The endless questions, which you alluded to elsewhere; the energy it takes to constantly appease the curious. I need a question for the human race at large…something like, “Hi, is there anything you would like me to know about you before I get turned loose in your personal china shop?”
OMG, you nailed it.
I think one of the reasons I went so deeply into the woodwork for so long was fatigue, plain and simple. As you might gather, during transition one is consumed with one’s transness and the world’s interest in that transness. I wasn’t exaggerating about going about feeling naked all the time. The attention is intense, overwhelming, and you get really, really sick of it.
‘No one does this for fun.’
I am amused, in a horrified kind of way, by those who imagine that being trans is a choice, a kind of ‘lifestyle’. Nothing could be further from the truth. For most of us, transition is a desperate, agonising, last-ditch effort to get away from being trans, to fix it once and for all and move on to a place where trans is not part of our lifestyle. Trans is how we’re born and how society treats us, not what we choose.
“Hi, is there anything you would like me to know about you before I get turned loose in your personal china shop?”
After a few decades of anonymity I am finally recovered enough that I can talk about it. But it’s still exhausting. I am pressed to continue by the need for a mitigating voice amongst the hullaballoo. As someone whose life experience traverses much of our known history and most of the issues, I am in a position to say something. I feel obligated to say something.
When we were invisible I could forget about it and quietly live my cis-ish no-longer-trans life. Now that we’re subject to broad attention and scrutiny, I must speak up. Exhausting though it is, if we do not explain ourselves others will explain us, and that never goes well.
Some of this is so adorably funny! “What the hell do I do with my hands?”
I am actually adorably funny. :-) I wish this came out more in my work. My life is not all so serious and down-beat. I need to lighten-up.
❤ Allison
