guilt

Today I would like to talk about a topic that I think a lot of transgender/genderqueer/questioning struggle with: guilt. It is certainly easier for some to rebel against the norms and structures that society builds for us than it is for others, but I really think that this feeling of guilt, as irrational as it may be, affects more people than most realize.

NOW, I’m not saying that I feel guilty for transitioning, or being myself, or FINALLY living how I’ve always wanted to live, that’s not it at all. I am extremely happy with the decisions I’ve made to start transitioning and how far I’ve come, but it’s much more complicated than that. Some of the feelings I’m about to talk about were a part of my coming out process and don’t affect me anymore, while some are still very present, and others still are a confusing mess of the two.

Allow me to explain…

I’m gonna go in chronological order here so that this will make some kind of sense HOPEFULLY. Just tell me if you get lost. Keep you hands inside the vehicle in the event of a crash oxygen masks flotation device in-flight meal service blah blah blah HERE WE GO.

Let’s go back in a time several years to when I was just a small child. I was a pretty normal kid, I liked to play outside, build with legos, hang out with my friends, and I often had the thought “man wouldn’t life just be so much better if I were a boy?” And LEMME TELL YOU, I had this thought A LOT. I didn’t think much of it when I was very young. I didn’t know a ton about gender roles, other than the basic surface level stereotypes I saw every day; I didn’t know much about gender inequality or prejudice. That’s part of the beauty of childhood; kids just want what they want, without feeling guilty or ashamed or worried of how things might turn out, that is until society and growing up beat that brave naiveté out of us. Anyway, back then I didn’t feel guilty about my feelings I just FELT them #feelingfeelingsfelt #twss

Anyway as I got a bit older I became uneasy, I thought “oh no, I’m not supposed to feel this way, this is wrong.”  I felt very guilty for wanting to be myself. I constantly wondered what I was doing wrong, and thought that if maybe I just tried to fall into this role that had been carved out, then maybe I would fit happily into society. Maybe I would feel RIGHT.

Needless to say, THAT didn’t work out. Let’s fast forward to not too long ago actually, my sophomore year of college. One of the biggest turning points for me has been allowing myself to just FEEL my EFFING FEELINGS. I remember sitting across from my therapist one day, wondering aloud what the eff was wrong with me, and him just looking at me and saying, “it’s ok for you to feel this way, you know.”

So matter-of-factly.

Like it should have been obvious.

I mean it SHOULD have been, and yet…

For so long I had be not allowed myself to WANT what I WANT. Lemmetellyou, THAT was a big huge step. So I started to play with the idea. It brought me a ton of relief, honestly. It wasn’t like I went around telling a bunch of people or anything, I just stopped trying to stuff my own feelings down, stopped trying to control and monitor my own thoughts. I mean, it was like I had hired myself as a security guard to stand outside the cell that my genderqueer thoughts inhabited night and day, for years and years, and never given myself a break, until that day when I let go.

Butterflies are freeeee to fly, FLY AWAYYY

WOW
What a novel idea, right?

OK so that was step one, I was done feeling guilty for just wanting to be a boy.

Great! Let’s call it a day-NOT SO FAST.

Then the second wave of guilt started to creep in.

Although I had decided, in my mind, that it was OK to feel this way, I was still afraid that my feelings would somehow hurt other people. PLUS, having just admitted to myself that I had always wanted very much to be a boy, I was still nevertheless very embarrassed by these thoughts. I was, of course, also afraid that my feelings would also enrage and/or disgust others, but those fears had less to do with guilt.

Those I was most afraid of hurting, were my parents. I was afraid that they would feel like they had failed me, and that it would hurt their feelings that I was so unhappy with myself after everything they had done for me. I had watched several (dozen) documentaries about transgender children, and it seemed that many parents of transgender kids felt like they were “losing” their child, and gaining a different one. I didn’t want my parents to think that this would be a symbolic (or literal) death of their first daughter, and I certainly didn’t want them to think that I was committing symbolic suicide because of something they had done wrong. I also didn’t want to come across as ungrateful in some way; for everything my parents had done for me, for myself and my body and mind which they had worked so hard to protect and feed and entertain and love.

I knew that I was not symbolically killing myself, and that I didn’t even hate my current self; all I wanted to do was make my body match my mind. But I certainly did hate my body sometimes--a lot of the time. But how to explain that that I wasn’t ungrateful? I was happy to be healthy and have straight teeth and good vision and all my limbs attached and working properly, and yet there was always something very wrong.

At this point I was still very VERY confused, and my confusion and lack of clarity and explanation for my feelings certainly didn’t help when it came to the terror and guilt I felt when I thought about telling my parents.

My mom had told me the story of my birth many times; at least once a year around the time of my birthday she told me how she had wished and prayed for a girl. She used to joke to my father that her water had broke when it hadn’t, and when it was actually time, he hadn’t believed her and had rolled over and went back to sleep. No, I was not born on the kitchen floor or in the tub; it didn’t take long for my dad to realize that my mom meant business. Anyway, she had been so ecstatically happy when I turned out to be a girl, and the same went for my two younger sisters. My mom was always commenting on how glad she was to have her “three girls,” and how we were just what she had always wanted. How could I tell my mother that I was not happy this way? That I didn’t want to be one of her “three girls”? I was sure I was going to break her heart, and I felt infinitely guilty about that.

Dramatic recreation--do not attempt at home. 

Of course, now that I think back, I shouldn’t have felt guilty at all, but it was all part of the process, and not wanting to hurt my parents feelings was a big part of my process…

I also felt guilty in a more societal way. I wasn’t sure why I had always wanted to be a boy, and as I was still coming to terms with these feelings and my acceptance was still fresh and raw, I was extremely insecure about the reasoning behind this whole situation, and I began to get bogged down by other people’s opinions on the matter. Losing sight of my actual thoughts and feelings, I began to apply other people’s points of view to my situation, trying on each “explanation” for size to see if it fit. As I watched documentaries and read up on other trans people and the transgender phenomenon, I wondered if what some of these people were saying was true; was I just unhappy with my place in society? Uncomfortable and unable to accept myself as gay? Unable to present as typically masculine in a female body because society said that this was somehow the wrong thing to do?  Was I giving up on the body I was born into because it was too hard to be a woman, and a lesbian, in modern American society? These thoughts haunted me for a while, and I began to feel guilty for wanting to abandon my female place in society for the more privileged and dominant role. I was sure that the queer community would reject me for “choosing privilege", and that women would look down on me for the same reason.

Of course, when I actually reflected and looked inward I knew that I didn’t want to transition for any of these reasons. I had simply wanted a male body all my life. It’s not like being biologically female had stopped me from wearing and doing what I had wanted for most of my life anyways, but I really couldn’t get around the fact that I desired a male body.

The more I thought about it, the more I actually wished I could just be happy as a lesbian. If I could really have just been genuinely happy with myself as a female, everything would be so much easier. Plus, I thought being gay was just cooler than being straight. In fact, I rather liked being gay.

I liked gay bars, gay pride parades, rainbow t-shirts; I liked feeling like I was instantly part of this cause, fighting for gay rights and gay marriage and equality. And I liked the gay dynamic of my gay relationship. The gender binary wasn’t a part of my relationship, and so we didn’t fall into the typical gender roles that I felt sometimes dominated heterosexual relationships. (Or at least that had dominated the one heterosexual relationship I had been in (if you could even call it that. #hardly)) We were just equal. I felt like we were two people, much more than we were our genders. #doesanyofthismakesense?

Of course, you do not have to BE something in order to support something or fight for equality and believe in equal rights, and I still identify as extremely queer (I believe that’s the scientific term) BUT at the time I was afraid of being estranged from the “gay community.” The whole sexuality thing is another big conversation, so we’ll save that for another time. #ohboy

When it came down to it, I knew that I could never be truly happy and true to myself if I tried to stick it in a female body.

But the question still remained in my mind:

Did I REALLY want to be a heterosexual white male in America?

I'm sorry about this.

 Ugh.

I love you guys.

Seriously?

So very much. 

Yes.

Unfortunately. (Or so I thought)  

This fact confused and worried me for quite a while.  

It took me some time to realize that I couldn’t choose who I felt I was inside, and that I couldn’t choose my identity. After a while I realized that I didn’t want to be something I wasn’t; all this time I really just wanted to be what I was.

The other sort of guilt I felt was of the physical kind. After I knew that I didn’t want to change my soul or my personality or my essence, if you will, I still felt guilty for wanted to alter my physical body. I mean, my body worked perfectly fine for what it was. I performed all the necessary tasks that one needs a body for.

I could use my voice to express my thoughts—but I wanted it to sound lower.

I could use my tiny hands to write and play drums and draw—but I wanted them to be bigger.

I could use my cute face to get out of trouble—but I wanted it to be beard-ed.

I could bear children (technically, not realistically)—but I wanted to impregnate someone else.

Ok

Maybe these aren’t the best examples, but I think you know what I mean. My body worked really well, it just didn’t work for me.

Did I really want to pay thousands of dollars to have a surgeon cut into my perfectly fine body, and lop off large chunks of my flesh and then stitch me back together, rendering me immobile and pain-stricken for weeks? #Imabouttopassoutonmylaptop Why, I thought, would anyone CHOOSE to do that??

            ASIDE: I have been known to grow faint and even pass out at the sight of blood. Once in high school, I was helping build a set for the drama club’s summer musical. Inexperienced in the field of power tools as I was, the drill I was using slipped and I ended up putting a small hole in the nail on my left index finger. And when I say small, that’s an over-statement; it produced literally one drop of blood. I yelled to my friend—she is very caring and always carried her first-aid pouch—to see if she had a band-aid, but she wanted to wash out my minute puncture. So she dragged me to the sink, and washed my finger, and the whole time I was trying to think about my cracked nail and what was underneath it—it’s really texture that freaks me out more so than actual blood. I think a pool of blood in theory wouldn’t freak me out, but thinking about how all the blood left someone’s inside is what actually makes me feel sick. I told her I didn’t feel good and she said I was fine and that we needed to put some Neosporin on it to prevent infection, so she dragged me to find the assistant director. All the while I couldn’t stop thinking about the texture of it all and so when we found the assistant director I passed right out. Luckily, they caught me.

          Needless to say, having flesh removed from my front, and then being stitched back up, and having nipples created (do they still feel like nipples?) and held on by stitches and having drains coming out of my wound which would secrete some sort of flesh-juices and thinking about how pulled-down flaps of skin would have to re-attached to the fat and muscle underneath was NOT AT ALL MY IDEA OF A GOOD TIME.

I know, I know--I'll stop now, I promise. 

And yet, that’s exactly what I wanted.

I felt so conflicted. When I told my therapist of my inner turmoil he told me a story;

“My mom never let me add salt, or anything else to any of the food she made for me,” he began.

“Alright…” I replied.

“She said that it was perfectly good the way it was, and that it didn’t need anything else,” he continued. “Still to this day, I don’t add always add salt to food, even when I want to.”

He has a very clever way of telling me things without actually saying them outright.

“Do you think I should have been able to add salt to my food?” he prompted.

“Yes,” I understood.

“Because even though it was just fine the way it was, it wasn’t good for me, it didn’t work for me, no matter how good it was to other people.”

My body was fine, in excellent condition even, but it didn’t work for me, and so I decided it was ok to alter my physicality, so that it worked for me, and so that I could feel whole and complete and at peace. And I would do it right, carefully and meticulously under the care of experienced doctors, because although my body wasn’t quite right for me, I still respected it, and wanted to take great care in altering myself so that I could remain healthy and come out the other side in even more excellent condition.

And so that’s what I’m doing.