Welcome to #TransTuesday! It’s my birthday week (it’s true! seems I keep having them every year and thank goodness). Birthdays can be weird for lots of people, but for some trans people like me they’re extra strange. We’re talking TRANS BIRTHDAYS. Plus: a letter to little Tilly!
My first birthday after coming out was strange. It was the first one in my entire life that I got to spend as the real me, except that was much less the real me than I was on the birthday following, or the one this year. So in a way each of them is like an entirely new thing.
They’ve all felt deeply weird. Birthdays have always been a bit odd for me though. They were fine when I was a kid, as they are for many kids. Cake, presents, maybe a party with your friends. Even though the world still seemed wrong and broken.
Looking back, what little of them I can remember are still all tinged with sadness and pain, and they always will be. If you’d like more info, see THE PAST (and why it haunts us).
In my mid-20s birthdays all started to blend together, but I imagine that happens for everyone. I remember 30 feeling a bit different, even though I don’t remember the day itself, but then they all blended together again after.
I couldn’t tell you what I did for any of my birthdays now. They’ve never been that special, I guess. Susan and the kid and I might go out for dinner (not since Pandora’s box started tho) or if it was a weekend, maybe go to Disneyland or something.
Even then, they never meant anything to me. I was getting older, happy to be married to my best friend, loving our amazing kid, loving writing, and that was it. The fact I felt disassociated and disconnected from the world and my own life probably has a lot to do with that.
But birthdays were always just a happy excuse to see people I love and eat food I like and get presents. Beyond that, even as a kid it never felt celebratory to me. What’s to celebrate? It’s just the day I was born, who cares?
Well being an adult and continuing to exist, especially in our present climate, feels heroic. Between covid and maybe half the country wanting to strip my rights away and the actual literal climate, just surviving is a big deal.
And we’re not just surviving. Susan and I are writing our best stuff ever, and we’ve never been happier or more excited by the work we’re doing. And we’re SO EXCITED to tell you what we’ve been working on, as soon as we’re allowed to. It’s all so wonderful.
But I look back and wonder what birthdays would have been like as a kid if I’d been able to be myself. I try to imagine what knowing that I was transgender would have felt like. I just don’t know.
It fills me with pangs of sadness and regret for the childhood I never had, for all the birthdays I could have had that might have meant so much more. What would it be like to be seen and accepted and celebrated for the REAL ME every year of my life? Goodness.
I didn’t get to be a little girl. I didn’t get to be a teen girl. I didn’t even get to be a woman in her 20s. Those are experiences I’ve been robbed of, and can never ever get back because time still stubbornly only moves in one direction because time’s a goddamned jerk.
Transphobic society STEALS YEARS OF LIFE FROM TRANS PEOPLE. There’s no other way to say it, and no softening the pain and damage that causes. I will never EVER get back the childhood, teen years, and young adulthood that should have been mine.
But then I realize that it’s all just a gossamer dream anyway because my home life was such that even if I’d known I was trans, I certainly wouldn’t have been able to explore it or live it. I’d have been forced to hide it and repress it and that’s already what I was doing.
I would have been told I was NOT trans, and they would have attempted to force it out of me. So what’s worse, living with the feeling that the world is somehow wrong and I don’t fit, or living with knowing why and how to fix it but being trapped and kept away from it?
Either way is awful. I’m so envious of trans folks who figured it out young and had supportive families that let them explore and find themselves. I have no idea what that’s like. It’s something ALL OF US should have. It shouldn’t be something we have to hide, a pain we’re forced into.
But I’ve also mentioned in previous Trans Tuesdays that if I HAD known earlier, and even been able to explore it and transition earlier, it would have changed my life in every conceivable way.
And then I might not have ever found my wife, and we might not have our wonderful kid, and I would never trade either of those things. But that doesn’t stop the well of pain that’s like a hole in my heart at wondering what might have been.
And so part of me wishes I was born a cis girl, because how much easier life would be. Not that cis women have it easy, but they have it a damn sight better than us trans women. But I don’t want to BE cis, I just want to exist in a world that accepts me as me from the get-go.
It’s not like I’m ashamed of being trans, or sad about it. Far from it! I’m proud of being trans and who I am. You have no idea the kind of COURAGE it takes for every trans person to exist in this world. It SHOULDN’T take courage, mind you. But it does.
And so this is like every other aspect of being trans, at least for me. It’s complex and nuanced with layers, and there’s no easy answer or even an easy way to explain it.
Since realizing and accepting my transness, and being out and becoming more my true self with every passing day, birthdays have been even more different. Because on each one I’ve been more ME than ever. Especially this year when I’ve hit so many milestones.
Like when photos just stopped spiking my gender dysphoria, which seems to have almost entirely dissipated altogether. See PHOTOS 2: THE SELFIE APOCALYPSE.
Or when I discovered that the lessening and dissipating of my dysphoria provided me a freedom that I never had the capacity to experience before. See FREEING UP MY BRAIN (aka lunch with Tilly)
Or when I finally got to go somewhere with people as MYSELF and discovered what an amazing new experience it was. And I could have this… on my birthday? FOR ME? YES YES I WANT THAT SO MUCH. See CONFIDENCE 2: INTO THE UNKNOWN aka WHAT IS HAPPENING aka A WHOLE NEW WORLD.
It would make me ludicrously happy, but I’m not used to feeling that way. I actually feel like I want to CELEBRATE, which I guess is what birthday parties are supposed to be all about? Hey! I survived another year in this mess of a world, congrats!
I actually wanted to do a party or something this year, if I could find a good outdoor location to hold one. But I didn’t think of it soon enough and we’ve been far too busy and I just didn’t have time to make it happen. And it completely surprises me how devastatingly sad that makes me.
Next year, if I can remember to plan it early enough, I want to rectify that with my first real birthday hang ever. Are we buds? Are you in LA or willing to travel here? ‘Cause I’d love for you to be there. Celebrating with ME. 💜
It’s all just so discombobulating. I hope that lessens over time, but I suspect it might not. It hasn’t so far. But if I could write a letter to that kid, tell her what was coming… maybe that’s the way to approach it.
Hey kid! I know you feel weird. I know you ALWAYS feel weird. Like you don’t belong, like you don’t fit in the world, like the world is made for everyone but you.
Even when you’re happy, even when you’re with people you love, something’s always off. “Like a splinter in your mind.” Some really smart and talented ladies wrote that line in a movie that’s going to knock you on your ass for reasons you won’t realize until years after.
You’re actually gonna come to be known for talking about those movies, and it’s going to help other people like you, in ways you can’t even imagine. But I can only show you the door. You’re the one who has to walk through it.
Did you know that there’s a reason, when you were six, you were devastated when your friend Chucky’s older sister was having a sleepover with her friends and he got to go because he lived there, but you did not because they thought you were a boy?
And there’s a reason you were more upset about not getting to hang out with the girls at the sleepover than you were about not getting to hang out with Chucky all night. Always wondered why that was, huh? Believe me, I know.
There’s a reason you kept that barrette you found in the street while walking home from school in fourth grade and hid it in your room, and put it in your hair every time you were home alone. You never knew why you did it.
It embarrassed you a bit, even though no one knew. Because “boys didn’t do that.” Why would YOU do that? What the fuck is wrong with you, you freak? I hear you wondering that over and over again and it breaks my heart.
Nothing. NOTHING is wrong with you, you beautiful tortured little child. What’s wrong is your biology, and the way the world treats you based on it. That’s all it is. It doesn’t make you a freak, and it doesn’t mean this world isn’t for you.
It just means you’re a girl. Yes you are. I am. Look at me. LOOK AT ME. Do you see? Can you imagine? This is you one day. You’ll get here. Don’t give up. It’s going to take fucking forever, but you can’t give up.
Don’t give me that, you are SO a girl. Despite the fact you never believed in god, how many times did you fall asleep literally praying you’d somehow magically wake up as a girl? How many?
It’s okay, I can’t count that high either. But did you know cisgender boys… don’t do that? They don’t. It’s not a thing every boy does. But it doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong with you!
It’s just your brain trying to work shit out. It’s your subconscious telling you something that it’s going to take you a very long time to figure out, but it’s there and it’s the truth and it’s just waiting for you to find it. And so, so much happiness is waiting for you on the other side.
So keep putting that barrette in your hair. Keep looking at girls you have a crush on and finding them almost as cute as their clothes. Keep looking at their hair and wondering what that would be like. BUT DON’T DO IT IN A CREEPY WAY okay good just want to be sure we cover that.
You don’t have the words or the knowledge yet to explain who you are, but that doesn’t change the truth. You know it, you feel it deep in your heart, even though you can’t express it.
I know, because I can feel it too. Even now. Being who I am today, who I’ve always wanted to be, who I AM. Because it’s who you are, and I can still feel inside me now how you felt then.
I know the pain, and the longing, and the sadness, and how nothing at all makes sense because of this one thing, and how that plagues you and won’t give you a moment’s peace. But you’ll get through it, and your future’s gonna be amazing.
Your best friend in the world is going to be your wife! And you’re going to love her more than you thought it was possible to ever love anyone or anything in the entire universe. She’s going to light up your world like you can’t imagine.
You’re also going to have a kid! And being a parent is going to be the toughest, most exhausting, most amazing, most rewarding thing you’ve ever experienced. And you will love that kid in ways you never knew possible.
And you’re a writer! And you’re working on tv shows and comics and you run a scripted podcast production company (I know you don’t know what those are yet, don’t interrupt me, smartass) and that endless imagination is getting put to wondrous use telling stories for others.
And the world won’t be so strange anymore. I mean, it’s still fucked up in a lot of ways don’t get me wrong. But you’ll always fight to make it better, so definitely keep that up. But that splinter in your mind?
You’ll find it, and you’ll rip it out, and you’ll heal, and suddenly the world will make a lot more sense. And you’ll have wonderful people who love you and support you to help you every step of the way. And there’s so much beauty waiting for you. Around you. IN you.
Don’t give up. Keep fighting. YOU’RE A GIRL AND THAT’S BEAUTIFUL.
Let the tears come. Then wipe them away and stay strong.
You’ll make it.
I love you, kid.
Happy birthday.
Tilly Bridges, end transmission.
tillysbridges@gmail.com
PS – Your wife & kid are making you tomato risotto ‘cause the future is magic. I know you don’t know what that is, just shut up and trust me. No YOU shut up. No YOU shut up! It’s really great, I mean it. What? No! IT’S LIKE FANCY MAC & CHEESE WITH KETCHUP YOU’LL BE FINE. Jesus.
ADDENDUM:
Just had a thought. I felt like that was truly how little me would have responded to this. And OF COURSE IT IS because just look at the FREEING UP MY BRAIN/LUNCH WITH TILLY thread I linked to. I didn’t have the capacity to try many new things/foods! BECAUSE OF MY DYSPHORIA.