Music + Me

For someone who loves music, I’ve never been able to play very well. I’ve tried to learn a few different string instruments a few different times, and every time I end up losing interest or giving up for some other reason (no excuse, I suck.) I like to tell people that I’ll listen to anything, and that’s actually true — I’m happy with just about anything you put on the radio, although I do get picky about country. Over the past year though, my relationship to music has changed in a profound way.

Life used to be fairly muted in terms of my emotional bond to things and people, but in the past year I have found a deeper connection to everything, including (and in a more specific way) music. This may seem like a mundane topic to write at length about, but the reason that it’s so noteworthy is that it coincides with my deeper understanding of myself and how to be an expressive person.

To understand why this is so important for trans people, you have to understand how many of us approach emotion. Testosterone does an awesome job at turning down the intensity of emotion. Having been predisposed to this way of life, it was frustrating to know that there was a world of feeling that I was missing out on. I knew that world was there, but it was just out of reach. In addition to what felt like a physical disability to express emotions openly, I felt contained by social stigmas that look down on men for wanting to be sensitive and to celebrate that. Being male never fit for me, it never added up.

It was a year ago in June that I was driving to work in the morning when Enya’s “Only Time” came on the radio (lame, I know…but keep reading). I was listening to a song about growing older and the uncertainty of what the future holds at a time that for me was riddled with uncertainty.

Uncertainty can be both exciting and unnerving, but if the uncertainty is coupled with something else like instability, then it tends to weight heavier on the “unnerving” part of the scale, rather than on the “exciting” side. I had no idea if my family would look the same in just a few short weeks or months, and so there, in my car, alone and for the first time that I can ever remember, I cried.

Yeah, that’s right. I cried to Enya, and I feel no shame for it (ok, maybe a little shame. It is Enya.)

Now, this wouldn’t be interesting at all if I was writing about something that happened a week ago. Crying to music is one of those charming side effects of estrogen, so it’d come as no surprise that I would have had this kind of reaction, right?

Well, I was still months away from being prescribed estrogen. That song in that moment was when that I learned how to appreciate and interpret my own emotions. It was liberating, and I loved it. It was never something I had to do as a guy, but it was something I needed to do in order to become a whole person. It was the piece of myself that had been missing, and I had finally found a way to fill it in.

I consider this to be a formative moment in my transition and my development as an adult. I would start to revisit older music that I had once listened to and loved at different parts of my life; music that defined a specific time. Bad Religion for dealing with bad breakups, The Smashing Pumpkins for mowing the lawn, Heart for moments of frustration. All of this music had meant something different to me depending on what was happening at the time that I was listening to it primarily, but the emotional value had been degraded.

Now each song meant something new and special. Before the songs had been entertaining, but not particularly moving to me. There were times when I knew I should have been crying, there were some topics that were meant to evoke an emotion. I was able to identify the emotions, but they were vague. It had been lost on me most of my life, but I wanted to feel what the songs wanted me to feel. Now I could finally understand the messages I had been missing for all these years.

It’s hard to catch me listening to the Hamilton soundtrack these days and not crying. Some people probably think it’s cheesy to cry to music, and certainly there are people who would scoff at me for appreciating music in this new way. It’s something that makes me happy, and I’m certainly happier now than I had ever been before.