Trans Day of Self Possession

[a watercolor painting of eight mirrors floating over a bright sunset. In the mirrors you can see snippets of the artist's body. There's a close up of their shoulder framed in a gilded mirror. Their eye looking out at the audience in a small round mirror. A close up of a tattoo of a wing. Their torso, nude as they lean back on their hands. Their jaw, dotted with small hairs. Their back. Their hand resting over their crotch, hiding it from view. and their knees, as they float in green water.]

Making the decision, after fourteen years of understanding that I am trans, to start HRT has raised a lot of questions from various people I’ve told.

They can pretty much boil down to:

Who are you doing this for?

And

What if you don’t get the results you want?

I’m doing this for me.

And ultimately, I’m doing this to be different from how I am now.

We don’t know that we’ll get what we want when we go through puberty the first time.

I remember being miserable at the discovery that my voice would not break and drop.

I remember being self conscious that I had small tits and a hairy belly (both things that are now boons to me).

I am choosing my transformation this time. I am choosing the uncertainty.

Because the reality is, nothing is certain anyway. I am aging. Time is passing and my flesh will sag and spot and crease. My hair will grey, or thin, or go wiry, or something else. My joints will continue their long complaints.

That is with plain old aging.

My body will change if I choose to do nothing. It will change in ways I cannot predict or plan for and I will have to make peace with that.

So why would it be any different to change on purpose and make peace with the unpredictable ways this manifests?

I feel like so much of the concern when a trans person decides they want to do some kind of medical transition is–will you regret it?

For some folks, I think this concern is genuine, the idea that I’m taking a leap off a cliff without considering how I’ll manage the ride down. Which, yes, is a bit patronizing, but not unloving in its intentions when it comes from people who know me.

For others–I think their fears are shining through.

When strangers—usually medical professionals–find out I’m on T now a strange thing happens–I get all their stories about other trans people.

Here is a common narrative:

“Oh they look so good now, but ugh, they were so hot/beautiful before! I could have dated them.”

This narrative highlights one of the biggest reasons trans people’s bodies are such intersections of hatred, fascination, attraction, and repulsion.

When we make the choice to transition–be it medically or socially we are broadcasting the message “I am mine. My body is for my consumption before anyone else’s. You get no say in how I wear this flesh.”

That makes people uncomfortable.

It goes against one of the foundational ideas in our society–that our bodies do not fully belong to us. They belong to our families, our lovers, our friends, our employers, the strangers on the street who witness us.

How they belong to others varies depending on our identities, but I do not believe anyone in this world is completely free of the sensation that their body is public property.

So when a trans person comes out, changes how we present to the world, we defy this convention. We reject people’s entitlement to our flesh. That sparks outrage, fear, confusion.

How dare you say I can’t know what happens to your body?

How dare you change yourself when I find you beautiful as you are?

How dare you say your body is yours (could I? Is my body mine?)

I dare I dare I dare

Because I’ve lived too long trying desperately to win people’s care, love, goodwill, and respect by having a body I’m told is “good.”

Anyone whose respect of your humanity is conditional is just waiting for the first chance to disrespect you.

If someone loves you for your meat suit, they’re out the door the second illness, age, or any other hundred thousand things changes you.

I’ve been asked a lot if I’m either doing this to attract partners who I think would like men better or am worried about what this will mean for my love life.

I’ve laughed at the first question, for I am no man and have no intention of ever being one.

I am both man and woman and neither at all. I’m a sissy and I’m a butch. I’m a hag in training and a witch of the wilds.

I’m still a they. Still nonbinary. Still out here hoping to confuse the shit out of folks with a goatee and titties on display in a plunging neckline.

I’m not trying to jump from one end of a broken dichotomy to the other. That’s not my truth.

I’m trying to find a way to become more myself outside of it.

And yes, on some days it does gall me that I will never be man enough for some people in the ways I might wish to be. But that is not why I have done this.

The second question I’ve paused at, because I do fear this.

What if no one will love me, when I become more myself?

But the answer lies in the fear, and starting T has shown me a truth.

There are people who I will desperately want love, care, and connection with, want approval from—and there will be nothing on earth or in all the heavens I can do to be enough with them.

If someone does not have it in them to love me as I am, to show up in a connection willing to be vulnerable, transparent, and engaged with me—that has shit all to do with me.

I cannot guarantee other people will love me, that they will stick around and show up.

But I can love myself.

I can stop holding my body in some stasis, afraid to take any action that soils my desirability for potential others, or I can do what feels good for me.

Testosterone feels good for me.

I feel like I belong to myself, for once in my life.

I am starting to know the person in the mirror. Not because they look different in any particular way, but because they are making choices that are for us, instead of for others.

I’m done with holding out for other people to affirm me. To want me. To love me. To hold me gently.

I can hold myself. I can love myself. I can want myself.

Do not mistake this as a withdrawing from vulnerability, or a giving up on connection with others.

Instead, this is me rearranging my priorities.

I want to take pleasure in my body.

I have existed so long solely in the confines of my mind.

My body has been a place other people enjoyed. To the point where I have endured pain, disrespect, and even violation because hey–I guess that’s what physical love means. Someone may as well take pleasure in the sight and sensation of this flesh I wield because it does not move me.

I’m bored of being disconnected from myself. Of feeling as if my body is a puppet I steer around instead of my home and my self.

I want to discover what if feels like to revel in my skin.

I want to catch my reflection in shop windows and appreciate it not just as a well constructed artifice on a good day, but as me.

I want sex to stop feeling like a performance for my lovers and become an experience I collaborate in, that I get caught up and lost in together.

I want to care about what happens to me. I want to recognize when I’m not being loved well, when my needs and personhood aren’t being respected.

Reclaiming my body for myself is the way to start with that.

It’s true, I don’t know what will happen to my body.

If my voice will finally sound like mine.

If I’ll get facial hair in the ways I want.

If my junk will turn out the way I’d like (mind your business).

I’m already dealing with the creaking in my vocal cords, a resurgence of chest acne, and sprouting cheek fluff that’ll let me cosplay wolverine with ease in about six months if I’m guessing right.

But I have never found myself so worthy of defending, of protecting, of loving as I do right now.

This alchemy is not effortless or elegant.

But it is exquisite.