“transition”
Tags: LGBTQ, Transgender, LGBT

maybe it’s a little funny. figuring out one’s Situation while in high school, then sitting on it for ten years. alternately denying and passively acknowledging. worried, of course, of the dreaded It’s Just A Phase; by year six, it was hard to call the Situation a phase anyway.

but how to phrase it. how to look a doctor in the eye and tell them yes, you did play with barbies and lego in equal measure when you were a child, yes, you feel close to differently gendered peer groups in radically different ways. yes, when you were 19 you drew a comic (never finished) about feeling like an alien in these peer groups. the assumption of course being that the doctor leans back, holding a manila folder, and says well, maybe you’re not a candidate for HRT, but-

so you bury it. keep wearing clothes that don’t suit the curves of your body. keep taking it as a triumph when the nice lady at the jean-coutu calls you “monsieur,” and wilt a little when she corrects herself with a frantic “mademoiselle”. keep shrugging it off when your mom asks you about the binder you used to wear, even though you can picture it folded neatly in the back of your dresser at home. you know exactly where it is, the same way you know exactly where your passport and wallet and keys are, because were it not for the discomfort you’d wear it every day.

eventually, eventually, you wake up spurred on by someone dear to you and you make a phone call. the waitlist for the informed consent clinic is six months. you ask to be put on it. the person on the other end says “we’ll get in touch,” and hangs up.

six months doesn’t seem like long, graphed against the ten years proceeding. but.

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it turns out, of course, that you can get practically anything online if you’re careful and have your wits about you. and if you live in a big enough city, there are needle exchanges that won’t ask questions, even when you stammer and sweat at the counter. there are also other people familiar with the process, who will call you one january evening and walk you through it. you’ll never officially be instructed on how to do an injection. it hurts less than it looks like it would. instead of dreading it you shake with adrenaline so much that it’s hard to hold your hands steady. .2 mL is not a lot; you later move on to .7 mL. you find out later, in hindsight, that .7mL is too much. it doesn’t matter- it’s not important- you have more immediate things to consider.

the changes happen quickly, at first.

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having been awarded a degree in gender and sexuality studies, and having done the amount of reading that four years of analyzing Butler requires, i am familiar with the term gender euphoria. it is supposed to be the opposite of dysphoria, a.k.a. that horrifying feeling of looking in the mirror and seeing something that is Not you and Does Not map to the you that’s familiar. many people have tried to explain these feelings; it’s difficult, personal, a slippery concept to get a handle on.

the first day i woke up and noticed something had Happened, i felt the euphoria.

it didn’t stop. it rose and grew like a tidal wave, next to unnoticeable for the boats far out on the water but gaining speed as it approached land.

my voice hadn’t yet dropped. i couldn’t imagine the feeling- how much joy would i feel when i spoke and felt the new resonance of my words?

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having hated my vessel for so long, having fantasized about being able to control it like this and being stuck powerless against the tyranny of flesh, the revelation of transition hit me powerfully, destructively. i told nearly nobody. i kept it a secret. the molding of my flesh into a new in-between creature was my private wonder.

in the back of my head, i did consider the more troubling aspects. how did i know that i wasn’t hurting myself with the dosage? i had never gotten bloodwork- how would i know my T levels? was i injecting right? was this supposed to happen?

i relinquished control over my body’s future; i do not intend to live forever.

the scaffolding of power within the medical corpus bars this illegitimate sculpting of flesh. i am, crucially, lucky to have had an informed consent clinic to call in the first place. many others must climb through gates and check boxes and answer Correctly something that can’t truly be answered. and then given the barest hint of what is desired. an infinitesimally small dose, enough to produce slight changes, just in case one wakes up in horror and demands a return to the cisgendered norm.

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of course, like anyone who has ever gone to therapy will tell you, if you’ve finally decided to take the plunge and ask for help that generally means you’re serious. at least hours, weeks, if not years of thinking goes into these decisions; i doubt anyone has woken up one day and spontaneously decided to take hormones.

i woke up six months later and the sight of my sleep-muddled face read as a comfort for the first time; looking down at my stomach (hairy), legs (also hairy), the receding curve of my hip subtly melting into something more vertical, i felt as if it was mine. mine to poke and prod at, to inhabit, to maybe stop thinking as a vessel of myself and instead just understand as me-but-not-me, mind and flesh the same being comprehending the world through different means. i rise and i see myself reflected in the mirror- first one i’d bought, first time i felt like seeing myself in greater detail than the blurry glassesless pre-shower once over that i’d do. i look like me, whatever that means. i sound like me, too, a near-tenor that cracks when i get too excited. it’s foreign in a way i want to keep chasing. i feel solid, grounded. i still have told nearly nobody. i wonder if i ever will. i wonder if i ever have to.

i wonder, quietly, if i can keep this as my own triumph.

i wonder, quietly, if i can.