I just wanted to write something about my upcoming 30th birthday.
I'm genuinely looking forward to my 30's and I am genuinely thankful that I had one full good year in my twenties as a beautiful young woman. Actually I went full time nearly a year before that. That was something I prayed for actually.
When I was 25 I spent about 6 months living with my uncle in Indiana. I moved out there to help him with his upholstery shop. I think part of me was thinking that maybe I'd feel "normal" if I lived in the small town where I should have I grown up, and I think I also was trying to run away from being trans. I quickly realized that that wasn't the case. There was a moment driving out in the middle of nowhere with nothing but snow covered fields for miles that I knew I had made a mistake, and that Kendallville IN wasn't considerably different from where I grew up. It turned out that my gay uncle is no more feminine than any other man and my theory that maybe I was thought more like a gay guy even though I was straight turned out to be absolute bull.
I know that theory sounds really absurd and even a little judgmental, but it's pretty common to equate sexuality and gender. There really isn't a connection, and femme is not feminine. Also in my defense I really hadn't know very many gay guys other than my uncle and really didn't know him very well until I spent 6 months living with him.
He's probably my favorite uncle.
Well anyway I realized I had to move back to Richmond and saved up money substitute teaching.
Also I am grateful for having lived in Indiana simply for the fact that I was able to spend time with my grandpa and get to know him better before he died. He was the only person who kind of understood where I was coming from when I moved back to Virginia. Almost my entire family on my mother's side lives in Indiana but it isn't my home, and though I really was only thinking this on a subconscious level when I moved back I couldn't have transitioned there.
When I did get back in town something clicked and I knew I had to transition. I've told that story before. Anyway I prayed for one full year in my twenties as a woman. I've had that and I am really really grateful.
One thing I realized then is that the times in my life when I had it together or was getting it together were when I was working towards transition and times in my life when everything was falling apart were when I took transitioning off the table. I realized that I was at the point where either I'd become a raging alcoholic, or I had to transition.
I tried to make a compromise with myself. I decided that if I let myself "cross-dress" in the privacy of my own home I wouldn't have to go through the whole horrible process of coming out to everyone and being permanently regarded as one of those "weird" people who changes their sex, and I wouldn't have to drink quite as much.
Well that didn't work, and it became increasingly difficult to concentrate on anything when wasn't dressed as a woman, and I really wasn't controlling my drinking.
I'm not an alcoholic, but I drank like one. Actually there was a book I read called Dress Codes where the author's father was a closeted transsexual who eventually transitioned. Before transitioning he was emotionally abusive, and as his doctor said "working really hard at becoming an alcoholic." I saw a lot of myself in that description.
My compromise ended with me moving back home with my parents and realizing that transition really was something that I had to do.
That was hard.
As an adult I have cried only for times. One of those times was when I knew beyond any shadow of a doubt that I was definitely a transsexual. That was before I tried to compromise out of transitioning.
A woman just flat out can't live her entire life as a man. That would have killed me.
I'm turning 30 and I don't think I would have had I not transitioned. With me, it wasn't that I lived for years not knowing. I knew when I was twelve that I was very likely a transsexual. I did not want to be and I looked for all sorts of reasons why I wasn't, even as I was talking about with a trans friend of mine looking at the statistics and saying it was highly unlikely.
Of course how I was able to use a 1/20000 chance to say I probably wasn't a transsexual and still justify playing the lottery, I will never know.
So when I moved back out of my parents home I started transitioning, and I knew that I had to take a step back from everything I thought I should be.
On my birthdays I used to get a little down because I thought it was a failing on my part that I didn't have a good job, that I was drowning in student loan debt, that I've never really had a serious relationship, and that everything I thought I was supposed to accomplish in my twenties never happened (except graduating college in four years cum laude).
But the reality is I never could have any of those things without transitioning. I mean the amount of effort it takes to be someone you are not takes so much effort that I flat out didn't have any energy for anything else. I don't know what it's like to be a closeted homosexual but with that at least your aren't living in a gender that feels totally foreign to you, at least you aren't hiding that from everyone.
Gender is so fundamentally a part of who we are that trying to deny our natural gender is pretty much impossible.
And then with me, I am naturally more feminine than most people. So it wasn't like I was a really androgynous woman trying to live as a man. I was a really femme woman trying to live as a really masculine man.
So when I transitioned I took a step back from trying to accomplish all the things I knew were not possible for me until I transitioned. I missed out on an adolescence I needed and didn't get until I was 27.
So I'm turning 30 and I am pretty happy with where I am in my life and relationships
I liken transition to being a teenager again at an excellerated rate. I missed out on a fundamental part of being a teenager which I am now making up. I mean early in transition trying all sorts of different styles and looks, having really non-serious "boyfriends," making out with people etc. That whole thing we all go through as teens where we learn to be adult men and women. So as far as that goes I'm probably at about 18 now. I'm pretty much a mature woman but not quite.
On the other hand I didn't miss out on my entire teenage years. I'm also very much 30 years old and in most things I have the maturity of a 30 year old. And I suspect that soon everything will catch up and I will be my age in all regards; my breasts will stop maturing, I'll pretty much have the body that I'm going to have, and I will have made up for all the things I missed out on as a teen and in my twenties.
So I'm going to write this because I know other people feel the same way sometimes. Don't feel bad that you haven't accomplished the same things that your friends have, or that they seem to have their lives in order so much more than you do, or even that you haven't accomplished the things you wanted to have accomplished by this time in your life.
Dealing with being trans is a big accomplishment.
Dealing with being trans is a huge accomplishment even if you are still closeted and no where near beginning to transition.
Dealing with being trans is a huge accomplishment even if you haven't even allowed yourself gender variant.
Living one year part time as a man caused Norah Vincent (the writer of Self Made Man) to have a nervous breakdown. We live with living cross gendered for years and years full time and hold ourselves together mentally. That is awe inspiring, even if most cis people don't realize it.
Yeah, that is something to be proud of. It's a burden most cis people can't even begin to imagine carrying, and a burden that would quickly break most cis people. So yeah, if you ever want to meet someone strong.
So yeah, I am really looking forward to my 30's.
It's going to be everything my 20's were not.
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