I was spent. I expended a lifetime of energy in ensuring others’ comfort. It amazes me how often we check another’s pulse, double checking that their blood pressure does not spike. I didn’t bother to check my own pulse. We don’t want others to even flinch, so we store away our truths, morphed into secrets. Namely, secrets that are us. I stored myself away like a secret.
We lie ourselves into sharing a truth that isn’t actually one. I cannot be transgender. We condition ourselves to tell a truth we’ve learned others want to believe. It’ll be easier to be a woman anyway. So, I got pretty good at lying. This went on for two decades, excluding the years when I was merely toddling around, old enough to talk and insist that I use the boy’s bathroom. I didn’t know the world around me yet. I find that we tell lies not only in the presence of one’s comfort, but also because we don’t know ourselves enough. It’s difficult to know oneself when you’re different. People don’t like what is different from them. So, you just conform. I want them to like me.
In my early twenties, I had enough. I came face to face with my differences. They weren’t going anywhere. You are not a woman. I was tired. I wasn’t even sure I had the energy to do the unpacking that was about to come next. First, I had to remove the truth I crafted for others. I wish that process was as easy as writing the sentence before this one. It took years to move past denial, past answering others disingenuously, and past suppressing the poking dysphoria. After I got past all that, it took some more years to replace my fictional truth with my factual truth. You are transgender.
Living my life as I always should have happened because of something simple, really. New, tender life. My child’s newborn black eyes, googling at me.
Those marveling eyes elicited a sense of urgency in me. This time around, I checked my own pulse. A series of anxiety bouts emerged for months to follow. I let the tears wet my side of the bed, long after my partner fell asleep next to me. How can I be responsible and loving toward my child just ripe of one-month earthside if I can’t find a way to be at home with myself? So, onwards with my third chapter, following denial and uncovering truths. I embarked on a quest for language. Language that is withheld from people like me. Language that continues to be withheld from LGBTQ+ people, especially LGBTQ+ children. See public schools and administrators across the country condemning teachers for creating safe spaces for LGBTQ+ students, the continued battle of controlling the bodies of transgender people, and the banning of books that share inclusive literature. That’s just a minuscule scratch of the surface, introducing current events of resistance toward the LGBTQ+ community.
Unlike most LGBTQ+ children and because I am an adult, independent from all others, I am able to seek out such banned books without consequence. Banned books helped me find the language to uncover my secret; to share my truth. ‘Genderqueer’, a memoir written by Maia Kobabe gave me the language that allowed me two things.
(1) Language that can ensure the comfort of someone else I love,
(2) while also allowing me to live as me.
Though I have struggled with being your daughter,
I am so, so glad that I am your child.
No other combination of chosen words felt so real as that sentiment did. After reading it over numerous times, my chest shuddered in attempt to steady a wave of emotions. I’ve found it. I scrawled those words onto a scrap piece of paper. This is what I need to tell my mother. You see, my mother’s pulse, I check most often. I didn’t want to disturb what is familiar to her. I didn’t want to tell her that I am not what she thought I was since I was born. A child is a parent’s most treasured gift. I know this to be true. Even when I knew she would continue to learn how to love me through all my differences, I didn’t want to witness her confusion or concern for me once again. She gave me everything and more. And this is what I repay her with?
But what I didn’t want more was to continue being a secret. In doing that, I was not being me, around her. We both didn’t deserve that. We both needed to rise above, with the truth.
Finding language like Kobabe helped us with that.
We, the LGBTQ+ community, need this language to survive.
We don’t deserve to remain as secrets.
Help us with that.
Have at it.
-c.s.
I'm sorry you struggled to be my sister, and I'm glad you're my sibling!