I grew up in and around the city I still love in, and so my personal history happened in places that are still scattered around me. I see them every day. I sat working in a coffee shop where I went to college, barely a couple miles from home, just last week. My high school was a few more blocks away, and I visited them too while dealing with an errand.
The document I was there to drop off is not something I could’ve imagined I would be handing them when I was a student there: a court order effecting the name change I’d requested. It was a single-sex Catholic high school, and so was an obvious point in my life where I didn’t fit the expectations placed on me, but it wasn’t the first.
Things that you realize through the course of your life may end up being shared with people you know, but probably not all of them at once. I’m pretty sure the first person I came out to was my ex-wife. We were college students, dating, when I found the words to describe myself. Until then I had known only what I wasn’t: puberty was a hard time of my life. I used terms like “male lesbian” and felt secret shame about what I felt was the wrong body. But with the resources available to me as a college student, the term transgender became familiar. When I explained, she offered her support, but told me the relationship would be over if I transitioned.
I don’t remember shedding tears about it. Actually, I don’t remember crying at all, even when I read about what I would have to do to make myself whole. The costs — economic, physical and social — seemed really out of reach. “So I’ll do nothing,” I resolved, and staved off the emotions I thus felt I wasn’t allowed to have.
But I didn’t do nothing. In moments where I had become close and felt safe, I kept coming out. Just one or two people at a time, but I shared my truth.
There was a lingering fear of being cast out, of being treated like a piece of garbage. At best, I expected eye rolls and disbelief. But it didn’t feel like the stakes were particularly high. I didn’t feel very successful, and I was miserable. What was there to lose?
After many years of floundering about, the feeling of defeat reached a crescendo. I had spent nearly 20 years in a sea of depression. At last I seized upon some motivation to act, and proceeded to try to set my life again on an even keel. Newly single, with a new job, I went about trying to fix myself. “I can get past this,” I thought. I spent thousands of miles alone on my bicycle, losing a lot of weight in the process. I met someone new before long, and again started dating.
At the start I shared only part of the picture with her before just spilling the beans entirely. This time, the response to coming out was that we would cross the bridge when we got to it. Certainly not so discouraging as the first time around. We kept dating. She bought a house, and we moved in together. We got married. It felt as though I’d finally gotten my life in order. If you looked carefully you’d notice I was still fraying at the edges, though I was in denial about it.
I can’t tell you that my coming out story was triggered when a friend came out to me after lunch one day. The story was over twenty years deep by then. But listening to a story which I knew with a scarily intimate level of familiarity made it finally apparent that the issues would not “go away” with age. The door had been in front of me for a while. Nothing could change until I was willing to walk through it.
Deciding then what lay ahead of me, I felt it better to be able to explain what was happening than simply be met with confusion. It meant confronting a very deep question, though: “what is gender?” One of the more critical realizations was that I didn’t need to answer that question. I only needed to know what my own gender is.
I found a doctor, and started hormone replacement therapy with no reluctance whatsoever. The estrogen patches I shortly found myself applying brought something else, though: relief. This was a concrete step to simply being myself. The depression began to lift.
No matter, I was still scared, and so took only small steps initially in terms of telling people. Friends, as I saw them. Family, one at a time. After telling three of my siblings, I heard I’d been outed to the last by my ex-wife previously. In hindsight, it might have been a favor.
I worried how my father would react. I always felt a strain in our relationship, one I suspected was caused by the fact that I was never the son he wanted. When finally I did come out to him, it was in the most ham-handed way possible. My mother and sisters told him in the face of my failure to do so. It wasn’t really a case of being outed: he was expected imminently at my house for the meal I was cooking. And in spite of it, we remain a family.
The therapist I had started seeing shortly after I realized the need to transition got to watch as my fear faded slowly before turning to ease, then outright confidence. She observed, remarked on and finally got me to own my successes. When it came time to inquire as to WPATH letters, I noticed no pause on her part as to whether it would be a problem. The mere fact that I even have the opportunity to worry about such letters of referral is a victory unto itself.
At the start, transgender would not have been an identifier I’d have applied to myself. I felt unattractive, like even just blending in and quietly living my life would be a big accomplishment. I mused that perhaps someday I’d do an autobiography and so picked out a title: “Lipstick on a Pig.” While the ensuing months did much to convince me that I was down on my appearance pretty hard, it became apparent that even if you otherwise might think I’d been assumed female at birth, once I opened my mouth you’d give me the transgender label even if I hadn’t applied it first. In so realizing, I found that it didn’t particularly interfere with my ability to live a life where I was simply and fully myself. Even with the shortcomings I felt, the person I’d become was a successful woman entrepreneur, and I reveled in that realization.
And so today, you might just assume I am out. But life is a journey that offers you as many chances to learn about yourself as it does the rest of the world. My conception of myself evolves as I learn, and so I will reinforce it here from my knowledge today.
I am transgender. Rather than hiding it, today I celebrate it as one part of my true self.
I am queer, still married to a woman I love as we figure out what it means to our relationship.
And I am not driven by conventional sexual attraction, something I am unable to ascribe a simple term to as I continue to learn about this facet of my life.
But the most important thing I am, the thing that encompasses all of these, is myself. It has brought me such overwhelming joy. I now cling to the hope that everyone can be afforded the same opportunity while learning ways to work toward that goal.
For while it is a gift, it should not be. It should be the default.
