I’m still not used to ‘the transition’ being something that’s more in the past than the future. I’m not sure I’m “done,” whatever that would mean, but I’m forced to admit that I’m more transitioned than not. Which is weird for me, in a really unexpected way, because I’m so used to having “The Transition” as something in the future, something to plan for, an over-arching goal in my life. And now that I’m slowly moving past it, I’m struck with the unsettling experience of not knowing what comes next.

I’m having trouble getting out of the mindset that my body isn’t good enough, and needs to be improved. (I mean, in a larger ‘transition’-type way, bigger than simply losing some weight or whatever.) How do other women deal with that? I don’t want to spend the rest of my life pining over not being curvy enough, booby enough, thin enough, instead of focusing on the curves and boobs and body I do have. When someone at a bar says, “Wow, do you work out?” I want to be able to take the compliment and smile instead of  feeling like my muscles make me ‘too male.’

Being an educator, an authority on trans issues, a role model, is also something that’s still new for me. I’ve been doing more workshops with high school and college students, which has been really enjoyable, but also somehow makes me uncomfortable. Why wouldn’t I follow my own advice, ten years ago? Who am I – who still often feels weak and scared and unsure – to be called “brave” for how I’m living my life? I feel like I still have one foot stuck in the past, instead of firmly looking to the future. Instead of focusing on making up for lost time, or living the rest of my life, I get pulled into regret for what I feel like I missed.

I haven’t found many resources for this experience, even though my therapist tells me it’s not uncommon. Most trans narratives end after “The Transition,” with a “Happily Ever After.” Websites I’ve found on transitioning, being trans, living as a trans woman, don’t talk about getting over the regret of not transitioning earlier, moving past the (universally female) experience of not feeling pretty enough.

Anyone have some advice?

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.

That, realistically, there’s a very slim chance I possibly could have transitioned earlier than I did.

And yet, I keep beating myself up about it. Regretting that I don’t live in the fantasy life I constructed for myself, of going to school as a girl, experiencing adolescence as a girl, growing up into a woman. And I realized it has a lot to do with my own sense of agency, or lack thereof.

I’m not religious. I’m spiritual, and hope that there’s something more to existence than what we can see, but would consider myself agnostic (if anything). But I don’t believe that there is any overarching ‘plan’ or that we all have a destiny. I think humanity has enough good in it (and evil) to have a sense of wonder about our existence without having a man behind the curtain, so to speak.

But that does mean it’s hard to reconcile or come to terms with bad things that do happen. If I blame myself for my pain and suffering, if I take that responsibility onto myself, it causes a lot of grief. I send myself into depressive patterns, and don’t end up any happier for it.

But it makes sense. I understand how the world works: I’m unhappy because of my own actions.

Conversely, lets examine what happens if I say, “I did everything I could. I transitioned as early as I possibly could, and it’s not my fault that being trans is inherently difficult and emotionally painful.” In that case, the world is capricious and unfathomable: I’m unhappy because I had the poor luck to be born trans. Most of the pain that followed was not my fault, it was simply how the world works. That doesn’t mean we can’t work to change the world, and make things easier for future trans kids, but there was nothing more I could have done to make my situation any better.

That’s really scary, because it totally removes my own sense of agency from my life. I don’t mean that this should be taken to an extreme, that nothing bad that’s happened to me is my own fault, but it means a good chunk of my life no longer makes sense; it didn’t happen because I lived my life well or poorly, it just happened because it happened.

It’s a moment where some religion would be nice. The idea that everything happens for a reason, any reason, is really seductive, even if I don’t believe it’s true.

I’m working on getting through this, though. On letting go of letting go of the blame I hold for myself, and focusing on my history as a great foundation to build a future, rather than a shitty past to drag me down. I have some posts brewing that I’m hoping will eventually make way for my next performance piece, focusing on just these issues. But it’s a hard process, and not one I’m hugely looking forward to. . .

We also talked for a while about regret and how to look forward.

I explained to him how I’ve been feeling like I’m wallowing in regret. That I’m consciously aware of how good I do have it, but still can’t get over this fantasy that things would be better had I transitioned earlier or not had to transition at all. (By which I meant ‘had been born female.’ Don’t worry.) I know it’s futile, and I know it’s harmful, but I can’t get out out of it. He responded that I need to find a way to look forward, not  backward; regret over what’s passed can consume you. (Tell me something I don’t know…)

On the train ride home, I was rereading some essays from Yes Means Yes and one in particular struck home. From Sex Worth Fighting For:

I remained preoccupied by fears that something “truly” bad would happen, and often imagined gang rape and murder that would finish me off for good. It would probably be committed by boys who didn’t plan to go that far but felt like trying out their power on somebody who seemed like an easy target. This scenario felt so possible to me as to be the likely next step in my life.

That really resonated with me, because I have been feeling something of survivors guilt over not having suffered more harassment or assault than I have. Rather than count myself lucky – though I do that, too – I see myself as unfairly privileged, and of simply waiting for the other shoe to drop and for me to have the shit kicked out of me or worse.

The author of Sex Worth Fighting For continues in her essay, saying that what finally made things click and feel like she was taking an active response to her fears was a self-defense class. I’ve thought about that before, but I’m trying to fit it in context now with my experiences this past weekend at laser tag and pole dancing.

I’m wondering if taking a self-defense course, of explicitly taking action that says, “Yes, I’m potentially vulnerable, but I’m going to do something about it,” might make me feel less stressed about (say) taking the risk of being sensual or exhibiting a more femme side in public, and even in private.

Have any of you taken any self-defense courses? What were your experiences with them?

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 am stuck in myself, trapped between a history I don’t want and a future I can’t see.

Life branches out in front of me, and every opportunity must be taken. None can be missed. Every missed opportunity is a mark against me, of weakness and laziness and lack of strength. Because I am still chasing down the opportunity I did miss: a chance at transitioning younger, quicker, more gracefully.

And so I chase and I chase and I chase. And so I try to catch something lost forever. And so I wind myself up, let myself loose, and fail. Again. I hold myself up to standards impossible to meet.

No opportunity satisfies, because I could have should have would have done it better. I should have committed more fully. I should have given it more of my time. I should have started earlier, procrastinated less, given more of myself. I should have. I should have. I should have. Whatever ‘it’ is, it’s always the same.

Every day is doomed to failure, from the start.

I. Can’t. Win.

Why bother playing a game that can’t be won? At moments like these, I fantasize about removing myself from the board entirely. Playing a rigged game seems like an effort in futility.

And I can’t for the life of me – for my life, for living, for the in-out-taking of another breath – figure out how to change the rules. How to not judge every waking moment of every waking day against the failed expression of an eight year old, the broken and aborted attempts of self-definition at fourteen, the years of silence after closeted silence.

I would like to treat each moment as itself, not as a cipher for transitioning. My record catches and skips, “transitioning, transitioning, transitioning, transitioning, transitioning -” I open my mouth to speak but, inevitably, the same rats and insects and snakes crawl out, writhing, to consume me. Transitioning, transitioning, ALWAYS FUCKING TRANSITIONING!

Who did I wrong to be cursed with such a body, such a voice?

My clockwork is not well-oiled. It does not run smoothly. I am not of solid construction or resilient make. My gears grind throughout the day; I feel misalignment and catching in my chest and hear the throb of poor workmanship from head to toe. Fragile pieces seem to fall off, delicate into dust.

My hands shake and cannot pick a flower without gouging into the dirt, exposing the open and raw earth.

I cannot brush the hair from your face without hurting you.

If I hold you, I will shake us both to pieces.

As is my habit when driving to work on Saturday afternoon, I flipped to This American Life. (If you’re not familiar with the show, you really should be. It’s a weekly program that has various documentary-ish stories about everything ranging from haunted houses to the financial crisis. Start by listening to something from this list, and go from there.)

Anyway. I’d heard the promos for this week’s episode. It was about finding that one-in-a-million person, the one who you weren’t sure you’d be able to find. Act One of the episode was about a man going back to China to find a woman he’d met years earlier, and I caught the tail end of the act when I switched to NPR. Act Two started up after the station break, and was totally unexpected: it was about two eight-year-old transgender girls. (The episode is available online here, via This American Life.)

The act was called ‘Tom Girls’ and was about a conference on the west coast for families with transgender children. These two girls, Lilly and Thomasina, had never met other transgender children and were amazed that someone else might share the same experiences they did, the same fears and hopes.

It sort of blindsided me as I was driving, because they didn’t lead into it with any indication of what was coming. It was a well-done setup: two girls saying “We’re best friend because we’re both nice. We both like Chinese food. We’re both eight. We both have crooked teeth.” And then, at the prompting of the produced, “Oh yeah. We’re both girls. We’re not boys.” At which point they do the ‘big reveal’ that these girls are trans.

They’re also extremely eloquent (and/or the piece is very well-edited). When speaking about whether or not their friends know they’re trans, one of the girls says, “Well, some do. But some just think I’m normal. It’s nice, sometimes, to have someone just think you’re normal.”

I think that’s about the time I started crying, driving over to pick up my friend.

Because she’s right. It is nice to sometimes just be ‘normal.’ (I thought, as I was driving to pick up my friend who stage managed my show about being trans, to drive up to the theatre I’ve taken classes and taught at for fifteen years. Where I’m normal. But not ‘not trans.’)

Thomasina and Lilly are also adorably young; simultaneously worldly and naive. One of the girls speaks about how it might be bad if news of her being trans got out, that reporters would “bang on [her] door, yelling ‘How do you feel being transgender?!’ Or ‘Why did you change your name?!’ Or “I like your new haircut! What’s your favorite kind of jewel?!’ That would be very painful, and annoying.”

This American Life doesn’t sugar-coat Lilly and Thomasina’s life, sharing quotes from both the girls and their parents about how other kids tease them at school, other childrens’ parents complained to the principal at school, how Lilly and Thomasina’s parents themselves have had trouble adjusting to the big change in their childrens’ lives.

For all that, it’s really hard not to fantasize about what life would have been like had I come out to my parents when I was five. “Sure, a lot about growing up and going to school and socializing would have been harder,” I think to myself, “but it was hard anyway. It was hard because I wasn’t out and transitioning.” Of course, I try to contrast that with what I’ve been told by older trans men and women, that I’m “so lucky” to be transitioning so young.

Ultimately, I know both are true: I’ll probably always wish that I’d come out and started transitioning twenty years ago, when I was Lilly and Thomasina’s age, and that doing so probably would have made many parts of my life easier. But I’m also extremely glad I’m transitioning now and not twenty years in the future.

I just need to try and focus more on the ‘being happy now’ part than the ‘regretting what’s past’ part.

At this party the other night, when I was talking with these other women about pregnancy and giving birth, it reminded me that I’ll never be pregnant. That I’ll never give birth.

Lots of women can’t get pregnant, for lots of different reasons. And, because I stored sperm, I will be able to parent children, something that most of those women can’t do. But hearing about the experience of giving birth, and in particular the experience of holding your newborn child right after giving birth, teetered between bittersweet and outright sad.

To listen to these women talk about the wonder of holding a child that had lived and grown inside their bodies. Of the impossibility of this living, breathing thing in their arms. To watch it as it sleeps.

It made me miss something, mourn the loss of something I’ll never have.

I’m approaching the standard definition of ‘woman’ in an asymptotic fashion. That is, I’ve gotten closer by leaps and bounds, but am nearing a final stretch which I will be unable to cross. As that happens, I’m feeling the pain of that distance more acutely than I was ten years ago, when my focus was on names and pronouns and wardrobe and presentation.

Now, I’m trying to allow myself to view myself as a woman. To rethink my own concept of my identity. I’m working on expanding my wardrobe, not starting it from scratch. I wish my breasts were bigger, but love that I have any in the first place. And yes, I’m thinking about The Surgery.

But sliding along an asymptotic curve doesn’t seem to be like a pleasant place to be. I want to be happy with my destination, not forever looking across an infinitesimal chasm to greener pastures.

There is a list of things – my regret at not transitioning earlier, my frustration with my past, my lack of confidence today, my unhappiness with the forever-limited amount of ‘womanhood’ I can achieve – that I would like to acknowledge, grieve and mourn, and move beyond.

How do I do that?

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.

Musical quotes aside, as I’ve been working on my show I’ve been thinking a lot about transitioning, the parts of my life where I feel like I’ve missed something important as a result of waiting to transition, and how to recapture whatever those “missed” things are.

Along those lines, I had a conversation with a friend about dating someone who is transitioning. She said, very diplomatically, that it must be hard dating someone who is constantly trying to discover themselves, reinvent themselves, experiment with their identity and with their presentation. I laughed, and said, “It’s OK. You can say it: It must be hard dating a teenager whose in their mid-twenties.”

Because, to some extent, that’s what transitioning is. Our teen years (and, to some extent, our college years – hence the title of this post) are supposed to be a time of self-discovery, where it’s OK to dress outlandishly, experiment with your interests and social groups, declare radical new identities only to shed them days or weeks or months later…

In this conversation, my friend said, “But now you get a second chance to do all that!”

“First chance,” I replied. “My teenage years weren’t about finding an identity, they were about avoiding one.”

How do I find my identity this time around?