I Am Trans Enough Now

For the Child Who Didn't Know What Trans Was

I’m not the type of trans person that you hear about who “always knew.” Growing up I was classified as a “tom boy,” but I was also the kid who loved dress-up, and boas, and shoes that clapped when you walked. I loved big sparkly dresses. I loved Barbies and make up and so many other things that little girls are told they should love.

 There are a lot of holes in my childhood memories, but most of what I remember is feeling sad and anxious or starved for the attention that I certainly had. I’d wander the grocery store, getting lost from my mother as I sang a song I made up at the top of my lungs, just hoping to be discovered. My oldest brother recently told me that he would often find me playing in my room quietly all by myself. I wet the bed nearly every night until I was at least 12. In the second grade I started taking regular trips to the nurse’s office with headaches and fake illnesses I conjured up and truly manifested to make my pleas to go home more convincing. I was often sent back to class dragging my feet. I dreaded school, but no matter how good of a method actor I had become, I just couldn’t fake a fever on the spot. 

Now I’m 28, fully out, and I can see that kids like what kids like and they’ll pick the favorite of what’s pushed on them. Children learn from the environment they are given. I’m a nanny and I spend a lot of time with toddlers and four and five year olds. I’ve spent more than a few nights with two kids I adore, Bo and Reno. Bo is 5, obsessed with the movie Frozen and Reno is 2, a bruiser with a sweet heart. There have been whole evenings of readjusting dresses while the two jump all around the house as sisters, Elsa and Ana. I find complete joy in gently throwing pillows at the two, letting Elsa blast me with her ice powers to defend her sister. I smile as I tie up the end of Ana’s dress because I don’t want this little body to trip over the much-too-long-hem. Reno is the first to be put to bed, singing “my Bonnie lies over the ocean” as I lay him down amidst his stuffies, binky in mouth. I tell him we will be right outside if he needs anything and he slowly blinks back at me. As Bo and I leave Reno’s room he looks up into my eyes and says “I wish Reno didn’t have to go to sleep, now I feel so alone.” Hiding my heartbreak I ask if he needs anything from me to feel less alone in this moment. He pauses, looks back up at me as he hugs his little arms around me tightly. He tells me he loves me and we continue playing a game we made up called “spiders.” I go home so full after a night of seeing children so free in their own space with parents who don’t gender their play. I realize that moments of feeling deeply alone are universal and inevitable from birth, but can be fleeting if you have the right community. These are things I wish I could show my younger self. 

I look back on my childhood anxieties and wonder, was I an egg? A trans person hiding in a shell that took over 25 years to crack? I’ve spent a lot of time combing over what memories I do have, what has been implanted through stories compulsively shared with me at every family gathering. It feels shameful to hear about who I was as a child. I didn’t know I was trans, but I sure had built up the fantasy that I was unloved and unlovable. I’d hear stories of me being a grudge holding, petulant, annoying kid and wonder if it meant something was wrong with me or if I was just born bad. This may be the spinning of a thread to internalized transphobia, or simply the human existence. I’ve spent years examining myself, scrutinizing the child I was, looking for answers that you simply cannot find in a cis heteronormative world. I am a non- binary, gay, trans man and I certainly was not born knowing it. 

The shame I grew into did not stop at childhood. I was on many softball teams as a young teen and as the smallest, youngest, worst player on the team I felt a burning spotlight on my body. The audacity that grown cis men have does not stop short of commenting on adolescent girls’ figures. Most comments were not much further from the ones boys my age would hurl at me. Jared flicked rubber bands at me all through 8th grade math as he whispered “watch out mosquito-bite tits.” I was a late bloomer and no one would let me forget it. Just one of the things that led me on a journey to find god, because if there was one, they’d surely make this pain stop. This god would give me such a woman’s body that no one could deny loving it. I went from praying to a god I didn’t really believe in, begging for the magical growth of C cup boobs over night to spending most of my teen years godless: in bed, forcing myself to sleep during the day with Benadryl and binge drinking on the weekends. I had no regard for my body, only for what could make me more lovable. I’d drink until my skin was no longer mine.  I’d let the first guy who took interest in me do whatever he wanted. What better way to gain love than buying it with indifference to your own body? I can clearly see now that I was conflating any and all attention, assault even, with love. I can see now that I was massively depressed, but I was raised to see my major injuries as flesh wounds. My broken arm was a growing pain, my strep throat- Mono hybrid was the common cold, my anxiety was a tantrum, my complaints were a nuisance. I was trained to ignore the signs of my body. I didn’t know I was trans. 

I first started taking testosterone in the fall of 2020, the same month I was diagnosed with anxiety and bipolar 2. I waited 3 months to tell anyone I was on T aside from maybe one or two friends. I was pleasantly surprised by the responses I got when I finally told my parents, whom I had been living with during the pandemic. I slowly started telling more friends, even posting about it online. I sat in the glow of acceptance for a couple weeks until this gnarled child-like voice started feeding me stories that I would never be loved “now that I’m trans.” The weekly injections that once felt like the origin story of a superhero gaining their powers started to give me anxiety. I built up the event in my head so tall and let it crash down on top of me, burying me in my own fear and shame. I stopped taking T in the spring of 2021 and in the summer I moved to LA thinking “maybe I’ll give it another go when I’m living my new life.”

The second time I went on T I was a mess. It was fall again. I was “living my new life” and I was drinking heavily to cope. I wasn’t sleeping much and I was picking at my skin, preemptively clearing the pores I knew would be riddled with acne in no time. I was not ready for the changes of a second puberty, no matter how badly I needed to see them. My voice started to crack around month 2 and it didn’t stop until month 7 when I finally went off the hormone for a second time. This cracking felt so scary to me, my voice was basically my entire identity. I was a little kid singing for attention. If I couldn’t sing, I couldn’t be loved, and I felt like I didn’t have anyone to relate to. I surrounded myself with cis friends. No matter how much sympathy they held for me, there was just no  way they could breach the depth of the specific consternation that is being trans and not knowing how to let yourself be. While I guess I am considered to be pansexual, I kept finding myself growing feelings for cis men. I told one of my cis friends “I gotta stop crushing on cis men it only leads me to despair” and he replied “well maybe you’re straight then if that’s the case.” He saw me as a woman no matter what secrets of my identity I shared. The pieces clicked. I felt untouchable. Neither fish nor fowl. I kept drinking. I kept spiraling out in songs I sang tearfully on the floor of my bedroom. I kept wishing for more trans people in my life, and I thank my secret, made up god for sending me trans friends instead of C cup boobs.

I am not being facetious when I say: my trans friends saved my life. The release from 27 years of a blackened confusion pooled onto the soon to be flattened breast of my shirt as I exchanged texts with my very good friend, Annie. We were talking about our upcoming top surgeries, both to be performed through the same practice, by the same surgeon. Both identifying as non binary, both clamoring for some relief from these “parasitic slabs of fat,” as they once called them.  We talked about trans imposter syndrome. Talking to Annie I didn’t feel alone in how my dysphoria seemed to manifest much differently than other trans people. We both admitted feeling like we were “doing it wrong” or thinking “what if I’m not actually trans and I just made it up for attention.” Saying that now sounds ludicrous because what cis person is constantly fantasizing about medical procedures to relieve their dysphoria? It was helpful to see these fears reflected back at me by someone I cared for so deeply. The empathy that comes so much easier for other’s cracked me wide open.

I got top surgery on May 15th, 2023 and it was life altering. Nothing could have prepared me for how much I would feel like myself afterwards. As I type this I am 5 and a half weeks post op and one week back on T. This is me, I am a non binary, gay, trans man and I have been gifted a rebirth, a future. 

 I am forever thankful to Annie for being a beautiful mirror that I could build mantras with. I am forever in awe of my partner, Nico’s, ability to see me for who I tell them I am. They hold me gently, meeting me where I’m at, in the skin I once so carelessly gave away. We get to share a love so queer and so unique. A love free from gendered play. A love that feels like the origin story of a superhero gaining their powers. A love that makes you want to be the best version of you so you can continue to show each other what a beautiful world looks like. A love where the frantic, anxious child I was can feel seen and be strong enough to see. 

 Seeing the humanity of my trans friends made me see the humanity in me. It made me see the transness in me. To share a space with someone who holds so much of your own identity is catharsis. To hold your trans friend as you both cry with joy and love for each other is to love the younger version of you who could not find that love within. To witness these trans friends as their fullest selves is to see your life grow longer. I now know: I am trans enough for the child who didn’t know what trans was. I am trans and I am loved.

With warmth,

-al