I’ve been told, by trans people in their forties or fifties, that I’m “so lucky” to be able to transition when I am, with the support I have. And that’s absolutely true. But it would have been nice to be able to transition ten years earlier. That’s true, too.

I imagine that, whenever you realize you want to transition, and begin that process – be it at six or sixty – you’re going to say, “If only I’d transitioned earlier!” Because being trans is about realizing something isn’t quite right, and going about fixing it. And even if that something is only wrong for a few months, it’s still wrong.

This isn’t to say I don’t harbor some jealousy against kids who are transitioning at 18, 15, 12, even younger. I have a short-and-sweet list of things I think I could have done better had I transitioned earlier. Experiences I wanted to take advantage of. People I might not have alienated quite so much. But I know that same jealousy is directed toward me by older trans men and women, and they’re just as entitled to their jealousy and regret as I am.

What I’m trying to focus on, then, is the time I have left, not the time that’s gone.

Becca's Life Map

And so, a tour of my life map.

The first twenty years of my life map circle around transitioning. Wearily at times, uncertain and unsteady. At others, I ran toward transitioning only to be brought up short by lack of confidence or lack of will.

I grew up on South Blvd, in a house with a large backyard and, out past the alley, a park in the center of the block. The park had a hill, perfect for sledding and rolling down and rolling down inside metal trash cans. (I look back in wonder at how indestructible children are.)

Panic attacks were a regular part of my life. When I was dropped off at preschool, I’d panic. When my parents left my brother and I with a babysitter, I’d panic. When I went on overnight trips or to sleepovers, I’d panic.

King Lab was my elementary school. Martin Luther King, Jr. Experimental Laboratory School. It was a magnet school, drawing kids from all over the district, and it was where my older brother was, three years ahead of  me. At one time it was the pride and joy of District 65, but by the time I arrive its test scores were slipping and teachers were leaving. I would pretend to be sick, go to the nurse’s office  to escape class, and try to hold the thermometer up to a lamp to fake a temperature. In fifth grade, I started getting picked on by bullies, and often preferred to stay inside at lunch rather than go out to the playground.

In sixth grade, I moved to NCSDS. North Shore Country Day School. From a 80 or 90 fifth graders across multiple classes, at Kind Lab, to one class of 25 or 30 sixth graders at NCSDS. I had to retake DARE, the drug-prevention class, because at King Lab dare was in fifth grade, while at NSCDS it was in sixth. This seemed massively unfair, but my protests fell on deaf ears.

Somewhere in these years we moved from South Blvd to Payne, the house I still find myself in when I’m “home” in my dreams. In retrospect, it was more house than my parents could afford, but it was beautiful, with two fireplaces, two upstairs bathrooms, an even bigger backyard, a garage, a patio. I missed the front porch from the house on South Blvd. But other than that, I came to love the house on Payne.

I went to NSCDS with my best friend from King Lab. Unfortunately, while he drifted toward the ‘cool’ kids, I drifted toward the video game geeks. NSCDS was well-managed (and private) so real bullying never became an issue. I never felt my physical safety threatened as it had been at King Lab. But it was a rich, conformist school full of rich, conformist kids. (I’m embarrassed to say they almost talked me into voting for Bob Dole in the school’s mock 1996 presidential elections. Dole!)

In seventh grade I had my Bar Mitzvah. Only looking back am I aware of how much this enforced, gendered experience has poisoned Judaism for me.

Friends at NSCDS were the first I came out to, though. I remember lying in bed at a sleepover (I was finally able to attend sleepovers, though longer overnight trips still sent me into a panic) saying, “I wish I were a girl. I’ve been thinking about killing myself.” My friends told me it was OK, that I shouldn’t hurt myself. But I don’t know if they even really responded to the whole “want to be a girl” part.

After the seventh grade overnight trip – which I panic attacked myself out of – I decided I would go on the eight grade field trip to DC. The summer before eighth grade, I went into therapy. I’d been in therapy before, for the same panic attacks, but not by choice and always grudgingly. Now, though, I had a mission: Washington, DC.

I worked with my therapist on controlled breathing, bio-feedback techniques, and I ended up making it to DC alright. This was also the first therapist I came out to. He was positive, not judgmental or expressing any desire to “fix” me, but he was also (self-admittedly) clueless about trans issues. He did help me come out to my parents, though, in what I thought would usher in my quick transition and the ability to leave behind boyhood.

Nope.

I set deadline after deadline after deadline, all self-imposed. “By the end of Freshman year, I’ll have started transitioning.” “By the end of Sophomore year, I’ll have started transitioning.” “By the end of high school, I’ll have started transitioning.” “By the end of college, I’ll have started transitioning.”

I actually managed to hit that last deadline, but it was one of dozens that have littered my life, and made me judge myself for not living up to my own idealized idea of how I should be leading my life.

High school was the first place I was able to explore any real independence, beyond hopping on a bike. I had growing input in what classes I took. I got my drivers license. I got a car. (Sparky, my grandmother’s 1984 Tercel hatchback. I loved that car. The speedometer topped out at 80, and it was teeny-tiny, but it was a great first car.) A computer in my room, the Internet in all its glory.

My first inklings of a queer community. Pride Youth, where I was brought by a friend. For weeks I said I was “bi-curious” with these horrible, awkward air quotes. It wasn’t until we had two trans guest speakers that I was able to say yeah, I was trans.

“Pride Youth, surely, would provide me with the community I needed to transition!” Community, yes. But there was no helpful pushes or nudges in that direction, no real guidance saying “this is what you should do.” I remember one night we broke up into a guys group and a girls group. I was invited with the girls group, which felt simultaneously good and awkward, and I sat there in silence the whole evening.

The Gay-Straight Alliance at high school? No, there I was perceived as one more straight (or possibly closeted) ally.

Looking back, I’m sorry that my friends freshman year all went to college after my sophomore year. I think they could have really helped get me in a place of confidence to start pushing for my own transition. Sophomore year was a dark time, and the dip in my previously high grades reflected it.

Junior year I found a new group of friends, largely stemming from the theatre classes I was doing with Piven. I was happiest there out of all my high school activities and groups. I wish I’d come out to my teachers there, and asked for their help or guidance. They were younger than I am now, so I don’t know what they would have done, but they felt really adult and cool at the time.

Going to Northwestern was my next big step. Moving out of the house, into a dorm, managing my classes and schedule. Living in the boys section of the dorm, though, and using the boys bathroom. Having my friends make fun of me for ‘shedding’ all over my room. I looked at some old pictures recently, and had sort of forgotten (or repressed…) how hairy I used to be. Going to the Gay Straight Alliance and feeling totally out of place.

It was at Northwestern that I took my first big active step toward transitioning, by going to a therapist who specialized in gender issues. She told me I probably wasn’t trans.

That experience threw me into the sharp turns and lost-ness of my gender map and, once again, my sophomore year was unpleasant and forgettable.

Junior year, I started dating the girl who became my long-time girlfriend, and she smoothed my life out unspeakable amounts. She continued to nudge me toward having the confidence to transition, and senior year I tried another therapist, was referred to an endocrinologist, and took that final step in my mind into “transitioning.”

If only it were that simple, though.

I have a tendency to move the goal-posts: transitioning is when I go to a therapist. No, it’s when I go to an endocrinologist. No, it’s when I go on hormones. No, it’s when I come out to X, or to Y, or to Z.

So I realize now that didn’t think of myself as “actually” transitioning until I was already well on my way. My life map reflects both my current understanding of transitioning, and how I viewed it when I was younger. Younger, I saw transitioning as an impenetrable fortress. Foreboding. Surrounded by moats and spikes and terrible dangers. My path was blocked on all sides, and I constantly took steps toward transitioning only to retreat.

Now, as much as I realize transitioning was and is a gradual process – made up of many smaller victories rather than one or two single defining moments – I do realize that going to see my therapist set me on the path to hormones, changing my name, coming out to friends and family and coworkers, living my life as Rebecca.

On the life map image at the beginning of this post, that’s where  I literally punched through the paper to continue drawing on another sheet. As a friend put it, that was my ‘through the looking glass” moment, where I fell (or leaped, or tentatively waded) into another world.

This was a world made of small steps interspersed with large accomplishments. Slowly building my female wardrobe wasn’t a monumental occasion, but going through my old clothing and getting rid of 90% of my boy stuff was. Having friends begin to call me Rebecca, one by one, wasn’t monumental. But going to work as Rebecca or seeing my extended family for the first time as Rebecca both were. Slowly, with unnoticeable changes, my confidence grew, my sense of self-worth grew, my comfort in my body grew.

And then I broke up with my girlfriend.

I don’t regret that decision, but I will always regret hurting her. This was one of my big periods of mid-transition self-doubt: Could I do anything differently to make things work? Would we have needed to break up if I’d just transitioned earlier? Why could I be more patient for her? Why couldn’t I take things slower?

Rereading those thoughts, I realize I was (and am) too hard on myself. Life isn’t always simple enough for one person to be at fault, and the other blameless. Sometimes both people didn’t do anything wrong, things just don’t work out. I don’t like the dismissive simplicity of that, but I’m trying to acknowledge its truth.

It has taken me the past year and a half post-breakup (including one brief period of getting back together with my ex) to feel comfortable standing on my own two feet.

And 2010 has been the Year of Change: I finally acknowledged that I’m single, and that that’s OK. I’ve started exploring what it means to date as Rebecca. I quit my job(!!!!!). I’m expanding my art and trying to make it my livelihood.

I’m sorry.

I’m sorry I stayed silent too long, spoke too softly to be heard, gave in too quickly.

My kindergarten classroom stretched along an endless hallway. There was a finger-painting station, a corner with cardboard building blocks, a book nook, a playhouse with a kitchen. Trim along the ceiling had numbers, one for each day of the school year, and we would hold a little classroom celebration every time we hit a number ending in zero. We sang, and drew, and played tag at recess. Once a week, I would leave the class and go down the hall to talk with the school psychologist. Even then, my parents knew something was wrong.

I’m sorry I didn’t tell her – in her office with reassuring colors and a calm far removed from the kindergarten class – that there had been some mistake, that my bowl-cut should have been reserved for a boy, could I trade in my button-down shirts for pigtails, please?

I’m sorry I chose blue, rather than pink. My bunk bed was blue (a hand-me-down, perhaps that doesn’t count), my walls after we moved were painted blue (light blue, not too manly), my walls after we moved again were blue (still light blue, still not too manly), my jeans were blue (but so were everyone’s, that doesn’t count either). The sky was blue as I looked up from the soccer field, wondering why I was playing on the boys team, watching kites overhead and wishing I could fly away, too. The cold water of Lake Michigan was blue, where I raced in wearing only swimming trunks, my skinny hairless body splashing to the surface and sending ripples toward my mom, who laughed, my dad, who laughed and splashed back.

I’m sorry I couldn’t control my/our/your body better. I tried. I tucked my penis between my legs and stood, looking at you in the mirror. I snuck into my parents’ room and tried on my mom’s one-piece bathing suits, tucking dangly bits out of the way and stuffing the top with tissues or socks. When she confronted me, I denied that I’d ever gone through her things and she let the matter drop. Even after I switched from briefs to boxers, I kept a pair of briefs hidden in a drawer because I liked the way they let me hold everything tight, up, out of the way, smooth.

I rejected the idea that hair could be springing up anywhere but the top of my head, denied that a foreign and unwanted growth was spreading across my skin, was repulsed by the way hairs painlessly slid out of follicles, like foul vegetation bursting from a decaying corpse. I wanted my skin to hurt with each hair’s pinprick, their escape into sunlight, to show how wrong and unnatural they were. I’m sorry my will and desire couldn’t suppress their growth. I’m sorry for the hormones and the hair and the height and all of the other h-words.

I’m sorry for all the photographs, especially the ones where I look happy. Where I forgot that the moment would be recorded in time as a testament to boyhood. Against girlhood. The pictures and home videos that stand as “proof”: here was a boy. The gifts and toys and chotchkies with that name on them; my name, ostensibly. Your name. Baby momentos and picture frames and penny banks and train statues. Yearbooks with inscriptions written to me, to him. “See you next year!” “Keep in touch!” If I could, I would take back the scrawled signatures on countless documents: homework, the inside cover of book after book after book, postcards.

Even my handwriting was passed from me to you, from me to me, from me to us. A handwriting which scrables to take hold on a horizontal line and causes me to wince when I see the same sloppy angles or curves as my father. Here, typing and technology has been a curse: my speed at typing made me impatient with the hand-written word, makes slowing down and taking my time seem an excrutiating waste. I saw my handwriting develope into something blocky and masculine and ugly, and I’m sorry I didn’t alter its course and gift you with something more graceful.

I’m sorry for the vocal chords which still crack on occasion, the singing voice that is pleasant only in a masculine range, the energy it takes to stay light and feminine. I’m sorry that yelling and projection usually involves dropping into a deeper range, one I don’t particularly like hearing from myself. That during vocal warmups or group exercises backstage I try to mask where my voice breaks.

I’m sorry I didn’t spirit away makeup to practice putting on, didn’t enlist girlfriends to help me learn how to look pretty. I’m sorry I left you with hands that shake and a sense of overwhelming confusion and inadequacy.

I’m sorry that you run into parents of childhood friends and enemies, that interactions which should be quick and quickly forgotten become slow and prying and awkward. That mom receives a hug and you receive a handshake. Because, in their eyes, you’re not the woman she is.

I’m sorry my existence has given such power to others, that they can bring you crashing down with a pause or a pronoun.

I’m sorry the only shoes I had to wear to my brother’s funeral were platforms, leaving me towering over family and friends and mourners, because my wardrobe was/is still woefully incomplete. Bending down to give and receive hugs, over and over, pretending I felt confident as the woman I was presenting as. Being ignored by cousins who you didn’t want to talk to anyway but would have liked the courtesy to be acknowledged by them.

I’m sorry I stayed silent too long, spoke too softly to be heard, gave in too quickly.

I’m sorry it’s difficult to correct the mistakes I made.

I’m sorry you’re hurting.

I’m sorry.

• Are there advantages to being a woman as opposed to being a man?

Advantages for who? For me, yes: I’m happier with myself and with my body, enjoy wearing clothing and makeup, enjoy being perceived as a woman.

For someone who identifies as a man? Probably not. I think women – in general – have more clothing and presentation options today than men. That is, a woman can present from relatively butch (even going so far as to wear mens clothing) to super-femme, and still be a ‘woman.’ Men, on the other hand, have fewer options for clothing/makeup/etc without having their ‘man’ status questioned. But those are all subjective; being a woman isn’t “better” than being a man, just different.

But it is better for me.

• Are there advantages to being trans?

Being trans gives you the opportunity – hell, forces you – to think much more in detail and at length about your own identity and gender than being cis. I feel like the choices I’m making about presentation and how I gender myself are a lot more conscious than for many of my friends, and I’m doing so with more intention. They haven’t had to think about their own gender, and so many of them haven’t. (Or, hadn’t until I forced them to by transitioning and talking about it at great length!)

Being trans has given me the opportunity to dive into the trans and queer communities both on- and off-line, this blog being a big example of how I’m doing that.

Is all that worth the pain and difficulty of being trans? I’m not sure yet; I’m still too much in my transition to make that call. But I’d be lying if I said there were no advantages to being trans. At least, I’ve had a few places where I’ve been able to make lemonade out of lemons. I’m just hoping that I’ll ultimately feel that way all the time, not just every once in a while.

• Have you had any regrets after transitioning?

That I didn’t transition earlier. I’ve written a lot about my feelings of regret, and that’s the number one thing I’m trying to work on emotionally right now: Being OK with where I am, and not living in a land of ‘if only”s. I also regret that my transition has been difficult for the people in my life who I love, and who love me. I don’t think there would have been any way to prevent that, but (again) I play a pretty constant game of “If only I’d…” It’s not healthy, and I’m working on stopping, but it’s a process.

But do I regret transitioning? Not for a second.

• How did you react when you first realized you were trans?

I don’t really remember having a lightbulb moment where I realized I was trans, so I’m not sure how to answer this question. I always knew I’d rather be a girl than a boy, but didn’t start to learn what that meant – the language associated with it – until getting online in late middle school. There’s definitely been a sadness around my understanding of being trans, because for many years I thought (incorrectly) that it meant I couldn’t/wouldn’t be happy, couldn’t/wouldn’t live and present myself successfully as a woman, wouldn’t/couldn’t find someone to date or who would be attracted to me, etc.

I’m definitely on a good path, but being trans is hard. No doubt.

That’s a tough one to answer. How did you know you wanted to be a girl, anonymous questioner? (Or wanted to be a boy?)

For me, it wasn’t so much that I wanted to be a girl that I knew I wasn’t a boy. I imagined being a girl was better, I hoped it was right for me, and I wished I were a girl. But I wasn’t positive that it would be until I did it. Maybe a good analogy would be the question, “How do you know you’re hungry?” Well, because you’re hungry! It’s a state of being, something you know you are or you aren’t. I didn’t know I wanted to be a girl because I liked dresses or makeup or dolls. I knew it because it was true.

• What do your family and friends think?  Did anyone give you moral support in making your decision?

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: I am spoiled, blessed, privileged, and thankful that my friends, family, and coworkers have been so supportive during my transition. I’ve had people (family, mostly) react in a confused way, but I’ve never had anyone who was important to me act in a negative or intentionally hurtful way.

My experience, however, is the exception. It’s (unfortunately) not the rule. But I’d like to work toward a world where my experience – of the people important to me being supportive and enthusiastic of my transition – is the norm.

• Did you lose friends or family relationships?

As I said above, no one important. Some relatives, who I already wasn’t close to, I’m now even less close. Likewise, some people I was casually friend/friendly with drifted apart. But – thankfully and knock-on-wood – I haven’t had any really, openly negative reactions to my transition, or my coming out to someone.

• How long have you felt you were transgender?

This is sort of related to the first question in this post. Rather than expand on that, I’ll quote myself. From “I think I want to be a girl”:

…as early as I can remember having a concept of gender, I knew I would gladly switch bodies with any of my girl friends. There was not a doubt in my mind I’d be happier with the prospect of growing up into a woman rather than a man. I fantasized about magical gender-swapping spells, sci-fi mind-transfer rays, alternate timelines, and even more outlandish possibilities (and I still do…see any of my posts on trans fiction for more on that subject). I had no problem asking, “Why am I not a girl?” or saying “If only I was a girl” or “I wish I was a girl.”

That’s it for tonight. Not even half way through the questions! I’m speaking to the Loyola (college and above) class on Thursday, and the high school class that submitted these questions on Friday. I’ll definitely try to post more answers on this blog, though. It’s been a good writing exercise.

What I realized, when I heard [in Trans Form] about the photo albums, and the pictures on the walls of her [Rebecca's] parents’ house, was that these were the memorabilia of an occupation, held onto and commemorated by its collaborators (witting or unwitting). Yes they represent a historical “truth,” a “past” one does not want to “deny”–but so do guns and chains and whips and bombs, and you don’t see them in the family photographs. Well, not if you were on the receiving end, anyway.

That concept, viewing photos or keepsakes of my past as “the memorabilia of an occupation,” finally clicked with me today.

This past weekend, my dad and I were talking about my depression. I was saying that I regretted not transitioning earlier, and he was saying he was sorry for not doing something when I was younger. Seeing something, noticing my unhappiness and its cause. And he said that, with the more tangible problems my older siblings had, it was easy to see me – with good grades, friends, a voracious apatite for books, no small skill at playing piano – as the ‘normal’ child. The child who didn’t need ‘fixing.’

And I realized, as Cedar indicated, that where we find ourselves today is not simply a result of the “truth” of history. It’s a result of how that history is viewed.

I’m angry at my parents for not knowing I was trans earlier. For not hearing my hints or cries for help before I officially came out to them. For not finding an active, participatory role to help me transition when I did come out to them. But I’m working on expressing that anger about things past, and they’re working on expressing their regret. It’s a process I very much need to keep at, but it’s one that has already begun.

What I realize now, what finally fell into place today, is that I’m also angry at them for celebrating the “occupation,” as Cedar puts it. I’m angry at them for remembering as joyful (or even merely placid) the time I felt as painful and turbulent. I’m angry at them for happily framing and mounting photos that remind me of how horribly trapped I felt at all times. I’m angry at them for mourning the loss of someone who was never really there, regardless of how ‘normal’ he was or how little ‘fixing’ he seemed to need. And that anger, I haven’t really even started to address.

My therapist said, earlier tonight, that I can think of pre-transition life as a sort of war prison: not something whose time is to be celebrated, but an experience from which strength can be drawn. Her thought was that I don’t need to be proud of having been a prisoner of war, but I can damn sure be proud I came out alive.

Except it’s difficult to find pride in that when no one else sees you as having been imprisoned. The people I value in my life have all acknowledged the validity and importance of my transition. But I’m still having such huge difficulty in grieving for the life I didn’t lead, and mourning the one I did, in part because I’ve (mostly) tried to do so alone in my understanding of that grief and loss.

I worry that asking my parents to take down old photos of me will simply mask some deeper discomfort I have with myself. And yet, from where I am right now,  I don’t want them to celebrate or commemorate those memories due to how painful they are for me. And that’s not simply because it brings up anger at them, but also anger toward myself: why didn’t I transition earlier?

“Why didn’t you transition earlier?” I ask my younger selves, trapped in those photographs.

I’m not sure what to make of this.

On the one hand, it feels rather momentous: Of the 25 years I’ve been alive, 24 have been at least partially presenting as a man, with only as a woman. But all the years ahead stretch out into woman, with this past year being the first brick laid onto that path.

On the other hand, though, I’m still so incredibly conscious of where I do feel uncomfortable. Where the transition still seems like an ever-present weight on my mind, my shoulders.

I had a few situations recently where I realized, in the presence of people who just met me, that they didn’t know I was trans; I was passing as a “real” woman. (We’ll get into a discussion about the problems with the word ‘passing’ another time. Any suggestions as to alternate language would be welcome.)

The first was at a Christmas party. I’d gone with a friend to a party hosted by some people she knew from work. We chatted with two other women by the trays of cookies guests had brought, and the Door Country wine that made me exclaim and share memories of going to Door County as a child. (I really want to order some online, and may have to give in if I can’t find any locally.) The discussion turned friends who were pregnant, and it wasn’t until walking home with my friend did I realize that they thought I could get pregnant, too. The conversation was, for me, a very different conversation than it presumably was for them. For me, the discussion was entirely hypothetical.

Then, this past weekend, I was at a friend’s house playing some boardgames. I was there with two girls, both of whom knew me pre-transition, and two guys, who I’d just met. We ended up playing Boys v Girls, something I used to hate but now can kind of enjoy. Sort of. Anyway, the teams had been self-named “Too Many Balls” and “Not Enough Breasts,” respectively. (I was the most well-endowed on my team, go figure.) I had a moment where I planned to chime in, with my default sense of humor, “Of course, our team has some balls, but yeah, ours don’t compare to yours.”

But I realized, “They don’t know I have balls. They assume I don’t have balls. Maybe I don’t want to out myself with that joke…”

As I said, I’m not sure what to make of this anniversary. I have trouble being super excited about it, since I’m only good at being self-deprecating and dismissive: Why celebrate the few things I’m doing right, when I can dwell on the many I’ve done wrong? Or not right ‘enough’?

Which is obviously a bullshit. But something I’m really good at.

I’m really looking forward to the next few weeks, when work is slow, to take some time for myself. And, yes, pamper myself a bit. Buy some things for myself. And try to get over this recurring block I construct for myself!

(For those of you who aren’t theatre people, tech refers to technical rehearsals, where lights/sound/etc are set. It comes before dress rehearsals and/or previews, the final rehearsals before a show opens.)

The show is going fine, although I’m planning to head out of work early tonight and finish up some sound and video work. And yet, I’m really scared about it opening on Friday. Not simply stressing out, but scared. And, after thinking about what parts of the show terrify me, I realized I’m not just dealing with stage fright (although there’s some of that) but with some deeper internalized transphobia.

It keeps stemming back to this issue, of recalling how I felt about gender and my own identity growing up and in comparison to now. I can’t get over hatred of my younger-self for not doing anything about being trans, and a hatred toward my body for being trans in the first place. I don’t want to be trans – I want to be done with it; with the show, with transitioning, with being trans in the first place.

And so going on stage and celebrating my trans identity is rubbing me a little raw.

Which isn’t to say the entire piece is celebratory. I’ve tried to acknowledge that I’m on a difficult journey. But I feel obligated to end more positive than negative, if for no other reason than saying how I actually feel seems so vulnerable, in a show where I’m obviously already putting a lot of myself out there.

I was thinking, yesterday, about a line in the show, spoken by my fifteen year old self: “Puberty is already shaping my body in ways that I hate. Bringing me closer to manhood. Taking me further away from being a woman.” For whatever reason, it made me remember my dad teaching me how to shave.

We were living in our second house, the house I still identify most as “home” in my memories. We were in my parents’ bathroom, and I had a nice layer of fuzz on my face and neck. He showed me how to apply shaving cream, to make sure the water wasn’t too cold or too hot when rinsing the razor, how to shave without cutting yourself.

I felt totally humiliated by the whole experience. I couldn’t voice it at the time, but it was like someone rubbing my face in my masculinity, in how my body was going one direction when I so desperately wanted it to go in the other.

I realized, though, that I have something of the same sensation with ‘feminine’ experiences – getting makeup or buying clothing for the first time. I do get over it, something which never really happened for shaving, but the very first time I’m doing these things I can’t help but feeling like I should know what I’m doing and would, if only my life had turned out right.

Getting back to the subject of this post (internalized transphobia, for those of you still with us) I’m struggling a lot with being OK – let alone happy – with who I am. It is so damn easy to see the things I don’t like about my body, and source them back to being trans. (Not helped because my stupid girl friends are too attractive! I need uglier friends!) (Not true, friends who are reading this. I love you!)

I’m really looking forward to have some me-time after the show, because I think the big thing that will help with all this is time. Time to get to know myself better, time to be myself, time to reflect and let all the big changes of the past year or so sink in.

And hopefully I’ll make it through the weekend…

Shell looked thoughtful. “I don’t know, Jenny. About ninety percent of the time, you seem like the happiest person I know. And then, every once in a while, I”ll catch you looking out a window like that. I don’t get it. How come you’re so sad, if you’re happy?”

[snip]

“I don’t know, Shell. I said. I mulled it over. “I get tired sometimes, of being different.”

[snip]

I wiped my eyes. “It’s like, I went through this whole amazing change, and at last I feel content, at last I feel whole. But what about that kid I used ot be? What about all those memories? That’s the one thing they can’t give you in surgery: a new history.”

I’ve been having a really hard time with that: how do I reconcile who I am now, who I want to be, with who I was?

The weight of that history, of the twenty-plus years I was living as male, feels like it’s overwhelming the ten months I’ve been living full-time as Rebecca.

Already ten months? Only ten months?

It feels like I, Rebecca, am spending each and every day putting down bricks, building a wall to defend against this boy or this man that I never wanted to be. Who keeps peeking over, around, pushing the wall over, screaming for attention.

I don’t do it as often anymore, but I used to have conversations in my head between myself and Rebecca, who was not yet “myself.” I thought of this because it’s something Boylan talks about having done – albeit in a slightly different way – in I’m Looking Through You. (I’m curious if this is common among trans individuals, or just among angsty teenagers in general.)

My conversations would usually start when I was feeling particularly stupid, or sad, or masculine. She’d start, this Rebecca that I imagined myself as in some alternate universe, speaking to me across the barrier which separated our realities: “You’re never going to be happy if you keep on like this.”

“Stop it.” I had no interest in hearing about what I should be doing, particularly from myself.

“I’m serious – you need to get off your ass! Go find a therapist! A doctor! Hormones!”

“I don’t want to hear it. Please stop.” It was true; the possibility that I could be doing something seemed, and seems, so tremendously tragic. That my pain and suffering was my own damn fault.

“Why?”

“Because I’m not going to do anything. I’m going to sit here and be sad. Sit here and wish things were different. Sit here.”

“Then why don’t you just kill yourself?” This line was always particularly seductive. Why not kill myself? Clearly, nothing was ever going to change. Friends would be happy, family would be happy, I wouldn’t. Maybe for brief moments, sunlight shining through the clouds, but never for long.

“Go away.”

“Just do it. Kill yourself, and it’ll be over. You’re never going to be me.”

“Go away.” And she would, for a time.

She always came back.

Now that I am Rebecca, that I’ve crossed the barrier between realities, I’m realizing that I want to have those conversations more than I ever did when they were a regular occurrence. The fact that I can’t yell at myself across ten, fifteen, twenty years of time is an ache I didn’t realize I had. Because she was fucking right, all along: I could have gotten off my ass and done something about who I was, who I was going to be. I could have gone through puberty, correctly, the first time instead of needing an awkward and painful do-over ten years later. Erased and rewritten two decades of photographs and memories and stories and friendships.

It feels petty and immature, but I don’t want to have played the male love interest on stage, had my picture taken with the boys’ group at prom, hurt loved ones during my transition, been groped by someone who thought I was in drag, had to tell the same coming out explanation over and over and over, had (and continue) to struggle to figure out clothing and makeup and dating ten years after everyone around me. I don’t want to be, as Boyaln said, different.

I’m sitting in the present, looking back at a past frozen and permanently set, as if in impenetrable crystal, furious at myself, grieving for myself, regretting myself.

I’m ready to not be different, please.

At least, people saw me that way: I had a boy’s name, boy’s clothing, wore swimming trunks to the pool or the beach, had a Bar Mitzvah (however grudgingly), changed in the boys’ locker room before gym, wore a suit and tie to important family occasions, participated in Indian Guides (however briefly), had my hair in a buzz cut every summer for years,  played on the boys’ teams after school, lived in the boys’ section of the dorm at college, was never taught how to put on makeup…

Looking through old photo albums, or at the pictures on the walls at my parents’ houses, it’s clear – boy, boy, boy.

I wanted a girl’s name, girl’s clothing, a girl’s swimming suit, a Bat Mitzvah (well, maybe not), to change in the girls’ locker room before gym, to wear skirts and dresses to important family occasions, participate in Indian Princesses, wear my hair long and flowing, play on the girls’ teams after school, live in the girls’ section of the dorm at college, know how to put on makeup from a lifetime of experience …

I’m not sure how to reconcile these lists. To own up to my history outs me as trans and brings up a long stretch – the first twenty or so years of my life – that’s at odds with how I see myself now. When I talk with people about Judaism, about my struggling relationship with it, do I acknowledge my Bar Mitzvah and out myself as trans, or do I say I had a Bat Mitzvah and rewrite part of life? When a coworker talks about buying suits or ties, do I chime in with memories of my experiences, or do I stay silent?

Do I ask my parents to take down pictures of the first two decades of my life? To wipe clean my life before 22 or 23? To cover the mirrors which reflect the parts of myself I don’t want to remember, don’t want to see?

I want to catch up to the friends around me who can effortlessly apply eyeliner while rushing to get ready for a night out. Who can dress themselves with confidence that they won’t look like a fool.

I want to stop receiving mail (male) addressed to someone who no longer exists.