On Weirdness, Pride, And Where-ever We Go From Here

Since it’s Pride month, I figured this would be a good time to write about being queer/trans. But I don’t just want to write a narrative of “my story.” I want to write about what it’s like, before, during, and long after. How it changed a lot, and how it really didn’t change much at all. And how I’m still trying to figure out where to go from here.

***

From the time I was very small, I felt pretty different. I didn’t fit in with most other kids. I was weird.

But I was weird without knowing it. I don’t think it ever really occurred to me that I was different from anyone; I just did my thing and then the world found out and decided that “my thing” wasn’t ok because <reasons>.

Around six, I remember playing lions with a friend (because when you’re six, “lions” is a game where you just are a lion and act like a lion and that’s pretty much it. It was good stuff.) And I really wanted to be a girl lion, so I was. And he was a boy lion. And I think I cuddled with him. It was really cute! And then, for some reason, the friend disappeared.

Sometime not too far from that, I kissed somebody at lunch (or they kissed me; who knows?). I always thought it was a boy, but someone else (years later) claimed it was her. What I remember really well, though, was that another student saw us and told the lunch monitor who had us sit at the “bad kids” table up front. And then we got a private talking to after from our teacher about how that’s not appropriate behavior for school.

And that’s the way most of my growing up was. I didn’t really understand what or why we were supposed to do things. Like, why do I have to line up with the boys? Why do I have to do boy things at school performance dances? Why do boys have to play with boys and girls play with girls? I very much didn’t want it. But it was just what was supposed to happen, so eventually I did it too.

Now, in some ways, this is the classic transgender narrative. But it seems like a childhood narrative too. You do what you want. People tell you it’s wrong. You’re like “huh?” And eventually you conform.

And it wasn’t just gender stuff. I wasn’t Christian and everybody else was. They sang all these songs and had all these gruesome pictures about some dude dying for everybody and talked about this place where people who were different [like me!] suffered for eternity and then they treated me like I was weird when I was just like “huh?” And, of course, my dad did a lot of really fucked up things too, but, like, when you’re a kid, you think it’s probably all ok and that you just don’t understand cause they’re the adult.  And my whole family acted nice and happy and then, periodically, it would turn out we all hated each other and it was really scary and awful? It was weird, man. It was all really weird. And as a kid, you don’t know. Am I the weird one? Are they? Their rules don’t seem to make a lot of sense, but, I mean, everybody else seems ok with them soooo?

So, I mean, yeah, the queer stuff was weird. Gender is weird. Religion is weird. Families (good help us) are so weird. It’s all weird. And while at first I felt weird, eventually that started to change. And instead of weird, I was wrong. I was very, dangerously wrong.

***

So, fast forward a bunch of years. I do some therapy. I fall in love. We break up. I’m real unhappy (after the break-up, sure, but before it too, just in different ways). So I feel really lost and still feel really broken. And I think about how uncomfortable I’ve felt as a boy, for most of my life. And I feel like I need to do something. So I decide to transition. And I hope, on some level, that I will be able to remove the wrongness inside me. I make some goals. I make a timeline. It’s all very orderly, very obtainable. I get through it. I get through it. I get through it. I make it to the other side.

And then….

Well. It’s like going through the looking glass, seeing a different version of yourself, but still being yourself. And it’s still weird. In many ways, it feels like a better fit. Like, there are many parts of myself that I can access and put out into the world much easier. I’m more myself. But it’s still. weird. too.

In some ways, it’s about being a woman. Things I used to do, pre-transition, are now awful. Like, I used to have a lot of “integrity” and was very “intellectually assertive.” And post-transition I was “combative” and “threatening” and I had to make myself small or else [for people who don’t have any feelings, men have lots of feelings]. It’s weird, too, because while men get valued for many things, much of mainstream American culture just values women as caretakers or sex objects. My appearance, all of a sudden, was much more contentious. And it can make you feel really awful.

And it’s weird being a trans woman! With cis women, it’s weird because I can try to fit in but I often still feel different. Like, I’ll be in a group of women, and they’ll start talking about their periods. Or dating men. Or (and men do this too) about essential differences of men and women that are obvious and I’m supposed to agree with. And it’s so weird! It’s like, part of me doesn’t really mind, but another part of me is like “I have no idea what is happening here, I’m just gonna go along with this and listen.” So I say “Yeah, definitely, peanut butter, that time of the month, yeeaaaaa.” Or “Oh man, dating men, so hard! They’re all like… menly and then you’re all like ‘I’m a woman’ and they’re all like waaaattt?” Or “yeah, women really are so <xdageaeabeaghea> but men are just like <ahahawlwahdsdazl> haahahahaaa.”

And then there’s dating, which is another post entirely, where I really don’t know what I’m supposed to do and obviously something is going wrong even as I have little to no idea what it is.

So ,even through the looking glass, it still feels weird! It’s cis women, sure. But it’s, really, still everyone. I am more myself. But that self still feels profoundly out of place.

***

So, where am I going with all this.

The thing is, I want to go to Pride and feel at home. I want to feel part of something. I want to feel connected. I want, like so many other people seem to have, to “come out” and to “be myself” and to have things be ok.

But I go there, and I still feel weird.

And I know things aren’t ok. I know shame doesn’t just leave after “coming out.” It doesn’t evaporate when you transition. I know that what I’m grappling with, what perhaps most of us are grappling with, is bigger than one identity, bigger than one experience, bigger than us.

Being trans is complicated and hard.

But, really, so is being a person.

So, I don’t know. I would love to write a trans narrative with a happy ending. But instead, you get a person narrative. You get someone complex and lost and kinda broken who really doesn’t understand much of anything. Who gets the distinct sense that something is wrong but who really has no idea what it is.

So I don’t know. Maybe I don’t need a Gay Pride Parade. Maybe I need a Human Pride Parade.

Or, at the very least, a Human Acceptance Parade.

Now that would be weird.