Drive vs. Talent: Learning to Care for My Transgender Self
Before I accepted my transgender, my life’s work was killing myself.
A recent conversation about the most interesting people I met evolved into an indictment of the entertainment industry. Certainly “interesting” should imply “talented.” Certainly we would want to meet artists who push the limits of their art to new heights, who conquer new frontiers with new techniques, who define a new genre in the community.
But what if I met Madonna? She is popular, no doubt. I like Madonna. But is she talented? What Madonna possesses is an unflagging drive, even to this day. Her ability to reinvent her image kept her relevant for decades as other icons of the 1980s became victims of “Where Are They Now?” documentaries.
Where drive abounds, lack of talent may be mitigated. But where drive lacks, talent languishes. In life as well as the transgender journey, drive can spur us to improve ourselves, to succeed when others doubt us. But drive can also spur us to harm ourselves, to chase approval from people who will never grant it.
Talent is a double-edged blade. In life, we may be talented at skills that do not interest us. Perhaps our parents encourage us to live the life they wish they had, leaving us lifeless and unrewarded. In the transgender community, talent can mean being capable of burying our true selves so deep that even we cannot find it. The cost for some of us is ending our lives.
Living authentically in health demands balancing drive with self-care. We must want to succeed, but not at the cost of destroying ourselves.
Selina’s many dance partners
In graduate school, I immersed myself in my feminine side. The name I used at the time was Selina, and I donned a short velvet skirt, applied blood-red lipstick and liquid eyeliner, and danced until dawn at the only gay bar in town — Boneshakers.
Inexplicably, fraternity boys found Boneshakers fascinating and would come to dance, their arms flailing out of time to the music. I found them absurd; they found me irresistible.
At the time, I was a feral cat. I scratched frat boys with my long pointed nails. I bit them on the neck as they leaned in to talk to me. I hissed and spit at them, then beckoned them to return with my soft, blue-black curls and innocent eyes.
They lined up to dance with me.
At the time, there was no doubt I passed as a woman. Only a fool could see the statuesque, gothic bitch-princess who was Selina as anything but. Today, some transgender women would revile me behind my back; perhaps I would not be fortunate enough to be spared their ire behind my back. I basked in my “pretty privilege,” as it is named pejoratively. I possessed talent, and plenty of it.
My memories from that time in life are unfocused. My mental health was poor — I dissociated frequently and awoke to angry phone messages about my lack of decorum. If I remembered the event, I apologized. If I did not, I deleted the message and thought about something more pleasant, such as where to find my next drink.
Several psychiatrists commented on how improbable completing a Ph.D. in chemistry appears given my mental health. I was told, “People with your issues don’t do what you did.” “People with your symptoms aren’t this highly functioning.” “People like you don’t get off medications.”
People like me.
What appeared improbable is my level of drive.
The drive to perform
In late 2021, I took a job with a startup e-sports tournament company. My task was to rein in development of their flagship product, which had found a good market fit, but had been built in a maelstrom of management politics and a revolving door of development staff. It was a difficult problem — precisely what I enjoy.
I immersed myself in my problem-solving side. No task was too small for me to take on if it meant development staff could focus on improving the product. I started 2022 working 60 hour weeks. As the company sold new customers, my workload increased until 80 hours per week was typical.
To be candid, I felt reward. My strengths are taking on responsibility, learning new skills, developing strategies, and checking off tasks as I solve difficult problems. Despite the strain on my mental health (as well as relationships with family and friends), I would not stop. I pushed myself beyond my limits on a regular basis because I wanted to.
The results of my drive to perform were frequent migraine headaches and weekends spent in bed staring at a wall or sleeping to forget. Dissociative symptoms recurred — I needed to put the pain elsewhere to allow me to get back to work Monday morning after a weekend of weakness.
A close friend of mine told me “[your] problem is that you can do anything.” Yes, I possess talent in the technology field, an aptitude that surprises me. But my real problem is failure to listen to myself and care for myself.
The good and bad sides of drive and talent
As a transgender woman, my greatest talent is being able to hide myself as well as hide from myself. We in the transgender community learn the skill at an early age, if only for survival. Some of us are better at it than others. I experienced the level of success I have — despite my clear mental health trouble — because I am capable of rejecting pain: physical, psychological, and spiritual.
Correction. I was capable of rejecting pain.
My experience at the startup company — as well as the subsequent breakdown — forced me to look at myself more closely. To be clear, that job was a terrible experience, and one that led me to find myself as Amethysta. For that alone, I would not trade it to save my life.
Finding myself as Amethysta taught me a new skill — the ability to feel my own pain. Now I know when I am pushing too hard. Now I know when the path I take is a bad choice. It is both blessing and curse.
I wrote previously that accepting ourselves as transgender means being willing to blow up our lives. In that article, I note I am “too dumb to realize [my] own limitations.” In some cases, pushing through adversity is our only option. When the result will be a better life — for ourselves and for those around us — we must allow pain to occur. We must feel the pain, accept it, understand it, and learn from it. Drive can be valuable in times when talent escapes us.
I also wrote previously that I used pain as self-care, that my psychology is constructed in a way that caused me to equate shame with reward. The job above underscores that point. In the transgender community, we must be careful to find self-care that is truly caring. We must not accept that society’s comfort overrules our discomfort.
My journey to Amethysta allowed to me discover that I put myself in cages. I built the cages; I locked them. So far, I have escaped the cage I erected around my gender. In time, perhaps I can learn to renounce and destroy my other cages.
Drive be damned! Talent be damned! You are not a tool to provide comfort for others. Find your identity and learn that loving yourself is the first step in loving society.
