A Year’s Reflection

Transitioning, Hormones and Discovering My Trans Identity

You know that moment in the coming of age movie where the girl embraces her features? Where the slightly crooked nature of her smile brings her laughter? Where she no longer finds her curves something worthy to be hidden but rather something to show off? When she in changing the shaggy nature of her favorite hairdo of her youth, embraces a new found aesthetic with the precise cut of her young adulthood? Do you remember that glow it seems she possesses? One that gives her a new confidence in her stride and a fresh joy in her eyes. The one that tastes like honey, aged yet sweetly new. One that feels like she’s found some renewed sense of self that wasn’t always visible but yet always there. I remember those girls, and those moments. I remember those girls like Raven Baxter from “That’s So Raven” or the duckling-turned-swan Mia Thermopolis in “Princess Diaries.” I remember those girls because I longed to be them. 

I didn’t understand in my youth what it meant to be transgender. What dysphoria was or the ways in which hormones played into my developing body. But what I did know was that it was in the far recesses of my mind, where no one could see or hear. Where no prying eye could cast a glare, no face could conjure scowl–that there was a little brown girl there. Whenever I pictured her she was dressed in the prettiest of white skirts, always ironed and pressed, and had the longest of hair. Sometimes her blown out strands of kinky hair would be neatly cascading down her back. Other times, her hair would be in slick black braids down to her tailbone. The ones that swayed as freely as she did in the summer breeze. I longed to be as free as she felt. As free as those girls who found themselves in their bodies. Whose bodies felt like home. 

I didn’t know it then, that that’s what dysphoria felt like (along with a slight self diagnosed body dysmorphia), because it’s not that I hated my body, but rather never truly loved it. Everything about me felt slightly off or out of place. While living as a closeted gay teen at the time, I tried my best to fit in. To appease the desire of the perfect masculine son to parents, who did no wrong and got straight A’s. One that excelled in class, athletics and wore masculinity like a second skin. But I couldn’t. I wore it more like an oversized jacket, and not the cute ones. The ones that folks try to hide in but only end up even more visible. I walked like a young girl in her mother’s heels, trying to fill shoes that aren’t her size. Taking big clunky steps, awkwardly trying to move forward in a role not hers. I was able to do the straight A’s thing and be respectful. Never talking too loud or being too controversial and outspoken, upsetting my elders. I could be the perfect child, I just couldn’t be the “perfect son.” 

Even after coming out, at the time as a gay, I still never felt fully myself. While I didn’t know what I didn’t know, I knew that that glow I had watched those girls possess in the movies and that freedom that tiny black girl in the back of my head had, I didn’t have. Criticizing my hair, my walk, my speech, my weight…everything felt off. And when compared with the outside perception of others, these feelings felt like the hallucinations of a madman. To them, I was smart, driven and handsome, but to me, I felt trapped. Confined in a body not wide enough to house my spirit. I had heard of transgender, not in depth but in passing, but never thought to connect these pieces. It wasn’t until senior year of high school, watching the powerful trans women and femmes in full array and color on FX’s “Pose” and discovering the transgender icon Janet Mock behind it all, that pieces started to make sense. 

Reading Janet Mock’s “Redefining Realness,” Piper Kerman’s “Orange Is The New Black,” and sisters Selenis and Marizol Leyva’s, “My Sister: How One Sibling’s Transition Changed Us Both” told me all that I needed to know. Their journeys of poverty to prosperity mirrored my own, but their feelings as young trans kids showed me what I had been going through all along. Dysphoria can take so many different forms, not just in some grueling battle with self image but also in the quiet ones. In the silent storms that dampen one’s sense of self, that create misty pathways to calling one’s body a home. Step by step, through rain and not seeing where my foot would land, I moved forward. Choosing to honor my voice and unapologetically follow my euphoria. 

Sitting on the other side of a year’s worth of transitory efforts from changing my name and adopting new pronouns to using hormones as a way to honor my trans identity, not as the basis of my transness, I can truly say I am home. Adorning my hair in the long braids of that little girl in the back of my head, or freely dancing down the street and walking confidently like the girls of my favorite childhood movies and shows, I have now become something newly familiar. My body feels wide enough now to house this beautifully trans spirit. And that’s the joy trans folk have when allowed to freely exist. Allowed to freely exist, in all of the expansiveness that is their gender identity. A joy that surpasses words and description. 

You know that moment in the coming of age movie where the girl embraces her features? Where the slightly crooked nature of her smile brings her laughter? Where she no longer finds her curves something worthy to be hidden but rather something to show off? When she in changing the shaggy nature of her favorite hairdo of her youth, embraces a new found aesthetic with the precise cut of her young adulthood? Do you remember that glow it seems she possesses? One that gives her a new confidence in her stride and a fresh joy in her eyes. The one that tastes like honey, aged yet sweetly new.  One that feels like she’s found some renewed sense of self that wasn’t always visible but yet always there. I remember those girls, and those moments. I remember those girls like Raven Baxter from “That’s So Raven” or the duckling-turned-swan Mia Thermopolis in “Princess Diaries.” I remember those girls because I am now one of those girls. I remember those girls because they set me free.