“If you could choose to stop being trans, would you?”

My immediate response when someone posed the question was — well, if you mean that I could be a normal, quiet (because apparently this existence is never quiet), boring, cisgender man — absolutely. In a heartbeat.

But if you mean, “Would I choose to feel good as my assigned gender?”, well…that’s more of a toughie than I thought.

When I came out to myself and started hormone therapy, it literally and astoundingly felt like a viscous, scratchy, grayish mental screen was removed, and the soul of the boy who left at 14 was placed back into his body (or, finally, mine again).

I can no longer wrap my head around ‘feeling female’ or how I possibly could have (I never owned it in the first place, even as a reasonably high-performing woman in tech with endless opportunities to exemplify and represent).

But back to the question. I suppose if I could magically erase all of my memory and imagination and sense of self and genuinely have a comfortable essence that matched a female body, sure. I would logically be happy, because I wouldn’t be trans or experience the feelings or fallout around it, and life would be so, so much easier.

But I have this inexplicable sadness when I think of that. It’s completely illogical.