Magnitude of the Mountain

in

I didn’t always know, at least not in the way that people usually speak about it. It started small, by despising my name. I don’t remember a time that I liked it — I could recognize that it was a pretty name, and it suited everyone I met who shared that name. But it didn’t suit me, although I bet if you looked at me with my long hair, dresses, and long eyelashes that you wouldn’t understand why I was never a Nina.

But it started small, and it crept up on me. People always ask what signs there were when I was young, and I never know how to answer that question. Did I play with the boys? Yes. Did I do ballet? Yes. Did I join the all-boys sports team? Yes. Did I play with Barbies? Yes. Did I want to learn woodworking instead of homemaking? Yes. Did I enjoy learning to knit? Yes. The problem with these questions begins with the assumption that these likes/dislikes have anything to do with gender. Do girls enjoy playing ‘boy’ sports? Of course they do. Are there boys who like ballet? Without a doubt. So when I’m asked for the signs, I don’t know what else to do but shrug.

For the longest time I thought that I was adopted, because I felt ‘other’ and understood that to mean that I didn’t fit in with my family. (As a kid you tend to believe that your family is a reflection of the world, but it would take many years to understand that it was society as a whole that I didn’t feel I fit into.) Spoiler alert, I’m not adopted. I emailed the hospital where I was born to double-check in case everyone had been lying to me my whole life. (In case you’re wondering, yes, I’m a Virgo.) At first they couldn’t find my records, giving me a renewed sense of ‘AH-HAH!‘, but then they came back with the boring truth. So the answer to why I felt so ‘other’ didn’t lie in my birth story.

When I started exploring my sexuality at the age of 17, I finally found some of my ‘otherness’. “Ah, so this is why I’ve been feeling like a stranger all my life”, I thought. And for nearly 10 years I held onto this answer and didn’t think much of it again, that is, until I started abusing alcohol. At first it started because I was mourning the death of the most consistent father-figure I had in my life — my grandfather. I drank what I smelled so often on his damp breath: brandy and Coke. It made me feel close to him. Over time I found other drinks, and eventually I was drinking myself blind drunk every night off of gin & tonics, passing out nightly on the couch. I didn’t understand at the time that I’m a highly sensitive person, prone to feeling all the feelings. And feelings didn’t feel safe, so when I drank it was a way for me to process some feelings without actually having to be present for them. A fantastic loophole, I thought.

IMG_2297.jpeg


At some point during one of my binges I started to write down my drunken thoughts as journal entries on scrap pieces of paper. And I remember distinctly reading one of these brain-dumps the next morning — I was struggling to understand what I was feeling during intimate moments with my then wife. At the time I didn’t have the language around gender that I do now, so the thoughts basically went something like this: “Sex is feeling really weird lately. Actually, it’s never felt really good. I hate when I’m touched there. I don’t have the right body parts. Do other people imagine they’re someone else during sex? I’m not a MAN, so I can’t be transgender. But I’m also not a woman. So what the hell am I??”

Then I promptly shelved those thoughts and didn’t revisit them for another 5-6 years.

Much has changed since those thoughts first emerged in my mid-twenties, and these days I comfortably exist as someone who identifies as non-binary (I finally found the word!) transmasculine, meaning that I really don’t identify as any gender, but if I have to put a label on it, I walk through the world as a guy. A trans guy. And the idea of a ‘non-binary trans guy’ makes many people really uncomfortable because how can you be a guy with no gender?

I was about two months into hormone replacement therapy (HRT) when I had my first real moment of doubt since beginning my medical transition. I watched a video of a prominent (and controversial) transsexual in which he asserted that true transsexuals — those who choose to medically transition to the ‘opposite sex’ — don’t call themselves  transgender, and that the transgender identity was for others, meaning people who weren’t truly born in the ‘wrong body’. People who were essentially faking it. I can now speak endlessly about how problematic his ideas are, but at the time all I felt was ’other’... again. As someone who didn’t have the experience of being born ‘in the wrong body’, who experienced a comfortable childhood, who generally felt okay, and who didn’t assert at the age of 4 that he was a boy, I once again felt like I just didn’t belong, even in my own community.

I wasn’t trans enough.

I wish I could say that this was an isolated feeling, that as the months went by I consistently stayed confident in my identity and my decision to begin HRT, but that would be a lie. I’m just not built that way. I remember a conversation with my mom shortly after I started HRT, where she asked me for the millionth time, “Are you sure?”, and for the millionth-and-one time I said, “Yes”, and lied to her.

I imagine that if you’re someone who exists within the binary, for whom the world is frequently black or white, deciding to transition might be an easy one. But I have questioned this every step of the way. And frankly, people just don’t like that uncertainty, especially around a decision like this. For most, the idea of ‘switching genders’ is an extreme, radical act. And while it isn’t a decision without risks, whether social or medical, it never felt radical. My fears were never about my own reaction to HRT — it was always about how others would react. And then one day (after a bunch of therapy) I realized that I didn’t care.

When I was six years old, growing up in South Africa, there was a day when I realized that something wasn’t quite right. I was riding in the car with my family and they were speaking about the mountain range in the distance. I always thought it was a beautiful blob of grey and blue, but suddenly I understood that they could see lines and cracks and magnitude in the mountain that I had never seen. And when I got glasses, I could suddenly appreciate it for how impressive it really was. Transitioning for me was never about being in the wrong body. It was always about appreciating what I already had while knowing that an adjustment like HRT would open me up to experience something even more profound. And that’s perfectly valid, too.