i think the worst part of being transgender is how much time you lose.
when i was 13, i came out to my parents in a letter that I left on their dresser for them to read. soon after, i got on a plane and flew to phoenix, arizona to stay with my aunt for two weeks during the summer. two agonizing weeks where i went to the grand canyon and did the shit you do when you look at the grand canyon, and thought about how easy it would be if i just went tumbling down the side of the canyon and got dashed to a million pieces by the rocks and scorpions and things of that nature. i got home and of course my parents were unhappy and they did all of the things that parents who spent more time at Tea Party meetings than with their kids do; there was the let down at the beginning, the hard drop to the bottom of the canyon floor that sounded like “we don’t accept your decision”, then the crying, then the reasoning, that nobody my age would understand and that it was a huge decision to live as a woman, that i couldn’t possibly understand the reprucussions of the decision i was making, that i’d get bullied and that i needed to wait till i was 18. then came the screaming, the bible, the pause for dad to get another beer, the how-could-you-do-this-to-your-mother-you-pervert. i got grounded for the rest of summer.
two weeks wasted agonizing and hoping.
i kept myself secret for the next five years. i built a carefully crafted image of a straight, cisgender boy who just got a little confused in my early teen years. i hid my boyfriend from them. i tried on women’s clothes in secret and lied about who i was with when i’d go to the mall to try on dresses. i confided in very few people and saved my money for the day i could start hormones. i planned to go to a college far far away and as soon as i turned 18, cut off contact from my parents entirely. but at a certain point, it was too much for me to bear. i stopped going to the mall to try on dresses in secret. i got rid of my makeup and women’s clothes. i quit going by other names online and in person and went back to a shortened version of my deadname, Drew. it was easy and gender neutral enough that I could get through the day being called that without wanting to cry. i wore flannel shirts and did all the things a nice, straight, cisgender man was supposed to be. i pretended to be a different person for so long that i came out the other side of my teenage years as an actually different person altogether.
being transgender is a forever game of catch-up. for all of the narratives associated with coming out of finally finding your true self and living authentically, there are the countless years of hiding in plain sight and trying to kill the real you to stay alive. it’s being born and living life at a standstill until you’re old enough to transition and then being born again in your 20s and going through puberty for the rest of your life, trying desperately to catch the dream of normality, chasing the white rabbit forever but never being able to get past your untied shoes.
none of this is to say i didn’t love my teenage years. i did all of the shit that teenagers are supposed to do — drugs, drinking, play bad computer games, play good computer games, crash a car, get a handjob, vote, get into a fist fight with your uncle at a sushi restaurant in reno, nevada, etc. i listened to bad music that i thought was good and good music i thought was bad. i had crushes that never went anywhere and went to prom and hated the whole thing. those are the things you’re supposed to do and i reveled in every minute of it. but when i got to college and started my actual transition and became accepted by the cis women i was friends with, i couldn’t help but shake the nagging feeling that i wasted all my formative years trapped in the wrong body.
i never got to do the things that teenage girls do. i never got to wear clothes from justice, or have a diary or play with dolls, or get crushes the way they did or read the weird introspective teenage girl blogs they did. sure, no female experience is universal but there’s a part of my trans woman heart that yearns for a cookie cutter cisgender childhood. the common transphobic narrative championed by terfs and conservatives alike about young cisgender girls forced to shower with men pretending to be women always ignores the lived reality of actual young women forced to shower with men because nobody really belives they’re girls. i will never get my first period, or my second, or my third. i would take the pain of cramps and bleeding if it spared me the pain of having parents that only love you when you perform for them.
i never got my great getaway, by the way. i started college 15 minutes from my parents house and anguished about it. but i transitioned anyway. i’m finally starting to see the shape of my own womanhood, and there’s no dent in it just because i didn’t have the stereotypical childhood that pretty much nobody really has except for in movies and TV. for now, i will keep mourning the cisgender girlhood that i didn’t get to have, because i think some tiny part of me will always want to be a cisgender woman. i don’t think anyone will ever totally shake the feeling of wanting to be somebody else every now and then. i will have to come to terms with the fact that i don’t get a do over. sometimes i think it’s okay to want to be someone else, because when i’m done i come back to who i really am, and decide that i like myself a lot. i love that i am a self made woman, that i get to define my own womanhood, my own existence as it may be. i got to be a teenage girl online, on tumblr, on forums where i read webcomics, on MMOs and video games where i could be anywhere i wanted to be. and I got to do it my way, which is the only way anybody gets to do anything. and at the end of the day, that will have to be enough.
