With my upcoming surgery, I find myself in my head a lot lately when I’m alone. Not my old self-doubt thoughts like “Is this what I really want? Is this really, 100% who I am?” Instead it’s been going like this-“What will it feel like to run without that extra weight I’ve had all this time? What will my shirt feel like? Will I even feel it or will I be mostly numbish?” And most importantly “How many days, hours, minutes until I can feel like my real self again?”
One of the hardest parts of this trans journey for me is thinking about telling people who I believe will react badly. My parents still don’t know. My bonus parents/ex in-laws don’t know. Most friends don’t know. And when I think about telling them, all that comes to mind is “HOW COULD YOU NOT KNOW?” I have felt this beast inside me for my entire life. I remember the rage I felt as a child when someone told me I threw like a girl or ran like a girl. It was the worst possible insult…but it was also a fact I suppose. Why didn’t anyone see what was happening to me? Why was everyone pulling me in the wrong direction, like I was clueless about who I really was?
Some of my former colleagues in the military are super transphobic. I dread being open and losing the good friendships we had before they revealed who they were. No one seemed to bat an eye at my not at all feminine behavior. I think most people thought I was shy, stuck up, rude, or stupid. But I was quiet because I was afraid my words and my thoughts would give me up. I was born female but fighting SO HARD to pass as female at the same time. I was trying to be delicate and small, because that’s what female felt like to me. My whole childhood was me being a bull in a china shop. But that label…bull in a china shop meaning rough, out of place, and not delicate, it was meant to warn me about taking up too much space. No one would expect a boy to make himself small to wander through a shop full of glass. No one would expect that same boy to stop being a boy at certain times.
But for me, social conditioning and sexist messaging from my parents taught me that I should be as small as possible. Especially because I was different. I was a huge embarrassment to my parents as that bull. I wasn’t small and delicate like I was supposed to be. I’m sure that older relatives pointed this out to them, and maybe I made my parents a lightning rod for unnerving criticism from relatives that were never happy with them anyway. I was loud, I took up space that wasn’t meant for me, and I refused to change for most of childhood.
I feel myself taking up all the space in my own body now. I feel proud of who I am for the first time since the real me was forced to hide. I feel that little boy I was meant to be looking out at the world now, and not hiding because it hurts. I don’t make myself small unless it’s in the context of being polite, like allowing someone to pass in front of me at the theatre or being polite in a human way. I used to make space for everyone around me, even strangers. But I don’t want to do that any longer. I want to be in the space that I want to be in. I’m tired of people telling me how much space I should be taking up. I’m tired of telling myself to take up less space.
I am taking up all the space I want to take and I will continue to be kind and polite as well. And yes, I can be a bull in a china shop and that’s ok too. No more pretending I’m something I’m not. I just wish the people I’m afraid will shun me will actually surprise me and not reject me. I hope they will always love me and take the time to understand that this isn’t a choice. The only choice I am making is to stop hiding, stop pretending, and stop living my life like a series a parts in a fictional movie where I live how I think I’m supposed to. I don’t think I can stay alive in that type of life for much longer. It’s not me.
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