Welcome to #TransTuesday! Today I want to talk about something I’ve been thinking about for a while, but have been able to do ZERO prep for because life has kept me ludicrously busy. So you’re gonna get an off the cuff, stream of consciousness examination of: LETTING GO.
Again I will remind you that I’m speaking of my own experience here, and while there may certainly be commonalities with other trans folks, I do not speak for them and do not claim this is any kind of universal experience. K? K.
I’m not sure what brought this to mind. I only added it to my list of topics to talk about a few weeks ago, so it wasn’t even something that occurred to me at the start. I suppose part of it is being out publicly for a year and the extra introspection that inspired.
To be clear this isn’t any kind of “one year in” retrospective (there will be one! But I’m doing it in a couple weeks and combining it with a “one year on HRT” retrospective). But I guess it made me realize that it hasn’t been everything I expected.
It’s been a lot I didn’t expect, and some I did. Which is not to say I have even an ounce of regret about transitioning, I absolutely do not. But one of the things I had to let go of was my expectations of what transitioning was going to do for me.
And again, it’s been amazing and I’m thrilled with the way things are going. But… I don’t know, it’s difficult to explain. Maybe because I had no time to do any kind of prep for this one. 😬 Or maybe it’s just a tough thing to voice.
One example that might be easier to approach it from is in thinking about my HAIR. I actually did an entire essay on that, and how important it is to me.
I had no idea I had curly hair. When it came in wavy, I was like… well okay, whatever. And then the longer it got the curlier it became. And I did not in any way ever anticipate that would be the case.
So when I thought about transitioning, when I imagined actually getting to be the woman I am inside, that was never part of the picture. As a kid I had mostly straight hair, so I thought that’s what I’d have. The lady inside me, the real me, had long straight hair in my head.
At first I just didn’t know what to think about it. I didn’t know if I even liked it. I thought about maybe straightening it (but I’m glad I didn’t, and now I don’t think I ever will). I just so badly wanted to BE the image in my head, and that’s not what my hair was. At all.
But the longer I sat with it, watched it grow, found the right products to care for it, and then finally got my first real haircut and got my ludicrous, lovely, wonderful, curly bangs… each step I fell more and more in love with it.
Not only just because I now feel it actually fits my personality and style (Do I have a style? Answer unclear.), but it’s MINE. This is MY hair, and I didn’t even know it. MINE MINE MINE. And I adore it. But I couldn’t get to that point without letting go of the expectations I had.
And a lot of transitioning, for me, has been very much like that. In thinking about women’s clothes, I had this idea in my head of what I’d wear. Turns out I don’t like wearing some of that! Or don’t like the way it looks on me.
I did an essay on HEAVILY GENDERED CLOTHES AND TRANS PEOPLE.
I still have a lot I’ve not been able to try yet, but it’s been… educational. See the trans tuesday on PRIVILEGE (time and money) on how both time and money can restrict transition in many different ways.
I’m learning so much about who I AM, and even after all the introspection and soul searching it took to discover and accept I’m trans, there’s still more to go. Which I very naively thought I was done with once I accepted I was trans. Ha! I’m a dummy.
But I couldn’t get to where I am now, in a whole bunch of ways, without letting go of the expectations I’d laid out for myself. And I feel like that very much mirrors what happened for me as I discovered, explored, and accepted my own transness.
I was assigned male at birth, and despite NEVER ONCE feeling like a boy or a man, I still believed I was because that’s what society told me and what I was raised to believe.
And even though, EVEN THOUGH, it made me feel awful and miserable and distant and isolated and alone, it was the identity I had. It wasn’t real, but I didn’t know that for a long time.
And I had to LET GO of my preconceived notions of who I was in order to become who I AM and have ALWAYS been.
It also feels this is something that applies to humans across the board, regardless of gender (or lack thereof). We have all these preconceived notions of what our life will be, and how it’s going to go. Carefully laid plans that rarely go the way we think.
Which is not to say you shouldn’t plan for the future (I know I certainly do), and have goals and things you work toward. But nothing’s so cut and dry, directly on-path with no deviations. Life is chaotic and messy and beautiful.
And you have to roll with those punches. You’ve got to examine WHY you want the things you want, WHY you feel the way you feel. It’s the only way to get to the truth about what we want out of ANYTHING.
See the trans tuesday on GIVING YOURSELF PERMISSION to explore these things.
And do you know what giving yourself that permission takes? COURAGE.
I guess what I’m getting at is it’s great to dream and have goals, but as you work toward them (whatever they may be), don’t be so focused on the preconceived notion of them you miss the slight variation on them that you might like even better.
Or you might hate it! Certainly possible. But you won’t know if you don’t try, and you won’t try things if you don’t push past the fear of the outcome. Or the fear of the outcome being different than you expect.
LET. GO. You might like the reality of what you find on the other side.
Tilly Bridges, end transmission.
tillysbridges@gmail.com