I didn’t fucking know

onibox
onibox
Jul 28, 2017 · 4 min read

It took me 30 years to figure out that I was transgender, even though I experienced it every day. I feel a sense of shameful lonesomeness when I think about it, to think that no one noticed. Me included.

Halloween as a smexy Raphael

There’s a trans narrative. It’s different for everyone but there are overlaps in general. Thinking back on my childhood, it’s easy to connect the “obvious” signs — refusal to wear skirts, wanting to cut my hair real short, the hot shame when given a doll, the inwards shoulders to hide my breasts, the confusion of where I could belong. But I didn’t think about these things as signs. They were just part of existence. I thought everyone went through this shit, in one form or another. The persistent anxiety.

At some point I realized that I was having nightmares everyday. It was always the same dream: running from something, alone. Weak. I was always so weak. But I felt that I needed to survive. Something was about to catch me and do something terrible to me. Something was a lot of things, alien invasions, giant fires, monsters, ghosts, assassins, unknowns — all horrors without a face. This was daily for about twenty-five years. Man do I wish I had therapy as a child.

Always wore pants in kindergarten (Japan)

As I got older I started to feel there was something terribly wrong with me physically. It was confusing because there was no pain, or any sort of obvious problem. I “looked” good. The best way I can explain how I felt was that I felt that I looked and sounded like Takashi from the film Akira. Takashi was a young boy who looked like an old man because of some government experiments. He “aged” quickly, never going through puberty. He was sized like a boy, and was a boy, but with wrinkled blue-grey skin and white hair. His voice was of a young boy, high pitched and innocent. His clothes were also of a young boy’s; colorful and fun, giving his look a sense of squeamish horror.

Takashi from the film Akira

That was the image I had of myself. I felt I looked like a kid, but was growing older, so quickly, but not looking more like an adult. Growing wrinkles and stretch marks, other signs of aging, while looking and sounding like a young child. At first I thought it was just some commonly held feelings of growing old. The fear of aging. I kept hearing “everyone feels young inside” and whatnot. But my feelings felt too extreme. Objectively, I didn’t look like a child. I didn’t think like a child. I didn’t act like a child. But my existence felt so young, not even young as in a teenager. When I spoke, my voice felt so wrong. It was so weak. So soft. I didn’t want to talk. I didn’t want to hear myself. I didn’t want to look at myself. I couldn’t explain it. I haven’t thought to myself “I am a male and I feel terrible because I look like a female.” I just didn’t know. I just looked wrong.

Around age thirty I came across a video of a transgender guy on YouTube. God bless YouTube. The video was a compilation of videos and photos over a two year gender transition. The video started with a person who looked female, “her” hair was long but slightly unkempt, “she” “herself” was pretty, talking into the camera about not feeling right. Her eyes were like of a fish who has stopped struggling on a ship deck, staring into the sky and the gills pulsating slowly… the sounds disappearing…instantly I felt a connection. There was something about the pupils, the dimmest of fires, not dead, but searching for oxygen… the body sluggish and tense at the same time, small neurotic flicks here and there, but still dull. But still alive. Wanting to be alive. “She” then cut “her” hair short, the length gone, making “her” head look so fresh, clean. “She” dressed in a young American man’s attire, boxy jeans and a cheap t-shirt. A snapback. I’ve always dreaded looking like a woman trying to look like a man, but “she” didn’t look like a woman, but a young boy. My expectations were disrupted… I was sucked into the video… “her” voice started to drop, his body grew thicker, and the shadow of hair appeared on his face. He was suddenly a man to my lizard brain. I suddenly woke up on this Earth, and I was here. I was him. I saw myself. I saw myself in another human being. A gut feeling I never felt before. That was when I found out — I was a transgender man.

onibox

Written by

onibox

Bland life in Tokyo.

Welcome to a place where words matter. On Medium, smart voices and original ideas take center stage - with no ads in sight. Watch
Follow all the topics you care about, and we’ll deliver the best stories for you to your homepage and inbox. Explore
Get unlimited access to the best stories on Medium — and support writers while you’re at it. Just $5/month. Upgrade