On ‘Cracking the Egg’

It’s a clever and memorable metaphor. Once an egg cracks, it can’t uncrack. Whatever animal is inside the egg is born twice, in a way— once laid, once hatched. But when I’m in an online trans space and I see the question,

“What cracked your egg?”

I never really know how to answer. Lots of little things, maybe. Some bigger than others. It was something that had gradually weighed heavier and heavier on my mind for years. So what question are they really asking? What specific point is the egg crack metaphor referring to?

Is it when you admit that something is wrong with your gender, or when you admit to yourself that you’re trans? Is it defined by the period of ignorance or denial?

Some might argue that those are the same thing, in the vein of “Trans is literally anything other than cis” and in abstract, I agree. But when it comes to this question, there’s a difference. They are different points in time. And since identity isn’t something that can be switched at the drop of a hat, the time between those points can be days, weeks, months, or even years.

I could see an argument that cracking the egg could even be the first time you had a gender non-conforming thought that you couldn’t explain, or maybe the first time you went out presenting in a gender non-conforming way (even if under a flimsy guise like a joke or a dare) Probably not, though.

So what cracked my egg?

I honestly don’t know. There was a cycle in my life — irregular in its duration and intervals, but a cycle nonetheless — where I would be faced with the thought of “Oh god, what if…?” and I could find a way to dismiss it. I went back to my normal life, effectively forgetting the question entirely for a while. I could mentally kick the can down the road, and the nature of that action meant I didn’t even have to think about whether or not I could keep kicking forever, because I could just kick that can too.

And for a decade of my adult life, I kept kicking.

So how about the last cycle — the one that stuck?

Maybe it was the feeling of seeing my little pastel avatar in Animal Crossing try on a dress in the Able Sisters’ shop; how it would fill me with butterflies to think that an avatar fully representing me inside and out could be seen wearing something truly cute or beautiful. Maybe it was seeing Philosophy Tube’s coming out video a few days into my full-on “Oh-god-I-don’t-know-what-I-am” panic, where I saw myself so much in her words that I was effectively chained to that can I had been kicking, unable to free myself until the question had been answered.

Maybe it was when I recognized my own gradual slide into a slow suicide, when it got so bad I had to say to myself “I don’t know what needs to happen, but the way I am now is killing me.”

Maybe it was weeks later, after I spent my days barely eating and my nights barely sleeping, where I had lost 20 lbs despite not having any extra to lose, the first time I finally thought to myself “I am a trans woman.”

But there were so many contributing factors, both positive and negative. An internal carrot and stick.

On the negative: A good friend of mine died suddenly about month before my gender identity crisis. He wasn’t much older than me and we were never even able to find out why, only “natural causes.” Maybe it was dealing with that grief. Or rather, maybe it was the fact that I had grown so emotionally dead that I couldn’t deal with that grief. I watched my friends have the catharsis of weeping openly and I stood there like a false person — an emotional zombie, caught between feeling somewhere deep in my core yet simultaneously unable to feel, and wanting to feel all the while. Like feeling hungry, but only ever able to find pictures of food — recognizing a deep, integral need but unable to fulfill it.

On the positive: The sheer joy that came from simple things as I started to explore. Sometimes even trivial things. Things that I had denied myself for years — decades. The subtle admiration for certain types of women. Much stronger than wanting to merely wanting to spend time with them, or looking up to them, or admiring certain qualities about them, but to be like them. A role model for a mold that doesn’t fit. After going through the hell that is questioning, the absolute peace that it brought me to finally defeat the demon I had been fighting with for years. That moment of affirming to myself, even if only in thought during silent meditation, that I am a trans woman was scary but also just so right. It was like seeing light after a lifetime in darkness. Like tasting food after almost starving to death.

Some might justifiably say that it was that peaceful, life-changing moment when I first admitted it: that was my egg cracking. So what caused it? What ‘cracked it’?

And I’m back where I started. I’m left with a big fat ‘I don’t know’. It feels conceited to say ‘myself’ even after I mentally spent weeks desperately bailing water from a sinking ship. Perhaps it was something one of the earliest cycles, now long forgotten, that first brought about the at-the-time-terrifying idea of my own transness.

So even though the metaphor is wonderful, I think I need to break it down. My egg cracked when I realized I could no longer live as a cisgender man. My egg hatched when I reached the stage of internal affirmation. I think it’s fair to summarize that my egg wasn’t something fragile — it was calcified to stone from decades of fear and repression. Thus, no single thing could break it. It took an assault from many things working in tandem.

But one thing is clear: life never leaving the egg is no life at all.

~Nora