Transparent TV

If you are not watching Transparent on Amazon you are seriously missing out on one of the best shows on any streaming service. The writing is brilliantly honest and the acting is insanely powerful. While I was watching the finale of season one, I had a revelation in regards to my twenties and my life choices. In the episode “Why do we cover the mirrors” Ally (played by Gaby Hoffmann) is upset because she finds out that her father, who is trans (played by Jeffrey Tambor), didn’t mind her cancelling her Bat Mitzvah back when she was little because he consequently got to go to Camp Camellia, a cross-dressing camp. Ally is in complete disbelief that her father left such an important decision in the hands of a teenager and so she confronts him. Towards the end of the episode I surprisingly found myself crying when Ally says: “what would I do with guidance…what would I do with love?”

With this line Ally reminded me of myself and of how terribly I had managed the so called “quarter life crisis”, you know, that point in your life when you’ve once again reached a certain road block except this time it’s different, this time you’re dealing with an immense wall that seems indestructible and you feel there is no way you’ll resolve your problems. I hit this barrier a few months after my 25thbirthday, the solutions escaped me and I obviously started to blame my parents for all the maddening confusion because, who else is at fault anyways?

In this amazing final episode Ally blames her dad for letting her make such a huge decision at such a young age, for having spoiled her and for basically being responsible for the mess she has become. I too blamed my parents for how lost I was feeling during my sad crisis, I resented them for giving me all these false ideas of what adulthood was all about. The reality of it is that I was having a hard time facing the consequences of my mistakes which had been accumulating throughout my early twenties. Until recently I would constantly wonder, why did they spoil me so much? How could they let me think for a second, that life asks you what you want?

As I was watching the fascinating interaction between Hoffman and Tambor, I was thinking that I too felt cheated by my parents during my crisis. It was like waking up on the morning of a horrid hangover from all the delicious white wine I had been drinking for years. It was during this time that I started to learn that you had to not only demand life for the things you wanted but you had to push it around a bit and hunt your dreams down. I had spent years ignoring all these unwritten rules and I was under the impression that everybody had it all figured out and that I was alarmingly falling behind. I also thought that there was one exclusive way of doing things in order to be successful.

There I was, at the lovely age of 26, with no idea of what to do with my life, finding out that being an adult doesn’t mean you have the answers. I had just failed at completing a degree I wasn’t even passionate about and found myself in an internship I didn’t care for, doing things for people that didn’t care about my hunger for learning or my capabilities. I was disappointed in myself and I couldn’t stand who I had become. My main issue was that I had come to the realization that I had been trying to be someone I am not for so long. I had become obsessed with achieving a respectable academic course because it was my understanding that obtaining the all-powerful diploma would solve all my insecurities. As a consequence, I hadn’t been trying to find my own voice and I was far from creating my own path. My main focus had been to gain the world’s approval, it had never dawned on me that your own seal of validation is all you need.

Somehow I was convinced that all of the distress could have been avoided if only my parents hadn’t kept this monstrous life secret from me over the years. I would rummage through memories and pick all the relevant moments that enabled me to pin it all on my parents. For example, I would think that the whole moving around had screwed me up for good. Instead of thinking it made me unique, I would wonder why I couldn’t have just lived in the same place my whole life because maybe that way I would have turned out normal. Maybe just maybe, I wouldn’t have such a high failure rate if my life had had a bit of stability. In that space in time I didn’t appreciate the experiences I had gone through, I blindly discarded them. In the end this process would always lead me back to where I started. And that starting point was a dark place, a place where I had become a pro in the blame game, a game that was quite harmful and that inevitably filled me with bitterness and guilt.

In all honesty, I don’t really believe that my parents are the ones to blame for the mistakes I made or their consequences. When it comes down to it, I am conscious that by holding them responsible, for the harsh reality I was going through at the time, it was easier for me to complain and avoid facing myself. You can say it was easier to just “cover up the mirrors” than to look at my true self in the mirror. All the blaming turned out to be a waste of time that got in the way of the crucial questions such as Who am I? What do I stand for? What matters to me?

The season finale of Transparent allowed me to see my feelings with clarity and realize that I had come to terms with all the good mistakes, stupid mistakes, heartbreaking mistakes and all the wonderful mistakes I had made since I was 18. It was quite liberating to acknowledge that my confusion was behind me now. Transparent goes deep and its creator Jill Soloway speaks veraciously about our humanity. I find the series has a beautiful way of approaching our flaws. I love that it lets us see the world through the eyes of transgender people and that it so boldly embraces our diversity. This TV show is another element that comes to show that our diversity is what makes us better as human beings and that diversity isn’t going anywhere, it is here to stay. I am a fan for life.

Originally published at multiculturalhuman.com on October 23, 2014.