TW: Mentions of self-harm in the first paragraph (and then never again, I promise)
The force with which I desired — longed — yearned — to be remade on a molecular level at once terrified and thrilled me. At thirteen I did not yet have the words for the kind of drastic change I wanted — no, NEEDED — to make, nor did I know what I wanted to make myself into and so, small and young and so very afraid, I did what any not quite sane teenage “girl” would do: I tried to cut my left hand clean off. That feeling, of my body being so foreign, so painfully wrong to me (that several years later I could finally name as Dysphoria) came out in the only way I knew back then: blood, violence, and suffering.
(Spoiler alert: the impulse bathroom operation was NOT successful, thank God. I still have a fully functional left hand, all the better to do my T shots with.)
((Oh my God this doesn’t even make sense. I’m right-handed. This whole thing is falling apart.))
The first time I really allowed myself to flirt with the idea of being a boy was, ironically, this same year. I cut my hair myself, started wearing exclusively sweatpants and three layers of sports bras and comically baggy t-shirts, and was grumpy, messy, and crushed exclusively on girls but in a distinctly Guyish Way. No, I did not ever do anything so bold as saying the word “boy” to or about myself, but secretly, in my heart, I thought of myself as a boy. And that was enough, back then. It got me through. Then I turned fourteen and fell in love with a stupid boy and swallowed my silly fantastical dreams of being a stupid boy myself. It was just a fleeting thought, anyway, and it’s not like there was any way I could just magically become a boy, and so I convinced myself I never even wanted it in the first place.
Occasionally the evil little gremlin that lives in my brain wakes up to screech what if you only think you’re a guy because you don’t want to be in the same Girl Body that was hurt so horribly!!!!!! I usually just whack him with a big stick and he shuts up for a while. But just for this moment, let me explore this notion, that I am only transitioning as a way of sloughing off my traumas.
If I look at this thought with both eyes, glasses on, I can very quickly see right through it. It just doesn’t hold up. It doesn’t make sense! My trauma has not gone away and left me, finally, in peace. If anything, it’s only become more insistent, more demanding I pay attention to it — and I finally am. I’m working through it in a much healthier way than I ever was able to before. My body is still a haunted house, but it’s not so scary anymore. Instead of moving out into a newer, better, emptier house, I have befriended the ghosts and found that hey, they’re not that bad after all. They’re actually pretty nice, most of them. And they’ve all got really good stories.
This is my house! I’m not leaving! I’ve paid off the mortgage. I’ve put pictures on all the walls. I’m staying here, whether you like it or not.
The Author Finally Decides to Start Taking Testosterone
It has been six months since I’ve started T, at the time of writing this, and the house has not fallen down around me. I have not been transformed into an evil winged beast that spirits young girls away from their beds in the night and eats them in my Rotten Man Cave, no matter what my mother thinks. My mother is not the only one who views transition as something violent and bloody; I am sure hundreds if not thousands of other mothers view their son’s transitions in much the same light. We should start a support group — So Your Mother Thinks You’ve Murdered Her Daughter, and She Doesn’t Even Care About Your Sexy Little Mustache.
Our decision to transition is seen as an act of violence against our Divine Female Bodies and by extension, an act of violence against all of Womankind. I would argue, though, that nothing about my transition has been violent, except for others’ reactions to me. I have stepped out of my ill-fitting Woman Facade and wrapped myself in masculinity, like a big comfy sweater. There has been no murder, here, but a metamorphosis. The twenty years I spent as a girl were something like a chrysalis, a temporary home where I had the time and space to really grow into my gender. And now look at me! A handsome little butterfly. (Or, you know, just a twink. Whatever.)
I think often about a long-time family friend who also happened to be my boss for about nine months (small towns are weird) who, about a week after I came out, told me I was “just doing this to spite my mother” and that I “only think I am a man because I never had any good female role models” and thus am disillusioned with womanhood. At the time it gave me quite the crisis, but now it’s just hilarious to me. I have been surrounded by strong, capable, wonderful women my entire life. I love women! I’m just not one.
I am not trans because there were not enough ways to be a woman; it’s not like I ran out of options and thought hey, why don’t I try being a dude? I was raised by my incredibly feminist grandmother who burned her bras in the 60s and taught me that I can be a woman any which way I please, and anybody who has a problem with that can fuck right off. It’s more that womanhood has so many options, endless pages of options, really; and none of them happened to work for me. (And trust me, I tried them all.) So I did a little shimmy to the left and into the weird wonderful world of transmasculinity, where there are no rules except One: Chase Your Joy. (Okay, yes, I made that rule up, but it’s a pretty good one, don’t you think?)
This past year has been almost solely about chasing my joy. I like to think of Gender and Presentation as an all-you-can-eat buffet, where you can take as much as you’d like and leave behind the things you don’t.
Realizing I am transmasc was like receiving the Golden Ticket to Willy Wonka’s Factory, where all the Oompa Loompas are other transmascs who can teach me how to do my T shot and lament with me about ass hair and being perpetually sweaty, and Willy Wonka is Georgette Heyer in cat ears. (I am aware that this joke is only going to land with at most two people. The first draft of this said Frank Iero in cat ears, which only widens the scope to about five more weirdos.)
Coming Home Again
At last, dear reader, we return to the proverbial haunted house. Come in, come in, don’t dawdle, the cat will try to make a break for it. You can put your jacket on the back of the couch. Do you want me to do your shot for you?
