When I Fall Apart
True Tales of an Overly Sensitive Trans Woman
It’s around one o’clock a.m and I’m curled into a fetal position on the bed. I’ve been crying for half an hour. I’m fiercely gripping my body pillow. It’s a constant. It’s something I can depend on to be there when I need it.
My eyes are sore, scratchy, and red. My tears are harsh and salty. I can taste them. They cut lines down my face and land on my lips. I feebly swipe at them with a balled up tissue.
I look at my spouse. She is a witness to many of these episodes. Her eyes are also red. She sits up, legs crossed, on the mattress beside me. I tell her that I will find a way to drive her out. She assures me that will never happen. I don’t know if I believe her. She pats my shoulder and we both cry some more.
We married under the premise that I was questioning my gender identity. I had come out on my birthday as gender fluid. It was a term I’d learned recently. I thought it fit.
Trans feminine gender queer fit too. Not every transgender person goes through these steps. Not every non-binary, gender queer, or gender fluid person is on their way to being transgender. I didn’t know that at the time. I thought something was wrong with me.
Just after my thirty third birthday I came to grips with being transgender. I sat my spouse down. I came out again.
When a married transgender woman comes out to her spouse, it often ends one of two ways. Either they lose their spouse completely, or they irrevocably change the nature of their relationship. They become “like sisters.” Jenny Boylan talks about this in her book “She’s Not There: A life in Two Genders.” I think I found someone that fell so deeply in love with me that it wouldn’t matter.
There are days when I can believe I haven’t ruined her life. Then there are days where I end up a mushy ball of tears and snot and self doubt.
I was diagnosed with chronic depression, generalized anxiety, and binge eating disorder shortly after I came out as transgender. I’d been suffering for years in silence. I was happier not knowing. The prospect of chronic illness frightened me.
I thought I had deceived my spouse. I was selling an image of myself to her while we were dating. I was a whole, well adjusted person. I was a man. I was straight. I was tough and could protect her I never needed protecting.
I was a liar.
Reality: I was overly sensitive. I took the harsh words and actions of others to heart. I cried for no reason. I harbored constant doubt and fear of failure. I was queer and hiding it. I was never the man I was pretending to be. I wasn’t a man at all. I was a woman.
Reality was that I needed a hero. I needed protection. I needed support. I needed kindness and compassion.
I was soft. I covered it up with a sarcastic, bitter shell of self deprecation.
I fell into a cycle. I would hold in all my emotions for a week, sometimes too. I would stamp them down until the couldn’t fit anymore. After that I would explode. I would break into fits. I would beat myself into a pulp. I would bring myself to the brink of suicide.
It’s been more than a year. I’m still alive. I have continued treatment for my depression and anxiety. I am working through my transition. The darkness that almost broke me early on is still present. I have learned to handle it. I’m still scared a lot.
Every so often, though, I still fall apart.
