I wish I knew how to define myself and my manhood and just…everything about me.
It’s been 4 (almost 5!) years since my egg cracked and still it’s so hard to pick apart what parts of me (personality, likes and dislikes, ect )are from 26 years of forcing myself to be a girl bc I didn’t know I had other options.
I like pink bc I saw that the girls around me liked pink and so put it into my personality as hard as I could from 1st grade onwards.
I never played with boys after 5th grade bc they looked at me with disgust and disdain. I played with the outcast girls who thought I was a bit Too Much but I got them to tolerate me after following them around at recess.
I started saying I liked strawberry flavored things bc I saw an anime at age 13 where a man said it was very cute for girls to like that.
In middle and high school the girls slowly drifted away, only one friend left by high school.
The boys in middle and high school largely ignored me, save a few who went out of their way to treat my presence like they’d just discovered mold on their morning toast.
I played trombone in concert band to make my dad proud of me and to prove I was just as good as the boys. I knew 2 of my band mates since elementary school, both boys. One apathetic. The other hateful. Being 2nd chair over the two of them didn’t help me fit in at all. Another opportunity to be a freak.
When I was little I remember asking Dad when I,too, would grow stubble and have a scratchy face.
I felt upset when he said girls can’t have that. He said I’d be pretty instead. I had already learned to try to force myself to feel excited about that.
At 12 my dad stood with me in front of a mirror and pointed out all the ways I was starting to turn into a beautiful young lady. My heart shaped face. My red lips. My big sparkly eyes. I remember feeling happy that my dad was happy with me.
I remember feeling strange and alien and wondering what he saw that I couldn’t. Force my smile. Force the excitement- after all, I’ll like it when I’m older, I’m just nervous about growing up, right? Put on the training bra. Be the mom in playing house.
Show them I am strong! Don’t get upset when the youth pastor implies most women are too emotional to have important jobs- why else would you rarely see women as first chair musicians or famous inventors and scientists?
Laugh when he teases me for being a feminist when I insist on helping clean up chairs with the boys, and then suggests later on I sign up to help with nursery.
I feel like I’m a 10,000 piece puzzle only recently began untangling a distorted picture made by forcing pieces together.
Will I ever get to be anything coherent?
Where do I begin and the pieces that made up my ancient facsimile end?
