Walking on Eggshells: How I came to terms with being transgender.
One day, during my Freshman or Sophomore year of high school, the ‘shell’ of my identity that I’d built up around myself cracked. I was in the middle of a sci-fi book in the school library: at the end of the chapter, a main character was accidentally put into a woman’s body and forced to flee their pursuers. I don’t remember the book or the reason I picked it up, but I do remember thinking, “I wish that could happen to me.”
I wouldn’t act on that thought for a while, but I still remember finding that book. I figure it was the closest thing to the beginning of working out my feelings towards the slow realization that I was Transgender. There’s a school of thought that compares it to an egg cracking: a gradual process that can’t be undone, marked by large (or small) moments, each one bringing you closer to admitting the truth to yourself. And reading that book, the end of that chapter, was one of the first cracks in my egg.
I’m going to be straight-up with you: this isn’t a story about terrible personal hardship. It’s not a story about a struggle to survive while seeking my own happiness. I’m fairly ordinary and doing well enough that I don’t have concerns about food and rent, though I still have student loans to pay off and savings to build for personally-affirming surgery.
So what is this story about? If anything, this is a story about a real angry teen that eventually grew up.
To be honest, I was hesitant to tell my story at all. What do I have to offer that other queer and trans folks, people with actual problems or fascinating tales, don’t? What I finally settled on was this: I don’t need to justify telling my story in order to tell it.
Recently, I’ve been consuming queer manga and literature at a PRODIGIOUS rate. I genuinely love reading about other folks’ experience with their own identities, no matter the type of experience. So, then, why not share my own?
Part of the reason that I’m reading so much is I have a lot of time to catch up with the literature I spent years ignoring. I spent so long denying who I was with the usual arguments…
“I can’t become a girl”
“I wouldn’t even be that cute”
“It’s not as easy as just Being a girl”
“Maybe it’s just a weird kink”
“Doesn’t everyone think about being the other gender?”
“I’d do it if magic was real but it isn’t”
“I’m too old to transition.”
During that long period of denial, I never really looked at queer literature, explored queer spaces, or looked at the experiences of other trans people to figure this out sooner. So naturally, I have SO MUCH TO READ NOW, and the stories I’m reading can be enjoyed as retrospective and recreational! Plus, all that I’ve read has inspired me to tell my own story, in my own voice …so to speak.
Let’s look back to my high school days again. There were opportunities to do “trans girl things” in high school and college: different clothes and pronouns, staying on the straight (heh) and narrow, talking to counselors, confiding in friends… but I didn’t do any of those things.
I got angry, repressed those feelings deep enough that I didn’t even recognize them, and I proceeded to ruin my life as I’d lived it to that point.
Enter a terrible, shitty, angry, deep voiced gremlin of a 6-foot-tall teenager, going through the motions of becoming an adult, but applying no effort and taking no responsibility. By the time I graduated high school, I figured I’d go to college for… a Veterinary degree? I mean, I liked animals, and being a vet was basically the same thing, right? After college, I’d move on with my life, diploma in hand, ready to receive my Money to exchange for Goods and Services.
I failed out of college 3 semesters in.
Those semesters were filled with disgusting eating habits, even more disgusting living habits, and no regard for the people that shared my dorm rooms. I stayed up all night playing League of Legends or Starcraft 2, fell asleep in my classes, missed entire weeks of lessons, failed tests… The idea that I could coast through education shattered instantly. My self-disciplinary failings becoming painfully evident as I tried to weasel my way back into another semester of dorm room waffle fries and a chronic lack of hygiene. I didn’t even care about the degree, I just knew it was what I had to get. I’d gone through accelerated classes in high school without applying myself, right? Succeeding without effort was what I was meant to do!
But my conceit was as fragile as it was short-lived, and so the curtain closed on my college years. I moved home, disgraced, angry, depressed, my parents more supportive of my failing ass than I deserved. I took a job at a retail chain, sulking and hating life in a shitty, sullen, early 20’s way that only someone who’s thrown away every opportunity given to them can. By this point, I’d already driven away any friends I had online; they wanted nothing to do with me. My Dad pointed out a better job literally minutes away from my house, and, desperate as I was to get out of where I worked, I applied immediately. That’s still my job to this day, albeit at a different location. My life hadn’t changed dramatically in routine, but by living at home and working a job with decent pay, I was able to start rebuilding myself.
That’s when those thoughts I had, years ago, started to push their way back in.
I’ve described myself as I was when I ‘started’: A college dropout, one who never learned discipline, living with their parents and working minutes away from their home. After watching videos of people playing games for years and figuring “hey I can do that,” I decided to get into Let’s Play.
Production on my first videos started about a year into my job and would prove to be an invaluable investment in the long run. My side venture into Let’s Play eventually introduced me to my current group of friends and vastly enriched my life. I leaned hard into my untrained voice, smooth and bassy enough that I thought I sounded pleasant to listen to. Actually, I liked it a lot at the time! I even went to some coaching sessions to try to improve my voice, but something made me stop after a few sessions.
I thought that I’d finally reached a point where I was comfortable, and happy. But sometimes at night, before I fell asleep but after I’d relaxed enough to let my guard down, those unwelcome thoughts that I’d buried a while back returned.
It’d be nice if I was born a girl. | “But I’m not, so who cares, right?”
I wish I could just be small and cute. | “But I can’t — my voice is too deep and I’m too tall.”
I wish my voice wasn’t this way. | “You use it and people seem to like it! It’s got a radio sound to it! What other skills do you even have?”
I wish I sounded more feminine | “With a voice that deep?? Good luck lmao, it’s not gonna happen. Just accept it.”
I wish I could wear cute clothes. | “Clothes are cute in combination with the person wearing them, and you definitely don’t qualify.”
Transgender people exist. Maybe you’re- I’m- | “The closest I’d end up looking is like a drag queen, which may work for some people, but I don’t want it. I’d never pass as a woman. Why even bother?”
I’m not happy this way. | “…and I don’t think I can fix that, so stop thinking about it.”
I didn’t know enough about dysphoria to recognize it, and I didn’t have the exposure to any sort of trans education or literature that I’d need to properly work with it for some time. I continued to look at magical/scifi/manga transgender content for years, always wishing I would wake up one day to find out that it was me who changed, but it would still be another four years before I’d finally come to terms with who I was.
After all, every guy wishes for that stuff, right?
Who wouldn’t??
Why try to come to terms with it???
This is just how we all feel, yeah?????
Haha… haa…
Let’s skip ahead a few years. By then, I’d made even more new friends and grown more as a person. I was looking for new games to play… and was introduced to an MMO, Final Fantasy XIV. I’d never played an MMO before, and I knew from my end of college years that I could sink entirely too much time into a game.
“But maybe I’ve changed! I’ll just start playing this game, and- ah heck, already hooked.”
I was introduced to a wonderful Free Company — the FFXIV equivalent of a Guild — filled with friendly, inclusive people. My new friends were welcoming, accepting, and significantly more diverse than just about any group I’d been in up to that point. So when I saw them living their lives, trying to be the truest to themselves they could be, when I looked at my tiny avatar boy and considered changing them to be a girl…
I’d like to say “I realized everything and finally started being true to myself!” The actual truth is that I began to panic. Badly.
The egg metaphor for self-discovery is one I like a lot. You’ll make any excuse to stay in your shell, but a crack doesn’t just come “undone.” At that point, there were enough cracks in my egg that I was starting to see the light outside shining through. And I was anxious, nervous, occasionally terrified, and driving further into conscious denial than ever before.
Guys playing girl characters (and vice versa) in MMOs is nothing new. There are a whole slew of reasons that people do it. But for me, my player character was an extension of how I wanted to be seen by others. My first character was a small, friendly, unassuming healer boy, one who I’d chosen above any “larger” or “stronger” designs. I picked the look thoughtlessly and never thought twice about how it would make me seen. But the moment I considered changing to another race/gender ingame, human girl or catgirl, I was suddenly feverishly doubting my own intentions and how the people around me would interpret that change.
“That boy switched to a girl avatar and is playing around with different outfits, do you think they’re one of those folks that likes Staring at the characters?”
I have a tendency to imagine the very worst outcome, so because of the possibility that I would be somehow ostracized, treated as a deviant or like some kind of pervert… I couldn’t even start to consider changing it. I know now, in hindsight, that your character is your own to modify without scrutiny. It takes a great deal more than changing how your character looks to provoke judgement from your peers.
So May 2015, I change my character to a cute catgirl! Ahh, finally, some release of all this pent up anxiETY NO IT’S WORSE NOW, SCRATCH THAT. I immediately and powerfully felt the need to clarify to anyone who would listen that I wasn’t as cute as my character. That I really enjoy the character design but that no, I’m not like this, they’re a wonderful outlet for being cute in a way that I can’t in real life.
My good friend Holly and I met around this time, and when I talked to her later about our first interactions, she actually remembered how anxious I seemed.
“You were insecure about people complimenting your voice.”
“When you introduced yourself, you were really building up to telling me that you’re not as cute as your character.”
“I think people thought you were really bashful but you seemed really put off.”
It was no wonder that I seemed put off — something at the core of what I was doing felt duplicitous to me. I felt that having this character avatar, that not speaking in voice chats, that being only represented as a girl in-game could mean that this was all someone might know of me. That I could just… be a girl. “In game only, of course, this could never happen for me in real life! She’s cute and wears nice outfits! I’m not and I don’t! Haha. Ha.” Firmly in denial of the possibility of transitioning in real life, I’d found an outlet for my feelings. But it wasn’t enough.
Speaking in voice chats felt like I was breaking a masquerade that I desperately wanted to keep because, despite my protests to the contrary, that’s exactly what it was. Through customizing my character, I’d finally found a means to acquire even the smallest amount of validation for my identity. The first time an NPC called my character “ma’am,” I got so happy and embarrassed that I just kinda stared at the message for a second, nursing a warm fuzzy feeling in my chest that I was entirely unaccustomed to.
Only days later, my defensive walls came crashing back down. I changed my character avatar back to one of the small unassuming race of characters (but now, notably, a girl). I tried to push those warm, fuzzy feelings aside. I began to frequently consider changing my character back: maybe a slightly different design,maybe a new outfit…
Simultaneously, in real life, I looked up details about transitioning, difficulties, dysphoria, and promptly decided: “no, this isn’t for me.”
No matter how much effort I put in, there are some parts of my body that I can’t change. | “Does that mean you shouldn’t try at all?”
My voice is too deep. | “There’s training for that, or surgery someday if you wanted to save.”
I don’t look like a girl. | “That’s literally the point of HRT, though??”
Women have it harder in society. | “I mean yeah, but what’s a bit of social privilege when weighed against being happy with yourself?”
My shoulders are broad. I’m very tall. My hands and feet are really big.| “I mean that’s true, but-”
Aha. It IS true. Guess that’s the end of that, I can’t do this. | “I- that-”
My inner dialogue had changed. Now, my doubts revolved around the idea that I shouldn’t transition, not that I couldn’t. I was slowly turning away from the idea of a perfect “me,” and more towards the idea of a “me” I’d be more satisfied with.
March of 2016, I composed a long post on pastebin detailing my feelings. I’m warning you ahead of time: this is about the lowest point I hit before rising back up. It was an attempt to renounce my identity as a trans woman and a vow to live as I was, trying desperately to avoid the difficulties I could face if I transitioned.
I want to give the old me a hug. She was going through a tough time. But the denial of my identity ended shortly after this pastebin was written.
A week or two later, I saw a post on Twitter. Presented very simply, it said something to the effect of:
“You can just, be a girl. We’ll be here waiting for you.”
This post wasn’t addressed to me. I don’t even think it showed up in my feed naturally; a friend may have just “Liked” the post, and the hell algorithm that the site uses to determine content probably spat it into my feed.
But reading that single tweet was the tiny, final crack that finally split my eggshell wide open. All of the flimsy excuses I’d been using to hold it together were reduced to NOTHING by a single kind tweet from a stranger, one who never even knew that their post was the final blow that smashed my doubts.
In April of 2016, I started to see a counselor at a local Gender Identity Center to begin the process of my transition. As of today (November 2018), I’ve been on HRT for just over 2 years using medications of varying success. My parents, coworkers, followers, and everyone knows who I actually am. I still have anxiety about my looks, my voice, my wardrobe, and the future, but I’m happier now than I was for the entirety of those 25 closeted years.
I plan to continue talking about how things came to be for me, like beginning and continuing my transition, how my family situation changed, the ways in which my life continues to move forward. However, I wanted to start by painting you a picture of what it was like for me to finally come to terms with my own identity.
Who knows? It could help other trans people out there to read about my process. Maybe someone reading this feels some of the same things I describe in this story; maybe for a short or long time, maybe so strongly that it’s uncomfortable.
To which, I can only offer the same kind words that I received from a stranger:
You can just… be yourself. We’ll be waiting for you.