When you’re transgender and you finally feel comfortable enough to tell the whole world you are transgender, you get asked a lot of questions. Below is a list of my all-time favorites:
- How did you know you are transgender?
- Are you sure you’re transgender…you never played with Barbies or were an effamanate man/you never liked sports or working on cars getting all dirty as it’s not ladylike, where is this coming from?
- Are you planning on cutting your ding dong / hoo-ha’s off?
- Wait, do you like men/women? Are you gay now or are you transitioning so you’ll be heterosexual?
- How long have you known you were transgender?
And finally…
- What’s it like / how does it feel to be transgender?
So, “What’s it like being transgender?” Well unlike I want to say a majority of other trans folks out there, I didn’t know I was transgender from an early age. I didn’t play with Barbies nor did I have the urge to wear dresses or put makeup on or sneak into my mother’s closet to try stuff on. I had a happy healthy childhood as a boy. So I will admit I am a novice at in understanding what it means to be transgender but I think I found the perfect way to describe what it’s like.
I believe this scenario will resonate with most of you out there. How many of you had a job straight out of college? Your first full-time job, hopefully a salaried one, benefits, office culture, the whole shebang (which I know is rare these days, but humor me). It may not be what you want to do, it’s not your dream job, but hey it’s a start, it’s not like you are going to be here forever right…right???
So you start the job and you think it’s great. People even encourage you and compliment you on how well you are doing. You are fitting right in with everyone, get along with everyone, get into a nice routine. Get up, get dressed, do the great job that everyone is telling you that you are doing…work is great right? But ultimately you hit a wall. You realize that what you’re doing isn’t fulfilling enough…dare I say it doesn’t feel right? I think you know where I am going with this.
If you have never seen the movie Up in the Air with George Clooney, I highly recommend it as he is just phenomenal in it. Clooney’s character’s occupation is a downsizing specialist. He works for a firm that specializes in re-evaluating a company’s employees/size and then gives them a benefits package and then meets with each employee one on one and let’s them go. At one point in the film he fires someone face to face and Clooney’s character is experienced in this job, so he’s ready for any and all kind of reactions and when one employee gets angry that they are being let go from a lifelong job (and rightfully so), Clooney finds an interesting way to put it back on the employee.
Clooney challenges the employee with the question of “What is your dream?” alluding to the employee’s dream job and after a snide remark from the employee. Clooney looking at his resume says “Your resume says you minored in French Culinary Arts. Most students work the frier at KFC. You bussed tables at Il Picatorre to support yourself. Then you got out of college and started working here. How much did they pay you to give up on your dreams?” The employee replied “$27,000”.
I cannot think of a better example to sum up what it means being transgender. Everyone aka society tells you that you’re doing great. You have this great job, maybe a loving wife/husband, then kids then a house. Society keeps patting you on the back each day “Atta boy (or girl), keep it up, you’re doing great!” Society just never stops saying “Keep that status quo coming along, trust us, there’s nothing better out there for you…you’re happy, look at all that you have and have accomplished!”
Meanwhile the unhappiness that you feel starts to build. You try and push that feeling deep down. You convince yourself that you’re happy. Why do anything bold or new that might jeopardize all that you have? You look at all that surrounds you and it’s comfortable…but monotonous..it’s routine. That desire to pursue your dream job/dreams that you pushed to the side long ago starts to come out and just keeps building up inside you until…
Something has to give. Something has to change. But then doubt creeps up on you? But what if I fail? What if I lose relationships? What if…What if…What if…you can “What if?” yourself to death but ultimately it has to be you that turns that key and finally opens the door to the life you were born to live.
Remember George Clooney in Up in the Air…well he’s also a motivational speaker on the side. He has this analogy about how there are things in your life and you end up cramming them all in a backpack similar to the analogy of the weight of the world is on your shoulders. He starts with materialistic things to put into your backpack…house, jewlery, family heirlooms/pictures, etc. and then he says “and then I set fire to your backpack…what do you save?” The exercise was meant to obviously challenge what you deem most important in your life. So he ultimately goes a bit deeper with the analogy here:
”You have a new backpack. Only this time, I want you to fill it with people. Start with casual acquaintances, friends of friends, folks around the office, and then you move into the people that you trust with your most intimate secrets. Your cousins, your aunts, your uncles, your brothers, your sisters, your parents and finally your husband, your wife, your boyfriend or your girlfriend.
You get them into that backpack. And don’t worry. I’m not gonna ask you to light it on fire. Feel the weight of that bag. Make no mistake — your relationships are the heaviest components in your life. Do you feel the straps cutting into your shoulders?
All those negotiations and arguments, and secrets and compromises. You don’t need to carry all that weight. Why don’t you set that bag down? Some animals were meant to carry each other, to live symbiotically for a lifetime — star crossed lovers, monogamous swans. We are not those animals. The slower we move, the faster we die. We are not swans. We’re sharks.”
The slower we move, the faster we die is not just a euphemism, but a cold hard fact. Even more importantly you need to heal from the weight of that backpack. So once you’ve taken off the backpack and healed from it, that is when you have finally allowed yourself the chance to live your dreams and to be the person you were meant to be and not the person everyone wants you to be. Live for you, and you alone and then once you’re the best version of yourself, you can open yourself up once again and start a new backpack. This time though, keeping what really matters most to you and ready to take on anything and everything with a refreshed and renewed self-confidence and love for yourself you never thought possible.
So what does it feel like to be transgender? I think it’s a lot like freeing yourself from a career or job or life that you thought was making you happy but ultimately realizing it wasn’t. Once that realizaiton happens, then you have to find the courage to actually make that change…be that change for yourself and ultimately all those around you.
The one thing in both analogies that I think most people forget to save is themselves first. Afterall, how are you going to put the fire out if you don’t save yourself first? To free yourself of that aforesaid backpack and from the straps that have been cutting into you for so long and give yourself a chance to heal…to be happy. With the new year having just begun, I cannot think of a better time to start a new backpack, can you?
