When Everything is Better
image by mercedesmehling.com
It was June 2019. I had just come out, finally, as transgender to my parents on a video call through skype because we were living almost 900 miles away from each other. My mom’s reaction was to stand up, point her finger at the webcam, and angrily assert that “transgender is a political word” before asking my dad to end the call.
I’d like to tell you that our relationship improved and how that contributed to the “everything is better” mentioned in the title of this piece... but unfortunately, that’s not what happened.
I’d like to tell you that she took the time to listen to me. To hear about my life, my experiences, and try to put herself in my shoes and understand the way I see things and move through the world.
Instead, she chose to listen to other people. To anyone who would stress caution and underscore the dangers of transitioning (yes, there are risks--as there are risks with pretty much any type of health related care). To people who believe transition is not only morally wrong but a kind of sickness of the interior life... whether that be a psychological illness or merely a personal failure to resist evil/temptation. To so many cis-gender (that means not transgender) heterosexual and religious people. She preferred to listen to people that were and are more interested in maintaining an idea that everyone can fit their lives into one divinely ordered box than a willingness to see, appreciate, and love the diversity that exists in the human experience, and respect the divine hand that guided that diversity.
My mom preferred to listen to those who believed that transgender people don’t know what they’re talking about instead of listening to me, the transgender person in front of her. When I did actually try to speak, I could never proceed for more than a few words before she would want to correct me with references to anti-trans rhetoric. When I did share personal things with her, she would take them in and then weaponize them, using them against me later or asking me inappropriate follow up questions.
The moment she told me that transition was self-harm and gender-affirming surgery was mutilation was the moment I realized she had completely lost touch with me. She had no idea who I was (and how could she? She never let me speak). She had no idea who trans people are, for that matter. Those two assertions come from the mouths of those who have so limited their minds and imaginations that all they know is that, as cis-gender people, it would be self-harm and mutilation if they undertook the medical side of transition. They can’t imagine a better life for someone else.
Well, here I am, ten months and one week into my medical transition journey, and I’m almost at a loss for the words to describe how incredible and affirming it has been, and how untrue my mom’s words were and are.
I have spent a lot of time--too much--researching the same things my mom is absorbed in now (absorbed is truly the right word, as she spends most of her free time specifically seeking out anti-transgender materials and attempting to distribute them to other members of my extended family whether via pamphlet or through constantly bringing the conversation back up or arranging in-person meetings). I wanted to know all of this information so that I could be prepared to defend myself and to prove her wrong.
But I don’t have to prove anything.
In a world with so many different levels of transphobia, homophobia, and systemic oppression of anyone different, it’s a wonder that I even was capable of coming to my own, internal self-knowledge. There is no reason for me to now turn around and spend all of my time defending my right to exist.
I could spend all of my time caught up in a moral argument… but I have a moral life and a conscience that both ring true for my life and my decisions. I could spend my time caught up in a scientific argument… but science exists to function as a method of study, not to stop us from exploring and evolving but rather to accompany us. I could spend all of my time arguing about the medical side, about taking hormones and seeking surgery… or I could trust that I will know what is right for my own health, and act accordingly.
And it was when I started doing those things, instead of getting caught up in arguments, that everything started to get better. It got better when I realized that hormone therapy actually made me feel at home in my body for the first time in my 28 years of life. It got better when those in my social group began to see and expect my natural male behavior instead of a feminine performance. It got better when I started to see a future for myself. When I could finally imagine what it would be like to settle down and have a family of my own, now that I’m finally myself.
That’s how everything is better. Not just an external change, not just a hormonal change, but feeling normal. Feeling normal for the first time ever. Feeling like the typical, everyday life milestones that everyone else experiences are finally something that you can and want to experience, too.