Welcome to #TransTuesday! This past weekend I got to do something as myself for the first time, something that used to give me a ton of anxiety and that I was very bad at. So here we go INTO THE UNKNOWN aka WHAT IS HAPPENING aka A WHOLE NEW WORLD.
A few primers so you can understand where I’m coming from. If you’re not familiar with GENDER DYSPHORIA, that’s the place to start.
It also ties in a lot with the first trans tuesday on CONFIDENCE, and why I never had any pre-transition, and then discovering that suddenly had some.
And it’s also part of A PANDEMIC TRANSITION, and the ways that has impacted me and the things I can or cannot do.
Okay, so what the heck happened? This past weekend a good friend who lives on the other side of the country was in town, and had a get together for all his friends who live in LA as he doesn’t get to see us very often.
We were meeting in an outdoor rooftop bar in Hollywood, and Susan and I felt safe enough, pandemic-wise, to attend (which is great, because we adore said friend and missed him last time he was in town).
But as the date approached I realized this was a place I’d never been before. And outside of our friend who was hosting, it was going to be entirely people I’d never met before. And I started to wonder… what the hell this was going to be like.
Because despite coming out publicly in the summer of 2020, I’ve not had this experience before. I’ve gone places as myself, obviously, but only to, like, the grocery store or the bank or the pharmacy or to pick up food from a restaurant.
Due to all the restrictions the panettone has placed on us, I have not gone somewhere I’ve never been before, that would basically be full of people I’d never met before, since actually becoming the real me.
Pre-transition, events like this filled me with dread. I was incredibly socially awkward, which in my naivete I’d chalked up to just being a super introverted nerd. In reality, though, just an absolutely massive portion of that was due to my dysphoria.
As mentioned in the Confidence thread, a lot of that dealt with not wanting to be perceived (even though deep down I always wanted to finally be seen as a real person), because I did not know how to properly act out the part of the cis man that society told me I was.
I was terrified I’d do something that would cause me to be spotted as a total fraud, and then I had no idea what would happen.
I mean, in reality, probably nothing, because who meets someone for the first time and comes away with the impression of “that person seems to be faking their gender?”
But that fear was the overriding thing pumping through my veins. And the kicker is I didn’t even know that’s what it was. I just knew I HATED new places, and new things, and new people, and the feeling was so awful I wanted to dig a hole to crawl into and never ever come out.
In just writing about it I can still feel that inside me now, the sense memory is so strong. Because it permeated every human interaction, every new place I went, FOR MY ENTIRE LIFE.
All while being in utter despair because deep down I wanted nothing more than to experience things as myself and be recognized AS MYSELF, even though I didn’t know who or what that was, and couldn’t have told you that was what I was feeling!
Gender dysphoria is an absolute butt.
So as the date of this get together drew closer, I started to get anxious. But I was surprised to discover that it was ENTIRELY DIFFERENT than all the anxiety I was familiar with in situations like these for my whole life.
This new anxiety was much more mild, and honestly maybe it wasn’t even anxiety. It was an intense curiosity, and okay there was maybe a little bit of fear mixed in, but this was… different. It was the opposite of what I’d felt every time before.
Because now I was afraid that someone there would clock me as trans (I don’t think I pass, I shouldn’t have to, and I can’t even figure out if I would want to outside of the safety of it). See the trans tuesday on MISGENDERING AND PASSING.
Not that I believed any of the people our friend had invited would be transphobic (though one never knows where/when/how these things will manifest), but it was a public location. There would be employees and other customers at the bar.
But mostly I just had zero idea what to expect. Everyone has these situations come up, but they’re probably for much bigger things, right? Starting a new job, traveling to a part of the country or world you’ve never been, things like that.
All I was doing was driving a few miles to meet a friend. But everything I’ve ever experienced in my life wasn’t me, it was me behind ten pounds of lead and buried under two tons of concrete, wearing a costume of a man that didn’t fit, playing a part I couldn’t (and didn’t want to) act.
And when all of that is removed, because I’m just there as… ME…
The world is entirely brand fucking new.
It helped to have Susan there with me, an anchor to the familiar and loved. It also doesn’t hurt I have no doubt she would completely fuck up anyone who gave me shit for being trans, because she’s amazing like that.
Related: cis folks, BE SURE the trans people in your life know you’ve always got their backs, and that you will not tolerate anyone fucking with them. It means the world just to know we’re not out there alone.
Anyway, I felt hyper-attuned to everything around me. The world was stunning in its beauty. The decorative lights wrapped around a tree. The vibrance of the sunset (which honestly was probably only a B- by Los Angeles standards) almost left me breathless.
Every color was deeper and more intricate, every sound and voice and feeling was amplified. I was seeing and hearing and feeling them all for the first time.
But unlike my first forays into the world as myself, where EVERYTHING felt overwhelming as I was still adjusting (I’ve talked about that before, but I’ve done so many of these I can’t remember in which one, so you’ll have to go digging if you want more on that)…
This wasn’t overwhelming at all. In fact, it was… hm, what’s the word. Life-affirming? Tantalizing? I wanted MORE. I still do. It’s like I have this little reservoir inside me that’s been mostly empty my whole life, and suddenly things started filling it up.
A very sweet and tipsy lady asked me to take a photo of her and her mom, who I think she was giving the full Hollywood tour to, and I didn’t feel like I wanted to run away screaming? I took several for them and we talked and it was… nice? How??
A waiter complimented my boots, and I thanked him and talked about how they were great if I needed to stomp someone’s ass in a sci-fi movie, and he laughed. We chatted a bit. YOU DO NOT UNDERSTAND HOW REVOLUTIONARY THIS WAS.
I didn’t have to force myself to. I… didn’t feel like hiding?? WHAT?? I didn’t stumble for things to say or not know what the right thing to do was, I just… interacted with him like a fellow human being.
Pre-transition, my response to him would have been a slight smile and nothing else, or maybe a quiet “thanks” as I looked away or pretended to get a text or that something off to the side just caught my attention, in the hopes he’d leave and stop talking to me.
And not because he was horrible or awful, but because *I* felt horrible and awful due to all the aforementioned bullshit gender dysphoria saddled me with. I’m sure a lot of people thought I was a bit rude because of that, but if that was the cost, so be it.
I mean I hated the thought of people thinking that way about me, or that it might have hurt their feelings, but I felt trapped and like there was nothing else I could do. And now that’s just gone.
IT’S
JUST
G O N E
Another thing that’s bugged me is that I have so few photos of myself with Susan. I mean we have tons of photos from our life together, but none of them are ME. PHOTOS AND REFLECTIONS were always tough for me, as they are for a lot of trans people.
And they’re part of how incredibly difficult and painful THE PAST can be, even the happiest memories I have.
So getting photos of ME with the woman I love most in this world is really important to me. But if we’re stuck at home because of the pantheon, that’s not really possible. Kinda weird to keep taking photos of us together on the couch, y’know?
Besides, we have so many old photos together from places we went and things we did, and I want more like those. I want REAL photos of that stuff. Of US.
I can’t get full-body shots at home because our apartment is too damned small, so Susan took this one. Someone ELSE took a photo of me. And while I don’t love it, I don’t hate it. It causes no dysphoria. It’s just an okay photo of ME out in the world! And I need those too.
Susan even made me lean over to get a photo with this owl. Why? Because it’s weird. And goofy. And so am I and I’m so glad she told me to, and I LOVE this photo. That someone ELSE took of me! WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON?
Well I’m a fully-realized, self-actualized human being living HER life in the world for the first time, and it’s fucking magical. *I* hugged my friend for the first time, and not as the shell of a person buried inside a mountain and trapped by societal expectations.
I made some new friends. We had great discussions and I had… fun? Is that why people do this? You can… ENJOY new experiences and meeting people?
The world can be tremendously beautiful once you’re finally in it for real, friends. I’ve missed so much for so long. Do whatever it takes to get there. It’s more worth it than you can possibly imagine.
I want to dive head-first into the world and soak it up. The sheer beauty of it all, the cosmic dance of light and matter forged in the heart of stars and congregated here for all of us to experience together.
Here I am. And here I’ll stay.
Tilly Bridges, end transmission.
tillysbridges@gmail.com
