Reflections on five years of life as a trans woman
This week marks five years since I came out as trans, which seems like a good moment to reflect on my journey.
There have obviously been physical changes in the time since I started hormones: the quickest, to skin and face, the slowest, to my hair growth patterns and body fat distribution. I’ve gained thirty pounds but my hands have shrunk so much I keep needing to get my engagement ring resized.
Then there are the social changes: most of my friends now at this point are other queer and trans people, not because my friends from before ever treated me poorly, but rather because we’re now in different phases of life where they’re having babies and things like that and I’m getting more into art and thinking about what kind of volunteering I’d like to do.
The thing I wish could go back in time and tell myself is to be more patient. It took time for family to come around and confidence to build. I have not regretted this for one second, but that doesn’t mean the decision to transition is not a serious one. The most important thing to consider is how you’ll deal with the psychological impact of being trans in mundance settings, like the dentist. How awkward do you feel when you have to explain yourself to people?
How willing are you to learn new skills? This is going to consume your life for at least a couple years and you’ll have so much to unlearn, process, and learn for the first time. Don’t be embarrassed to be bad at things — practice is key. Practice your voice. Practice your makeup. Practice moving. When I was a teenager I got bullied for swaying my hips a lot and it was hard to get myself comfortable reversing my acquired stiffness and doing it again.
You shouldn’t have to do any of this stuff, and you don’t, but people will be far nicer to you if even when they can tell you’re trans, they know that you’re trying. And in my experience there’s a lot of people who don’t intentionally practicing embodying their gender not because they don’t want to or don’t care, but because they’ll internalized the idea that effort is cringe. Transitioning is the most cringe thing you can do, so start practicing getting over caring right now.
Finally, rage: you’re going to have a day where you’ll realize how much it took you to get to this place, where you finally feel real. The tension between who you are and who they wanted you to be is unbearable, when you look it in the face. It’s unbearable, and yet you bore it, for how many years of your life? Even one would be too many. It is a cruel society that did that to you. It is a cruel society that would do that to another generation. We do not have to live in a cruel society if we all realize what it has done to us, in this world where so many people suffer for so little gain. We are burning this planet, altering it beyond recognition in the pursuit of this cult of growth — this cult that you threaten by noticing just how much their values have cost you. Just how much has been taken from you.
You’re going to be angry sometimes, when you realize this. Start looking for ways to channel it. Let it be your tool in dismantling the world that forced you to be so afraid of your own personhood. Let it be the reminder to make the most of the years you do have as yourself. Let it be the fire that burns new paths into the future.