Nathan, 19, Dublin, Ireland
Nathan, 19, Dublin, Ireland
When I was 16 I was trying to explain to online friends why I was saying I was a boy from Ireland as opposed to a girl from Ireland. As soon as I typed the words, I knew there was no going back, and that this had to be what it was.
In trans-related topics, I had low-key things for years prior that suddenly made a lot of sense. I had finally figured out what those hours reading about FTM passing advice meant. I previously thought it was simply something I was randomly interested in. I was unconsciously aware already, and my conscious mind had finally done the catching up.
It felt like a mixture of terrifying and exciting. Exciting because for the first time in my life, I felt like I had a future. Before I understood my gender I thought that at some point I would just pop out of existence or just die and never truly get to have a life. I genuinely could not bring myself to conjure up some mental image of me as an adult.
The thought of growing up and becoming a "woman" scared me, and I didn't know why. There was something about it that was just so inconceivable. It filled me with horror. I genuinely did not believe it was going to happen, and I still cannot believe that if not for that realization, it would probably have happened by now. So, I was excited to finally have a future.
Suddenly it was like all of these invisible barriers had broken, and I had hope. Terrifying, though, because I knew that if this was to be achieved, I would have to come out to everybody I knew. That was horrifying. I knew to prepare for confusion, lack of awareness or acceptance, and a lifetime of coming out over and over. I was scared because I knew that I was going to have to tackle prejudice head-on, and without anybody to help me (as I did not know any other trans person when I realized I was trans.)
I just knew it was true and so I had to trust it. As soon as I thought it, everything fell very neatly into place. I knew that there was nothing else at all that could possibly explain everything so comprehensively. I did not think before that any explanation could shine the light on absolutely every worry and problem and anxiety related to gender I had ever had all at once. When being trans arose as an explanation that did actually explain everything, I just knew that there was nothing truer than it.
I got my hair cut short on December 20th, 2013. I began to bind using two sports bras. I always dressed quite plainly and masculinely. I never wore dresses as I felt very uncomfortable in them. I already did dress the way I wanted to, so the hair and the binding was the last step I was able to take before ordering a proper binder and beginning testosterone.
I told my school principal, my aunt and uncle, and my mother.
Telling my mother was nerve-wracking. I cried for four hours and was still not able to even get it out. I felt as if I would be throwing the family into turmoil, and dumping an issue onto them that I believed at the time that they did not deserve to deal with.
Before I started T, it was anxiety-inducing still to go out looking quite fresh-faced and feminine and wearing unquestionably masculine clothes.
But there was suddenly an overload of new opportunities. I felt much more comfortable getting to know people. I felt very much more "myself" when finally living as a male. I made a lot of new friends very quickly and these are friends I have kept to this day. My true self is a lot friendlier and more willing to have conversations than the person I was before I came out. I think that was due to not feeling as if I was actually "me".
This friendlier, truer version of me, before then, only came out online. However, it finally began to spread into my real life. I discovered things about my own personality that I did not know before I came out. So much of my personality and "me-ness" was repressed and inhibited by gender-related anxiety, and feelings as if I was somehow not myself. Once I came out, and I actually did feel like I was myself, I discovered my own personality along with everybody else. It was daunting, but I was always eager to keep learning.
Most people have been supportive, but this is because I did not know a huge amount of people before. I have much larger circles now. My mother and father, along with my grandparents, struggled for a very long time, but they have all now come around and are now probably my biggest supporters. They do not see my trans-ness as the sole aspect that defines my personality, whilst also being aware and respectful of the role it has played in my life thus far.
There has been a distinct lack of support from people I don't know; namely random Facebook messages I get from people who like to use slurs against me, and those who feel like invalidating my entire identity as a human being is "just their opinion, and needs to be respected". In real life, I do know people who do not support me, and I know who these people are. They keep their mouths shut, though, and that is good
The long waiting times to access HRT were extremely tough. I knew I wanted T from day one, and I had to wait years for it to become a reality. On top of that, there was trouble in my previous school with changing my name on the roll sheets, meaning that I was referred to by my birth name exclusively throughout fifth year. This was something I specifically changed schools to avoid, and it had not worked. Everybody knew I was trans from day one.
The same thing happened in college, where my birth name was the one I was forced to register with. This meant that in the very first minute of the very first class in college, my trans identity was out of the bag, and there was really nothing I could have done to prepare myself for this. I did eventually get everything changed, but that cannot undo the fact that I was outed twice because of the school administration. There are people in my class who use their nicknames on the roll without incident and have done so since day one. I felt that this was an identical request: "I would prefer you called me X instead of Y". However, in my case, I had to jump through hoops for five weeks to make it happen, where cis students who wanted to be called by their nicknames had it sorted immediately.
There is also the constant internalized transphobia you and I probably all grew up with, and the anxiety and worry of "passing", something that still worries me greatly. I still get a huge amount of dysphoria about the shape of my body. I am curvy and I have a disproportionately large ass. Despite my sideburns, my baritone singing voice, the "M" on every legal document pertaining to me, my flat chest, and my body hair, I still struggle whenever I see my body shape. It is something that I will have to try to either change or make peace with or both.
I am trans, yes, but trans people are not *just* trans people. Being trans is not the sole thing that makes up my being. It is important and deeply necessary to have a full understanding of my story, but many ignorant cis people do not think of trans people outside of their being trans. As soon as someone's trans-ness is brought up, the individual becomes nothing more than "the trans person". I am trans, but I am also asexual, autistic, an actor, a singer, a playwright (my first play will be staged in November 2016), an artist (I have over fifty notebooks filled with original character drawings), a storyteller, a geek (I adore Star Trek, Pokémon, podcasts, unsolved mysteries, Harry Potter, RPGs, and many more things I am not remembering at the moment). There is so much more to me. I'm not saying my being trans isn't important, but it's not the only thing about me that there is, and I am still working on convincing the rest of the world that this is the case.
I don't know yet what is special about me. I haven't been truly myself for very long at all, only a few years. Many cis friends have been comfortable with themselves their whole lives and have had ample time to figure out what makes them special, unique, different.
There are lots of unique things about me, though, such as my slightly different life experiences, that set me apart from the rest. Maybe what is special about me is that now, age 19, I still have not "discovered" the world, or fully understood it as myself, and that I get to finally have that opportunity, and that others can come along and discover the world with me.
I now view myself as an actual person. I was content to walk through life and just fade away before I came out. Now I view the rest of my life as something tangible, and something I am excited. It is hard to phrase properly because I obviously thought I was a person before I came out, but that feeling is minuscule compared to the understanding and comprehension of myself that I have now.
I cannot say I came up with this analogy. I saw it online and it really struck a chord with me. The message is that many cis people do not understand trans issues because, say for example, a cis woman thinks "what if I wanted to be a man?", cannot identify with that feeling at all, and dismisses trans people as delusional and flawed somehow. However, what the cis woman should be thinking if she is trying to understand what it is like to be trans is this: "what if I looked so much like a man, that I, a woman, had to pretend to be one?". I think that would definitely help. However, I'm aware that that is quite binary-centric. I will also add this. Maybe cis people don't have to understand. Maybe all they have to do is let trans people be who they are. Not every cis person has to understand how it is to be trans, but every cis person has to understand that trans people should be allowed to be who they are, whether cis people understand or not.
I am hyper-attuned to gendered language, and even though I identify as one side of the gender binary, I am still not comfortable with gendered language. I am comfortable with pronouns like "he", but not when I am excessively referred to as "dude, man, bro, etc". I feel like people who over-use that are trying too hard, and it is not necessary to constantly affirm my gender. Simply using the right pronouns is a sign to me that I am respected and valid when I am in your company. Overuse of gendered terms throws me into uncomfortable territory. Trans people's identities don't have to be constantly validated, even by well-meaning cis allies. Our identities were already valid. That is just something I have only recently noticed.
I think humans like binaries, and gender is one of them, and the binary does not cut it. There are more genders than male and female. It may be hard for other people to understand, but like I said before, you do not have to have a concrete understanding of everything. You just have to trust trans people to be who they are, and trust that if you make a mistake and they correct you, that the trans person who has spent their entire life probably struggling with the concept of gender likely has had more time to figure it out than you, and that's okay. The binary is slowly fading away, I think, as non-binary people begin to trickle slowly into the mainstream media, this only quickens the death of the binary. Good riddance.
I want to experience as much of life as I possibly can. I hope to live a long life, first of all. After that hope, I want to write books, write for TV and movies, I want to write more plays, and I want especially to act in plays, to become a vessel with which to spread a message and tell a story. I want to act.
I want people to see themselves in me, and feel less alone in the world. I needed somebody like that when I was figuring myself out, and I could not find anybody.
I want to see the world, to travel all over, and to hopefully leave an impact wherever I go. It probably sounds a little big-headed, I was born to make some sort of mark, and I am determined to make it happen. Whether it is through acting and representation on screen, where trans kids or asexual kids or autistic kids see themselves in me and feel less alone, or whether it is through stage plays, where audiences' views are challenged and called entirely into question by something I wrote.