4 gifts of my transgender experience
I don’t like being transgender. It’s one of the most misunderstood circumstances in the world, even by the silent majority that doesn’t actively wish to harm us.
I hesitate to talk about “trans joy” for this reason. There was and is an indescribable joy in becoming un-dissociated via my hormone therapy, and my similarly infinite and indescribable gratitude for that aspect coexists with a fearful resentment that’s at least nice to have as a societal cloud over my shoulder instead of a personal misery woven into my bones and biochemistry.
I resent the notion that people like me are expressive or brave, and I resent that I should ever have to worry about accessing a basic medication. Most of all, I resent that I am callously and ceaselessly used as a pawn in others’ political games. It’s really, really scary and exhausting.
But this is supposed to be about the good stuff, right?
I guess I wanted to preface it like that to emphasize that anyone could have ended up in my shoes, by pure chance of birth — including you. As negative as I’ve made it sound (and as negative as society makes it for us), being trans is just another circumstance, completely arbitrary. Transitioning is how transgender people put one foot in front of the other.
Anyway, It’s Pride Month (which also happens to be my birthday month 🥳), so I’ll shut up and get on with it.
Speaking only for myself, here are four nice things about my own transgender experience:
I got to experience the return of something lost
I remember where I was and what I was doing on the day I realized my hormone therapy was doing something astounding.
One mid-January afternoon in 2021, about 4 days after my first injection, I was on the sidewalk about 3 blocks south of my house when I realized that my brain wasn’t churning anymore.
Until then, since I was 11 or 12, the flowing pictures in my head (I don’t think in words) were endless, rote, grayish rehearsals of the next few hours: what I needed to do when I got home, what I would need to do after that, how I would need to move my limbs to do that, how incredibly tiring it all sounded, how worried I was about this or that, how worried I was about that other thing, exactly how many minutes would it be until the holy grail: my evening snack, more worries, more steps, the next task, the next step, the next task, anxiety!, the next task, another longing for the evening snack (the best part of not most days, but every day), how exhausting the process of showering would be, the next worry, the next task…years. Years of just this.
But on that day, on that block, as I passed the “Historic Westside Neighborhood” sign on the weird triangle-shaped median at 3rd Avenue, I was just…present. (?!)
There was nothing flowing through my head.
I was present.
My head was so freakishly, astonishingly still.
When I got home that afternoon, I sat on the living room couch for an hour and did nothing. It was phenomenal.
And it stuck around. I don’t remember my creative and happy childhood too well, but I can only imagine that my default headspace was a lot like this. Imagine being really, really congested and then — poof! — it’s gone; you can breathe again. And feel again — both nothing and everything.
(I could go on forever about this, so I’ll just link to this essay to explain more.)
I’m glad that I lost my chemical capacity for joy slowly over the blur of estrogenic puberty, and not all at once in the way that I experienced its return. It would have been unspeakably (and, frankly, suicidally) traumatic to experience this in the exact reverse. It will be for real if my access to hormones is politically restricted.
I could indeed go on (and I’m tempted, because I absolutely need you to understand and believe me for the sake of my safety), but that’s the gist. You truly don’t know what you’ve got til it’s gone — and you get it back.
I got to soothe my inner child
My tween years were overtaken by perfectionism and severe scrupulosity OCD as the aforementioned biochemical churning began, and in my teenage years, anorexia was added to the mix. As a result, I didn’t get to be a kid for long.
I’m over 30 now and have arguably aged a lot from the sheer, taxing nonsense of my private life being publicly debated. But in my first year or two of social transition, I looked like a teenager (if not younger, given one hilarious interaction with the TSA) and reveled in every second of it.
At 28, on my way out of a coffee shop, the barista approached me at the door and handed over a treat for the road. “Here you go, boss man! A chocolate chip cookie!” The interaction had all the tenderness we all still secretly want (or at least I sure as hell do), and my entire month was thoroughly made.
I understand that my sentiment is by no means universal, and maybe it’s some kind of mindfuck with also having a social disability and feeling like half my brain forgot to grow up anyway. But I had regular interactions like this at the start of my transition, and the comfort and joy they provided was unbelievable. I got the chance to just smile and exist in front of nice folks who were none the wiser — this time, without the burden of severe mental illness that no adult — let alone child as I had been — should ever have to bear. Best do-over ever.
I’m free from the stress of performative masculinity
The lengths that a lot of men go — in style, conversation, or otherwise — to not appear feminine are depressingly astounding.
I don’t want to minimize how lonely and harmful this shit is, but I will say this: it’s insidious, and it wasn’t learned overnight. Being this late in the game means that I won’t learn it overnight, either.
Sure, I’ll never have the internal plumbing I want or reach 5'10" (or even 5'5", without a miracle advancement in adult scoliosis therapy), but I can slip on a moonstone bracelet, tell someone I’m scared, or get visibly excited about vanilla bean hand soap without a lick of reflexive shame. A lot of guys had that freedom beaten out of them early on.
(At the same time, fellow dudes: If you’re not in an openly hostile environment, what’s holding you back besides yourself?
Your brother, dad, cousin, buddy, or colleague may very well be quietly waiting for another guy to loosen up first.)
I’ll never be afraid of another meeting
I came out at work during my daily standup meeting.
My boss (bless him) had the heads up and had my back, but it’s safe to say that I will never, EVER participate in a more awkward Zoom call for the rest of my career. Whenever I’m dreading some meeting or another these days, I just remind myself,
“Yeah, but are you a tiny, squeak-voiced little pixie creature asking four men who’ve known you for almost a year to call you NORMAN now?!? (like, not even something cute like Aiden or Skyler or whatever these days, but fucking Norman??? AAAHHHHH!! WHAT WAS I THINKING?!!!!!?)”
It would be an understatement to say that I wanted to crawl into a hole forever.
But my team was amazing, and I made it through with some combination of shared humor, grit, and the sheer chill vibes my mind is now capable of due to the hormones (don’t get me started on that part again).
So, yeah. Interview me, hire me, fire me, make my introverted ass interview someone else, walk me through the stupidest and most tedious bug imaginable, put me through two hours of ungodly corporate ‘asks’ — whatever.
Your ‘quick chat’ can’t scare me now.
(okay, please don’t make me interview other people)
