Yes, I'm still here. Can you hear me now?
Ghosts of moments past.
Empty spaces.
Tuesday afternoons, alone. Bumbling mumbling about the house. Brush of a cat on your leg.
A story with a trans theme. A life with a theme of gendered moments. Awkward glances. Knowing by familiarity, recurrence, without understanding. Familiarity without connection. What is it that makes me different?
Some learn to look down. Some learn to bare teeth early, quickly, to be ferocious and untameable. I look down.
Most days I feel like loose wires that dangle, but with you I connect.* I look up. You see me, I see you. Zap! Heart starts beating again. Resuscitated. Brought back to life. I wasn't dead, just... elsewhere. Dangling. You know?
Who wants a story with a trans theme? I never did. The word entered my life like an avalanche. Buried, numb, disbelieving, I had no choice but to start my life anew. No way to unrecognize, unlearn, unidentify, push the intruder out. Blissful ignorance gone like a balloon into the sky, not coming back. Shit, that's me. Awful, violent knowledge, ruining everything, forcing me forward.
Choices made in moments of desperation rarely turn out for the best. My moment of desperation stretched from approximately age 11 onwards. I couldn't picture a future me, I couldn't face the present me. I took what I could get. I looked down. I felt angry, said nothing. Shame, loathing, desolate, barren. Yet feisty. One of the fun things about years of desperation is the sense that there is nothing to lose. Freedom: lack of expectations, guidelines, boundaries, limits. Slipping silently around the ties that bind others, by being “other.” Grim resolution, keen perspective, both odd, out of place for youth. But where else could I have gone with all those empty moments, awkward glances, missed connections, small sighs, disapproving looks, and missing explanations. I would have given anything for an explanation, for a moment of kinship. What is it that makes me different?
Transgender. The word entered my soul like a knife, doubled me over, dead parts sliced through, raw, bloody, reborn. All at once there I was, with fresh new hope, cut free. Left one hell of a scar though. Scar tissue itches, and big scars are the worst. Without feeling, missing the proper nerve endings, you can never quite scratch it.
Phantom limbs, phantom lives, names of ghosts past. Let me tell you who I was growing up. Picture this. Jaws drop, heads tilt, lips tighten. Let me make you look downwards. Tables turn. What will you do with this terrible violent knowledge? Does it split you open? Do you know who you are? Can you see me now? This is what I have done. This is what it took for this body to blossom. Is it a sacrifice? A modern medical miracle? Is it cosmetic, or corrective? Is it ethical? Isn't it beautiful? Is it what you would do if we were in each others shoes? I can't possibly tell you the difference it has made.
Life goes on. Post transformation I am legible to the world. Scorn, shame, hundreds of shades of disapproving glances, have drifted quietly away from me, into so many small sore memories. That should make me happy, solidify my triumph, bolster my confidence, prove my righteousness. But that terrible knowledge persists. I am legible, but by a thin margin. The rug could be pulled out from under me again. No person is truly free unless all people are free. That doesn't seem very likely does it? I wish I thought I was free. I wish I could forget what it felt like before. I wish I could let it go, accept what I've got, accept what I'll never have. I wish I could move on. Life goes on but I stay right here.
*stolen from Gregory Douglass
Empty spaces.
Tuesday afternoons, alone. Bumbling mumbling about the house. Brush of a cat on your leg.
A story with a trans theme. A life with a theme of gendered moments. Awkward glances. Knowing by familiarity, recurrence, without understanding. Familiarity without connection. What is it that makes me different?
Some learn to look down. Some learn to bare teeth early, quickly, to be ferocious and untameable. I look down.
Most days I feel like loose wires that dangle, but with you I connect.* I look up. You see me, I see you. Zap! Heart starts beating again. Resuscitated. Brought back to life. I wasn't dead, just... elsewhere. Dangling. You know?
Who wants a story with a trans theme? I never did. The word entered my life like an avalanche. Buried, numb, disbelieving, I had no choice but to start my life anew. No way to unrecognize, unlearn, unidentify, push the intruder out. Blissful ignorance gone like a balloon into the sky, not coming back. Shit, that's me. Awful, violent knowledge, ruining everything, forcing me forward.
Choices made in moments of desperation rarely turn out for the best. My moment of desperation stretched from approximately age 11 onwards. I couldn't picture a future me, I couldn't face the present me. I took what I could get. I looked down. I felt angry, said nothing. Shame, loathing, desolate, barren. Yet feisty. One of the fun things about years of desperation is the sense that there is nothing to lose. Freedom: lack of expectations, guidelines, boundaries, limits. Slipping silently around the ties that bind others, by being “other.” Grim resolution, keen perspective, both odd, out of place for youth. But where else could I have gone with all those empty moments, awkward glances, missed connections, small sighs, disapproving looks, and missing explanations. I would have given anything for an explanation, for a moment of kinship. What is it that makes me different?
Transgender. The word entered my soul like a knife, doubled me over, dead parts sliced through, raw, bloody, reborn. All at once there I was, with fresh new hope, cut free. Left one hell of a scar though. Scar tissue itches, and big scars are the worst. Without feeling, missing the proper nerve endings, you can never quite scratch it.
Phantom limbs, phantom lives, names of ghosts past. Let me tell you who I was growing up. Picture this. Jaws drop, heads tilt, lips tighten. Let me make you look downwards. Tables turn. What will you do with this terrible violent knowledge? Does it split you open? Do you know who you are? Can you see me now? This is what I have done. This is what it took for this body to blossom. Is it a sacrifice? A modern medical miracle? Is it cosmetic, or corrective? Is it ethical? Isn't it beautiful? Is it what you would do if we were in each others shoes? I can't possibly tell you the difference it has made.
Life goes on. Post transformation I am legible to the world. Scorn, shame, hundreds of shades of disapproving glances, have drifted quietly away from me, into so many small sore memories. That should make me happy, solidify my triumph, bolster my confidence, prove my righteousness. But that terrible knowledge persists. I am legible, but by a thin margin. The rug could be pulled out from under me again. No person is truly free unless all people are free. That doesn't seem very likely does it? I wish I thought I was free. I wish I could forget what it felt like before. I wish I could let it go, accept what I've got, accept what I'll never have. I wish I could move on. Life goes on but I stay right here.
*stolen from Gregory Douglass