I Have Something I Need To Tell You

TW suicide, rape, dysphoria

The first time I tried to kill myself, I was seven or eight years old. It’s hard to remember. I have always felt outside my own body. As a result, remembering anything from my childhood can be a chore. But I remember, clearly, grabbing the wheel of the car while my father was driving and trying to pull us off the road because I couldn’t stand to feel the way I did anymore and I wanted it to stop.

I needed to get out of this body.

For a while, I thought the easiest way to do that would be to eat until it felt a little less like the thing I hated, the thing I didn’t want to be.

And then I started working at the gay bar, and everything went topsy-turvy for me.

No, no. I’m rushing. I’m not telling this right. I have to start from the beginning. I have to make you understand.

It starts with a pair of men’s underwear I stole from a package my father had gotten.

I am twelve and I am wearing men’s underwear and a thin, cotton t-shirt. As I look down between my legs, the fabric seems empty and soft, so I ball up a sock and stick it in there. I sleep with them on for six months until my mother notices them in my laundry. There is some laughter, more bewildered than anything. My parents ask me why I’m wearing them and I throw about desperately for some answer and say they’re more comfortable, but they aren’t more comfortable, they aren’t cut for my body, this terrible fucking body I’m trapped in. I’m always trapped in. It doesn’t come up again and I never steal another pair of men’s underwear.

I am thirteen and I am watching Ghost in the Shell. Project 2501’s voice is soothing to me. All I can think at the end is that I’m ready to merge, to leave this body behind, to go be somewhere free of it. When I was a child, my speech, feelings, and thinking were all those of a child; now that I am a man, I have no more use for childish ways. It’s like a secret promise I can carry in my heart. My cousin gets me the VHS for my birthday and I watch it again and again and again. What we see now is like a dim image in a mirror; then we shall see face-to-face.

I am fourteen and my head is shaved. I love it. I feel queer and strange and frightening. Someone’s parent thinks I’m a boy and there’s a sudden rush of feeling inside me that I don’t have a single word to describe, only moments building into each other. My heart leaps, and then suddenly I am filled with a strange and bitter regret that tastes like adrenaline on my tongue, and then there’s anger inside me, anger at them for not seeing the cage I’m in, these awful tits I carry everywhere, this body, this body, this body.

I am fifteen and I am keeping my hair short. I love dresses and skirts and feminine tops and pretty bras, though. I can’t be a boy. None of that makes any sense. I’m too feminine. I’m too femme. How could I possibly be a boy? I feel like I was born in the wrong body, or born in between the right body and the wrong body. I feel overripe, like I missed the chance to grow my body into the right shape. I feel like I’m dying every day and I lash out at the people around me. I can’t stand to look at my reflection. I begin avoiding mirrors.

I am twenty-five and an alcoholic reeling from being raped at a party. When people touch me I can feel the vibrations off their fingertips like knives on my skin. I stop letting them. I tell people I’m celibate but it’s more than that. I bind down my breasts in sports bras. I hunch my shoulders more. I disappear into the masculine world of kitchens and bars and whiskey. I don’t want to be touched, I don’t want to be touched, I don’t want to be touched.

I am thirty and I want to die every day. I drink so much that I lose jobs. I sleep in filth whenever I’m not at work. I stop talking to people. I’ve forgotten what my face looks like. I am working at the gay bar, where beautiful gay men move around me so confidently in their bodies, wearing whatever they want, dresses or suits, makeup or stubble or both, always perfect, always smiling and laughing and happy. Their bodies aren’t cages, but celebrations. I make my first transgender friend, a beautiful girl who dances in our drag shows because it’s the only job she can get. The possibility roots itself somewhere down in the core of me where it will wait.

I am thirty-three and I am getting married to a man named David. I love him more than anything or anyone in the world. Being near him makes me feel peaceful. I think finally. I am surrounded by my friends, who make me feel safe and accepted. I will only realize later most of them are trans.

I am thirty-four and I am miserable. I don’t know what’s wrong. It’s like an itch in the center of my back. It’s like something rotten in my lungs. Everything hurts every day. I can’t focus on anything. I flit from project to project without any sense of direction beyond a march towards death. I do want to die. If I’d just been born a boy. If I’d only been born a boy. If I’d transitioned earlier. If I had a different body. If I were taller, if I were thinner, if I were more masculine. If I were only a boy. If I were just a boy.

When I sleep, I dream of a city, over and over, like cities I’ve been to and lived in but unlike any city in reality, its borders my worst memories. The distance between points is a fun house mirror, too close when I’m trying to take my time, too far when I’m trying to hurry. There are back roads outside it, a river with a great beast in it, a castle like a video game, a collection of restaurants I’ve worked at, people I can’t bear to face, a home I don’t belong in. The city is a horror. I’ve ridden the bus through its neighborhoods of cookie cutter houses with empty faces in the windows. The bus follows a circle, just like I do, going round and round, but never getting to the center. At one point, I put myself in the river in the hopes the beast will eat me. I feel it brush my legs with its great scales and thick mane.

But it doesn’t kill me.

I have something I need to tell you. I need to tell you that when they choose a woman to read my pieces here on Medium, even though she has a very lovely voice, my heart sinks. I need to tell you that I look in the mirror and see the feminine side of myself that I love, but I am still incomplete, I am still empty. This isn’t who I am. I will never feel free as long as I try to live this lie. I come out as non-binary, thinking maybe that will help, but the splinter only goes deeper into my chest.

I have to tell you that I cry. That I stare into the distance. That there is a pain inside me, an itching in my skin like none of it feels right. I pick at it sometimes, at the mole on my arm, at my cuticles. I chew the inside of my mouth until it bleeds. Anything to stop this awful itching. I dream of reshaping my body like clay, pulling hunks off of it, shaping a small bit here or taking a small bit there.

I have to tell you that I struggled with this because what if I lost David? What if I lost my husband who I love so much? A friend pointed out that as much as I love David, that wouldn’t be enough to make this hurting stop, it would never stop until I addressed it. And when I told David, I held my breath, and he took my hand, and told me it was fine, because he’s wonderful. I’m scared of what comes next, but he held my hand and told me it was going to be okay, and I knew I had to tell you, I had to let you know.

I am thirty-five and I am a boy.

And today, when I looked in the mirror, the image was clearer than it has ever been. Finally, the boy I am looked back at me. After so long and so much distance, we had finally come face to face.

Kiva Bay is a writer and artist in Oregon. And a boy. If you’d like to help him buy gender-affirming items, you can tip here: ko-fi.com/kivabay