed to, getting over my fears around transition, and some practical talk about how I did it. I’m writing this half to document it for myself, half as modeling for other folks who may be feeling similar things to me, and half for visibility to non-trans folks about one girls perspective.
Unlike basically all my other big life developments, I can point to two specific days that caused me to transition1. The first was the Portland, ME pride parade on June 18th, 2022. It was the first pride event2 I had been to post-peak-Corona, and to be honest I was having a pretty shitty time. Throughout my life, I had always felt like I didn’t fit in as a queer person despite having been out as bi for years, and it was hitting hard that day. I decided to leave early, and was walking back to my car alongside the parade route. I remember seeing all these women there and feeling like all of the failings I had around my presentation and ill-fit into masculinity were accepted and even celebrated in them. I thought that if only I was a woman, things would fit so much better for me, and it just be so nice. Having been out as queer for several years, and knowing many trans people both on and off line, this immediately set off alarm bells3 in my head. The rest of that summer I dabbled with gender presentation (specifically clothes), but really had a hard time with it. I was barely 21 at the time, my life was rapidly changing, and so returning to New York City4 and starting my first long-term relationship caused me to kind of forget about those feelings for the next school year.
Fast forward to the end of Summer 2023, and I was living in Boston for an internship.5. That summer, I got to know in person some trans people that I had met through Twitter6. There was one specific day where a group of us took the ferry to East Boston and just…hung out. I felt so free with them to be feminine and for that to be ok. Through their example, I saw life as a transgender person was not signing up for a life of constant persecution and insecurity that it often is portrayed as, but just a thing someone can do and keep living well. It can be an improvement to life, rather than something people are forced into by the specter of dysphoria. That day, transition went from something I thought of from time to time, to basically my top priority besides not fucking up my last year of university.
However, I also had a lot of fear, uncertainty, and doubt around it which would take a few months to work through. Despite being incredibly sure of my decision to transition, I was still torn about basically everything else. I couldn’t really pin down why I felt I felt all of these things, and so making decisions more specific than “gender please” was really difficult. I’ve always prided myself on making optimal (or at least logical) decisions around most things in my life. But for this, I really had to act on faith that the changes I was making would make me feel better, and be ok with that being reason enough. I am NOT a person who EVER acts on faith, and I felt like I was starting from scratch in terms of how I make decisions. But through lots of crying, conversations with people in my life, and just holding on to all the euphoria I could get, I managed to get the ball rolling.
Transition is a difficult thing to wrap your head around. I’m autistic and have struggled with weight issues most of my life, so intensely considering my body and appearance to others was not something that came easily nor comfortably. I also am exceptionally tall, even among men, which made passing feel ridiculous to even desire. It would be nice to say that I’ve gotten over this and feel great about that side of things, but I don’t all the time! I still find it incredibly difficult to look in mirrors, and am often somewhat uncomfortable with my appearance. I’m not even sure I worry less about it now than I did before. But when I do feel good about how I look, I am so much happier about it than I ever was before. Additionally, working on myself is now so much easier and hopeful that it was before, so a pretty good deal overall.
I had been around a lot of trans spaces in the years leading up to my transition, and had always felt a little left out. Looking back, it was probably because I Wanted To Transition, but super early, it sometimes felt like my feelings were secretly just desire to be a part of the in-group. This made me feel almost predatory in some ways. But pretty soon after I came out, I was comfortable enough to admit that I really wanted for many reasons. Even if those feelings had been true, I probably would’ve realized that I had desire for other reasons, and taken my identity down another path. I wish I had the confidence to not be so worried that I was transitioning for the wrong reasons, and have faith that people would give me the benefit of the doubt in the event I realized I was wrong.
So, that was a fair amount of negativity all up front, which honestly is how I process things in general. Indeed, the very early process involved a lot of anxiety and feeling like I was completely unmoored in both life and my emotions. However, every single thing has been unquestionably worth it. I feel proud of and thrilled by who I am for the first time. I don’t feel discomfort whenever my name is used, and I feel good wearing clothes outside two safe outfits. I love being a women, and being able to be a woman for my partners and friends. I feel graceful and soft, and cute, and sublime. I love having breasts, and all the other physical changes HRT has brought me. I love not having to do the work I constantly felt like I had to do to maintain my manhood. And I love the community, and what being not only a woman, but a transgender woman brings me! Everything just feels so much more vibrant now. I’m probably doing a bit of a disservice to you, my dear reader, by only having this section be a paragraph, but trust me when I say that it was the best decision I could’ve made.
If this sounds dramatic, it’s because it fucking is! I don’t know why it happened like this either. ↩︎
or any kind of event ↩︎
but like, in a good way ↩︎
Despite enjoying living there, not a place or a school I felt comfortable fucking around with how I looked to the world ↩︎
for the DoD dramatic music hit ↩︎
What X was called at the time ↩︎