An unfinished nonfiction essay about being transgender that I don't think I want to finish but I thought that Tumblr might get something out of it:
An old teacher of mine once said that there comes a time when one is ready to write about something. Whether that be immediately or ten years down the line, you will know.
However, I have recently come to the realization that gender is a subject I will never truly have the space to think on, breathe on, drown in ink and spit it back out again.
I do not know what delusions the cisgender people think I am suffering under. I am living quite close to the question of my body every day. The small yellow ring in my blue eyes, the strange shape of my hairline and the wonder if it’s getting shorter or darker or if that’s just my imagination, my stomach too large to allow my breasts to be replaced with the scars I’ve been waiting for, the hives gathering in streaks along my skin after I make the mistake of biting into an avocado.
There is no relief in a second puberty. Not like taking a drink of water, anyways. More like pulling out a thorn over a period of months, or taking a painkiller and not noticing that your pain has been missing for hours. Slowly realizing you can access all of the depth of your own emotions. A thing that was not permitted of you before.
How does one explain being transgender? Many have tried. It’s a lot like trying to explain why one is left-handed, only worse. It is a thing so deeply tangled up in the understanding of the self that it is difficult to see even when it is standing right in front of you. Like trying to explain why you know that lemons are sour except in matters of the soul.
I had all of these thoughts one morning as I rinsed my face after sudsing it up with an orange goo. I am too close to certain aspects of my own existence to ever feel “ready” to write about them, in essay or poetry form. And yet somehow I feel some sort of obligation to write down these things, as if I must capture this moment in history for future generations. I am living in the middle of a civil rights struggle, after all. I lived to see the legalization of gay mairrage, after all. Shouldn’t I leave behind some artifact for my children to sift through?
So far my job has been survival. And what does one write about that? It is a thing that all humans do, but for the transgender person it is, unfortunately, a political statement. A powerful show of sticking it to The Man.
To be perfectly honest, I often tire of waking up in the morning to be a living breathing political statement. But I have no choice in the matter. Every bite of Raisin Bran is supposed to be charged with some sort of either pain and torment or outrage and determination. Going out to the grocery store in the middle of the night without a bra on must be a harrowing fight for my life.
My art can’t be about being transgender, because in practice being transgender is quite dull. It consists of rubbing the cleaning goo on your face in the mornings, shoving raisin bran down your gullet, idly wondering what is so intimidating about your existence that you occasionally get yelled at in public restrooms, peeling off your chest binder like you’re a snake shedding off its skin, watching tv before bed, and doing the whole thing again tomorrow.
Really, I may as well write about cooking dinner. I am transgender when I do that. I am transgender when I run, when my feet hurt, when I clean out the fridge. I am transgender when I go to church, when I call my father, when I dust off my bookcase or bite into a cherry tomato. I am just experiencing sweet existence. That is all.
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