TW: Suicidal ideation/SA

I’ve been transitioning for just under three years now. Only out to the public for under two. The whole of my womanhood, my new life, fits into that little sliver of time, a mere fraction of my time on this planet.

To build a new life, we must burn the old one down and all that.

Now, when I look in the mirror, I see nothing but a woman except on my lowest days. When in public, when at work, and elsewhere, I’m treated as the gender I project, and as far as I can tell, generally seen as such. People may gawk, but that could also be chalked up to me being a six-foot-tall woman covered in tattoos.

Just three years ago, I couldn’t have imagined this being my reality. I couldn’t have imagined being a woman.

I remember taking my first estrogen pill, a tiny blue oval in my hand. Something that, without exaggeration, saved my life. Sitting in my twin-sized bed, sliding it under my tongue, dissolving and changing my direction forever.

Leading up to it was the worst depressive episode I ever experienced. My high school sweetheart left me, I was raped by my closest friend for eight months, and I had this knawing void clawing at the back of my skull.

“I couldn’t be trans, I don’t mind being a man,” “I’m too old, I’ll never look like a real woman,” “what if I’m not accepted? What will my family think?”

I did the therapy, for years, in fact. From therapist to ineffective therapist, I jumped, none able to fix me.

I tried the antidepressants. A pharmacy full of pills attempts to dam up the feelings I had, to make life manageable. “I could be happy, if only this Prozac worked.”

I talked to friends, what few I had. Something I’ve since learned is that friendships are built on authenticity and vulnerability. I wasn’t close to anyone because no one was close to me. How could they be when I wasn’t even close to me?

I tried to push it all down, but nothing worked. I didn’t want to transition without assurance that I would look like a real woman. I wasn’t even fully convinced that I was trans. I was worried that it was too late for me. But something was deeply wrong, something had to change, and so I took a leap of faith.

My first estrogen pill was my Hail Mary before I killed myself.

To build a new life, we must burn the old one down.

In the early days of my transition, the only thing I cared about was eventually being indiscernible from a real woman. I’ve since come to understand how deeply parasitic that mindset was. For one, I was a woman the second that I decided I was one, and second, it was a restricted and deeply heteronormative colonial mindset.

But as I progressed, my biggest concern wasn’t my appearance or even how other people treated me, but more importantly, if I was making other women uncomfortable. I didn’t feel entitled to women’s space, and oftentimes I still don’t.

I rarely speak up in conversations about ‘girl problems’ unless it’s with my closest confidants, and until the last ten months, I always searched for alternative bathroom options whenever available.

I didn’t see myself as a woman, at least not fully, and as a result, didn’t feel deserving of the space. Passing was essential, I needed to be a real woman.

But again, I was, am, and always will be that real woman that I so desperately wanted to be. As my confidence grew, as I became more and more comfortable in my womanhood, as I became the person proud of being “passing” was less of an external concept and how other people saw me and more internal, and how I saw myself.

Transitioning is a deeply vulnerable and personal experience. You have to tear down your internal walls and reflect on everything you are.

I frequently think about a passage from Julian K. Jarboe’s book, Everyone on the Moon Is Essential Personnel.

“God blessed me by making me transsexual for the same reason he made wheat but not bread and fruit but not wine: so that humanity might share in the act of creation.”

Everyone has different goals when they transition, and sometimes those goals change. Sometimes what’s important to us changes. And most importantly, who we are changes. Passing just isn’t important to me anymore as long as I like what I see in the mirror.

To build a new life, we must burn the old one down.