My First Trans Day Of Remembrance.
I wrote this a scant 2 years ago but a lifetime seems to have past in that short time. Thank you to my younger self.
50, trans, loved and, most importantly, alive . Unlike the 400 trans people, this year alone, whose names we read out last night in a vigil for the Trans Day of Remembrance. It was by no means all of them, just the ones volunteers found. Most of the names called were half my age, many with no name at all. Many more missing still. And it will be that way for many years to come.
If I can invite you into a vulnerable space for a minute, I'd like to share some insight on my own journey this first year:
Now it's hard to explain gender dismorphia sometimes or what not being able to 'see' your own face is like before transition. Every morning a stranger peers back at you; a notion propped up by what, and who, other people tell you that you are. But you can't really see this person they keep talking about, no matter how much you stare at the blurry image in the bathroom mirror.
To grossly over simplify the whole thing, it's like being called a Mr. Potato Head your entire life, so you put Mr. Potato Head stuff, on your Mr. Potato face, because people tell you it looks nice when you arrange your face parts that way. But really you can't tell because you're a Mrs. Potato Head that can't perceive itself using the Mr. Potato face pieces that came in the box with you.
It shouldn't really be a big deal, exchanging the wrong parts, but everyone is so invested in you being a Mr. Potato Head that that's what becomes important. It's the only important thing, or so it seems sometimes. And nobody wants to be a Mrs. Potato Head in a Mr. Potato Head world right? So you try to oblige the people you love, and be the Mr. Potato Head they want you to be. But really you're just a blind Mrs. Potato Head trying to will the stranger in the mirror into being the Mr Potato Head everyone wants to see you be. Will power, ironic as it seems, has it's limits here -because this is not a choice.
To be a trans person who hadn't come out was,at times, like someone saying that being chased by an iceberg -connected to your ankle by a heavy chain- is voluntary. The shadow you are taught to fear by society never leaves you, and instead it only gets bigger the harder you try to run. My own impression is that, like many other trans and neurodivergent people, we spend most of our lives living in minds and bodies that became accustomed to one word existential fire drills like "run" or "hide" because that is where we were promised the safe spaces would be, but were never found. And the iceberg always followed anyways. So we never stopped trying to run, or hide...or fight. Many didn’t even make it far enough to see the iceburg for what it was. But sooner or later you do, and it all catches up, and the iceberg hits; slowly, profoundly, and entirely expectedly.
IF you are lucky enough, strong willed enough, tough enough, mean enough, loved enough, man enough, woman enough, supported enough, hid enough, ran enough, stood our ground enough, or whatever Schrödingarian combination of death-evading life skills it takes come out the other side and hear the "egg crack", then you get to realise your self and try and manfest that self in this world.
Get Demonia Pleaser’s stories in your inbox
Join Medium for free to get updates from this writer.
The first months on hormones were like the last throw at an Olympic curling finals; we all waited with foggy, baited breath and white knuckles; psychically willing the soft click that signals a good connection of brain and body with every pore of our being, every drop of blood, in every monthly test, as our numbers glide up nd up. Lovingly we nudge the wounded heart to awaken with this new found adamantine clarity. The fuzzy reflection and borrowed beliefs skittering off into the distance and irrelevancy, as our trans guardian angels sweep the path.
In truth though, it is the deafening roar as an ill-fitting, adopted, and contrived sense of self starts to splinter and fall. Huge, tidal wave generating chunks crash into the murky depths of voluntary forgetfulness. Sometimes these chunks, even full blown tsunamis, end up hurting the ones we love. I fear sometimes we are the ones being hurt, sometimes drowned by our own newly found and ferocious power.
At this time you are at your most vulnerable. Unfortuntely, this is often when society wants to treat you at it's worst as well. Sink or swim, you chose this right? To make matters more complicated, you're going through a second very sudden full blown puberty as well.
All.
Over.
Again.
At 50.
Complete with mood swings, acne, risk of "I hate you/I'm adopted/ you're not my real parents/ I'm running away!" style tantrums, swollen boobs, tender ego, 'rapid onset menopause', not to mention monthly cramps, mood swings and meat hankerings the doctors say you can't feel without bits you won't ever have.
To be honest, sometimes it feels like I'm voluntarily getting into the car wreck, Matrix film style, as it's hurtling through space knowing full well what's about to happen. But what it has also been is correcting a primal disalignment of self that leaves the body and senses permanently unsettled, confused and fumbling about blindly on borrowed notions of reality that never matched our own internal experience. And that same self knows instinctully, on a seemingly atomic level of mitochondria, writhing in tiny nuclaic straight jackets, screaming in unison what the cure is: transition.
Now what medical transition can be, in a supportive environment, is an invitation to step into our own skins, and be who we are for the first time in our lives. To recognize the person that stands before us in the mirror. When brain and body finally get the same hormonal messengers they need to communicate properly the cosmos lights up.
Brain exploding with neuronl activity that feels far more like connections long lost or dormant, than new. Body shifts, angles change, fat moves, muscles smooth. Even taxe codes and compound interest suddenly start to make sense! (Don't ask, I don't get that one either.) But then, one day, eyes and brain recognise each other as one and the same in the mirror. Like old friends meeting unexpectedly at the airport, or a kitten seeing their reflection for the first time; a sudden spark of recognition, and then...I?...see?...ME!
I am the newborn becoming an old friend to myself with every blink of my eye.
That is a very special feeling that I think all my entire extended trans family deserve to have. And deserve to have their entire, long, and healthy lives; filled with love and meaningful connection. Not half-forgotten, and read off a crumpled photocopy in candlelight halfway across the world.
But 400 won't this year, and 400 more next, and 400 more the year after etc. The rate of progress is far more glacial than we want it to be, nor always linear either and people slip through (or more often are violently shoved, or disposed of down) the cracks of society. Many of us never got to shed the coats of scars we became buried under. So you'll excuse me if I carpe the fuck out of this diem, and remeber their names. I have almost been one of them more times than I can count; closets are filled with so much pain it's a wonder anyone survives. And they would not have found my name as a trans person if I had.
My name is Windy; I am a proud -and alive- womon of transgender experience. That is, sadly, quite an accomplishment in this day and age. I wish it was not, but at least it seems to be getting better (relatively, for now). But I'll remind you that, just like every other trans person on this planet, I have every right to live in this world because, at the end of the day, living in it as somebody else that I was not, was not a life at all. So I choose me, I choose life.
🏳️⚧️🕯💕🙏 #tdor2023
