Welcome to #TransTuesday! Today we’re talking about something nearly every trans person is intimately familiar with, because we often can’t be who we are without it. And I’m going to tell you a (true!) story to help explain. Let’s dive into: TRANS COURAGE.
This all begins with a childhood story, and you’re going to wonder how it’s related to anything trans, but stick with me. It’ll make sense at the end.
No place has ever felt like home to me unless Susan was there with me, and even still no place has felt like home more than Los Angeles. I think the city itself feels more like home than any of the apartments we’ve actually lived in.
I feel somewhat disassociated from my past and childhood for reasons I’ve talked a bit about before, mostly in my thread on THE PAST and why it haunts those of us who transition as adults.
We also moved around a lot when I was a kid, so I never had too long to get attached to a place. The longest we ever lived somewhere was one house from when I was 8 to 16, so I suppose that’s as close to any kind of feeling of a childhood home that I have.
There was a playground nearby, and I went there with my friends often. But it wasn’t that big and we’d get bored with it fairly quickly, so we’d end up heading out into the fairly big (for a suburb) park that it was part of.
Way at the far end was a very modest lake, which I think was created as part of the subdivision. It took a while to walk there and all the nearby surrounding houses faced away from it, and most had their yards blocked by big fences.
So when you were there it felt kind of like you were in your own little world. There’s a pretty busy street nearby, which present satellite view shows is six lanes wide, so you could always hear the traffic. But it didn’t matter, it felt kind of like our little secret.
Sometimes we’d go fishing there, I guess because my parents bought me a pole and tackle box because it was a thing boys should have? I never really had any interest in fishing, and I made my friends put the worms on the hooks because I was NOT touching them.
You can tell I really loved it, can’t you? We never caught anything, and thinking about how this was an artificial lake, there probably weren’t even any fish in it. I don’t think we’d have known what to do with one if we caught it, anyway. I suspect there’d have been a lot of screaming.
There were always a lot of ducks though, and we’d find tortoises sometimes. We’d “skate” on it in our sneakers in winter when it was frozen over, which… was probably a very bad decision and I may be lucky to still be alive. But that ain’t the half of it.
Because “highly unsafe” basically describes me as a kid. Our neighborhood was relatively new and things were always under construction. In the summers I’d go poking through every construction site on the weekend when nobody was there.
Once I found a house that only had a basement foundation so far, and I jumped down inside it to explore and I had very, very little upper arm strength and couldn’t pull myself back up to get out. It took me over an hour to figure out how to escape that proto-basement.
It occurs to me now that my fascination with exploring buildings that were under construction and nowhere near finished is… probably related to my love of cutaways, blueprints, and technical diagrams. See SEARCHING FOR MEANING (when you’re trans and don’t know it).
Anyway, I never panicked when trapped in that basement (other than worrying I’d be home late). All of this is only to show you what this lake meant to my life back then, and so you understand the general nature of little Tilly’s insatiable curiosity (big Tilly has that too tho).
So the “corner” of this lake had a sewer runoff pipe that led into it. I went all around the lake on google maps street view trying to get an image of it, but due to the aforementioned houses ringing the lake, it’s basically blocked on every side.
So the pic I used before is the closest I could find with a quick image search. There were no rocky ledges in front of it, it just kind of came out of a hillside and dumped rainwater into the lake and its muddy shore.
I’ve always been someone whose imagination runs away with her (works well for being a writer!) and I could NOT stop thinking about what wonders might be deep inside that sewer pipe. I’d try to talk my friends into going in to see all the time, but none of them ever would.
I mean that speaks well of them, I guess. They weren’t imaginative banana clowns like me. But remember I’m the girl who jumped into an unfinished basement with 7’ high walls and no stairs without a single thought as to how I’d get back out.
So one hot summer day I was bored at the playground, and I was alone. My parents always told me to come back if none of my friends were around, but I never did. What a scamp! So I went down to the lake and poked around in the muck a bit.
I could hear the traffic and the ducks, and that weird kind of buzzy hum you get from bugs during midwest summers that I can hear so clearly in my mind, but couldn’t remotely tell you what actually made that sound.
The lake was always mostly still, though you’d get some tiny waves from what little wind could get between the houses or from the huge open field between the lake and the playground.
And I saw the drainage pipe.
And I couldn’t stop looking at it.
And my heart raced.
And you know where this is going.
I peeked around the side and looked in. PIIIIIIITCH. BLACK. When I tell you this gave me only a moment’s hesitation, well… yeah, I was actually kind of terrified, but the curiosity! What was in there? Whatever it was, I’D be the first to know!
I know it was hot and sunny that day, but I guess it must have rained recently because there was water running through the pipe. Not a lot, but enough that I couldn’t just walk in without getting my feet soaked. So (oh god, how did I not die)…
I leapt across the stream on the bottom, hit the side of the pipe with my left foot and shot my right foot out the other way… and I balanced myself with my legs spread wide OVER the stream, my feet at weird awkward angles due to the rounded sides of the pipe.
And then I… well I don’t know what you call it. It wasn’t walking. I’d pull one foot off the wall and shoot it forward to immediately brace it again, and then do the other side, so I could move down the pipe without wading through the water.
And so I went. Just… down into the darkness. It obviously got darker the further in I went. I don’t know where the nearest opening for rainwater to enter was, but it wasn’t close. Sounds got muffled. I couldn’t hear the traffic anymore.
I couldn’t hear the ducks, I couldn’t hear the buzzing insects. All I could hear was the running of the water underneath me, my sneakers as they scuffled along the walls, and my ragged breathing (because I was ding dang TERRIFIED).
Eventually I’d gone so far the opening looked like a pin prick behind me. I couldn’t see ANYTHING, it was just me and the curved concrete walls I could feel through the soles of my shoes and the sound of the water.
And I wasn’t worried about getting hurt, just about getting lost. I’ve always had GREAT spatial acuity. I can SEE shapes in my mind, and how they fit together. I’m GREAT at packing suitcases! Also at remembering convoluted paths through video games, even at that age.
So I was pretty sure I’d be able to find my way out, especially as I’d only gone in a straight line so far, but again: overactive imagination. What if I COULDN’T? What if I was lost down here? How would anyone ever find me?
Nobody would ever even think to LOOK down there. What if I was just stuck alone starving to death in the darkness forever??? What if while I was down there, there was a thunderstorm and water came rushing in and drowned me???
Note I did not think of these things before going in. It’s the basement foundation all over again.
Ah, to be a kid.
I was excited and fascinated and my heart was beating out of my chest. I was finally thinking about turning around when I noticed I could see a little better. There was light up ahead, and the first branch in the pipe.
Well I at least had to see what THAT was about, as I’d not seen or found anything else and that disappointment would not stand. So I continued on until I got to the opening, where it branched off to the right.
There was a weird little sort of lip where the two concrete pipes met, and water was running over it but I could stand on either side of that without too much trouble, which was a good spot to rest my feet.
So I got myself on that somehow and looked down this new avenue. And there was the first drain I’d seen from a street above, sunlight streaming down through the circular overhead grate.
I have no idea how long I had been in the dark, but the light hurt a little the way it cut through the dark like neon. I used my same “walking” shuffling method and went down the new pipe to the opening, and I looked up.
I have no idea where it was within the neighborhood. I have no idea what was up there. To this day I still don’t know. All I saw was bright blue sky.
If I ever go back to that town, I could probably walk around the streets near the lake and find the exact spot, assuming there’s been no major drainage construction in the intervening years. But I’m not sure I want to.
I guess I kind of do, buuuuut then again no, because it feels like that spot would then be somehow less mine, and less special. I dunno. But to see it from the other side of the drain would be… something.
The image of that neon-like shaft of light from above, the ONLY thing I could see in the blackout, has been seared in my brain since that day. I hope I never forget it. It was the first thing I think I’d ever experienced where I realized… this was MINE.
NOBODY else’s. Nobody else had seen this. Maybe nobody else ever would. I don’t know how long I stayed there, but it was a while, because for some reason I loved it and I didn’t want to go.
I suspect eventually the light let me see my watch and I realized I had no idea how long it would take me to get back out and I didn’t want to be late getting home, so I tore myself away and made it safely back out, without even getting my toes wet.
I never went back in, and I don’t really know why. Maybe I’d sated the curiosity. Or maybe the memory was just too special and I didn’t want to have it ruined or overwritten with repeated trips.
So why am I telling you all this? Because going into that sewer, ill-advised as it may have been, took all the courage I could muster. But I wasn’t going to let fear stop me. All through my life, I see myself doing the same, even if it took me a while (or too long!), I faced it.
Look at the post I made the day I got a makeover from a Hollywood makeup artist, which was when I knew that not only could I transition all the way, I HAD to because I finally got my first brief glimpse of the real me.
https://twitter.com/TillyBridges/status/1237470565344006144
A tweet I made on March 10, 2020 that reads: today I did something I’d been terrified to do for most of my life (I can’t tell you what it is, but it’s not dangerous so do not worry). And all I can tell you is that we only live once and if you’re wondering if you should do that thing that scaresyou? Fuck yes. Go do it. [purple heart emoji]
I don’t know if part of this came from me somehow seeing DEFENDING YOUR LIFE on tv as a kid, but it had a huge impact on me. We just watched it again last year and I don’t think I’d seen it since, and it was revelatory to discover how it had impacted me.
The Defending Your Life movie poster, showing Albert Brooks and Meryl Streep in white robes, holding hands and looking at each other in front of a billboard with a tram on it. The billboard reads, “Judgment City, just minutes away. Turn left onto the Past Lives Parkway.” The poster tagline reads, “The first true story of what happens after you die.”
The movie’s about this guy who dies and in the afterlife, has to answer for all the decisions he made where he let his fear override his desires, kept him from living the life he wanted and being the person he wanted to be.
The entire story is about facing your fears and not letting them control you, because you never ever know what’s waiting for you on the other side. And to NOT know, or to let those things go, can damage us in complex ways.
If you haven’t seen it, you absolutely should. It’s a warm hug and maybe it’ll change your life, too (I suspect Albert Brooks never thought it’d help a lady embrace her transness years later, but here we are).
Being trans in this world takes courage, EVEN THOUGH IT SHOULDN’T. Being trans should (and is!) just like being left handed or a redhead. It’s just a way some humans are. WE SHOULDN’T HAVE TO BE COURAGEOUS TO SIMPLY EXIST.
But we sadly do, because so much of the world hates us for no good reason. If you (somehow) need the reminder… translegislation.com is tracking 492 anti-trans bills introduced across the United States so far this year!
Nothing I feared in life ever held me back… EXCEPT anything relating to being trans. See the trans tuesday on THE FEAR OF EMBRACING YOUR TRUE SELF (and Halloween, costumes, and makeup).
You can also see the trans tuesday on HAIR, and how growing it out scared the crap out of me.
And you can see its follow up, HAIR 2, on how going for my first real haircut ALSO scared the crap out of me.
These things, ANYTHING related to my transness, was the drainage pipe at the lake. I saw it. I knew it was there. And I wanted to know what was down in those depths SO badly, but god I was SO scared to look. SO SO SCARED.
And I was afraid enough that I didn’t look inside for… too damned long. But eventually I went in. And it was awkward and terrifying, and I was worried I’d get lost in the blackout.
Until I found that neon shaft of light that explained it all. Hey look, you’re okay. This is why everything’s been so dark and confusing. You’re trans, and that’s OKAY, and you CAN be whoever you want to be, whoever you really are.
Explore that darkness. Find the light inside. Do what scares you. Be who you are.
(and watch DEFENDING YOUR LIFE, it’s great).
Look. Look UP.
Look beyond the grate keeping you in the dark.
It’s open blue sky, girl.
Just waiting for you.
Tilly Bridges, end transmission.
tillysbridges@gmail.com