Transgiving Feast

New to the area I wanted to believe life could be good. That all the years of trying to be what I was always told I was would end. I tried I really did, but that is all it ever really was trying. The harder I tried the worse things got.

Oh there were great times, but even they were tinged with a cloud of wrongness, an incompleteness I didn’t know how to explain.

Every morning looking in that mirror and seeing not what was, but rather what should have been. How long I had wanted to be the beautiful person the mirror showed. But no that couldn’t be, to many expected to much of me and that meant being someone I had come to despise. Why couldn’t anyone see what I did? Why couldn’t I have just been allowed to live the truth?

As with all things though the truth did finally get the chance to come out, and when it did it came out in a big way. The marriage was gone! when only one person in the relationship cares what is the point of the relationship? Things were said and done that broke the bond that kept the truth hidden. No longer did it matter what the world thought. No longer did it matter what happened if the secret came out because there was no longer anything left to lose.

First there was the clothes, clothes that until then had been nonexistent as far as anyone knew. Little by little the wardrobe grew and shrank. The the miscellaneous accessories to go with. Little by little things changed and the need took over, the need for completion, the need to match reality with the image in the mirror.

Pictures were taken and posted in a public place. It wasn’t a conscious thought, no really. It was more a surrender to the truth of what should have been rather than what had been. After the pictures there was the need to venture out into the world. To show the world what it had prevented from being for so long. Therapy was needed to confirm the truth, so was entered into. Even then none wanted to believe, it was easier to try penning the truth behind a lie that could no longer hide it. Promises were made, promises of support, support that became conditional at best, nonexistent at worst. Support that indeed turned out to not exist as time past and information was passed on. To be told that no amount of science would ever change how what I was going through was viewed because religion was more important than facts. A belief that could never be proven right held more sway than facts based on studies that had already been proven time and again.

Thanksgiving coming you and nothing to be thankful for. Ostracized by family and friends, not that there had really even been any friends. Cast out by family that refused to see anything without filtering it through religious beliefs that are corrupt at best. For me to make the claim I had meant I was calling God a liar in the view of so many. No; I hadn’t called God a liar, I had said something happened that wasn’t right just a with a baby born with a cleft pallet, or down syndrome. Not a mistake at least not a mistake on God’s part, but something went wrong somewhere along the line that caused this condition. I knew it wasn’t a mental illness. If it were why had it been there from as back as memory allowed me to look. Why was it nothing I tried could over come the driving desire to identify other than physical appearances suggested.

Alone with all these thoughts that keep running through the mind, wanting what wasn’t, wishing for what never was. What if everything had been right from the start? Could life really… really? Really what? Have been better? Be better? Match the dreams? So many questions so few answers. Thanksgiving. Give thanks with a joyous heart. Peace I give to you my peace I leave with you. Peace! What is peace? Is there anything to be thankful for if there is no peace? What do I need to do to receive this promised peace?

Transgender. Why? What is so different that I can’t be satisfied with what everyone believes? Why couldn’t I have been born with a continuity between my gender and sex? Why did I, or anyone for that matter, have to suffer the conflict between perceived sex and gender? Weren’t sex and gender the same thing anyway? What price had I payed for this confusion, a confusion that wasn’t even mine. Was I confused? Not really I know who I am. If the rest of the world doesn’t know does that make me the one confused?

I’ve heard it said if it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck it is probably a duck. Sorry folks I am not a duck, I don’t have feathers, or web feet, I am me, an individual a majority of one. I am not you, nor would I wish to be. My gender is something no one but me can see, so if you cannot see it, how can you define it? Yes of course I sound like a man, I am built like a man therefore I must be a man. Wrong you are going on proofs that by their very nature are flawed. The sex binary doesn’t exist the very nature of the human race prohibits such a binary construct.

How do I over come the teachings that said my gender was wrong when if those teaching are right I condemn myself for knowing my gender doesn’t match what the physical evidence seems to depict. A reasonable doubt, if this were a court of law I would already be judged, for the moment I was born the reasonable doubt in the minds of everyone were removed. I had the anatomy to declare what gender I should be, it was plainly there for the doctors and nurses to see. So if a reasonable doubt doesn’t work in making a true assessment what does? Can I blame the misconception of my gender on those who decried me a gender at my birth? They called it as they saw it and the physical evidence lied, what else could they do? No! Those who decried my gender as they saw it, they did not do so maliciously with preconceived notions of purposely calling black white and white black. They followed the guides set down for all live births. They labeled my gender according to my physical sexual characteristics, yet in my case as in many others, though still a minority of all births, they were wrong. I wasn’t what they saw what they chose to believe. I was one of those who doesn’t fit inside the binary code for what is and what is not male/female.

Back to being thankful. There are reasons to be thankful not easy to see reason, but reasons just the same. I can be thankful that I am alive, I am more alive now than any of the years is spent trying to be who I thought others wanted me to be. Now my life is mine, I determine, to set the standard for, to live in a way that allows me to no longer stifle the dreams that have always been there. I can be thankful for the modicum of acceptance that is out there in today’s society. That more and more people are willing to question the teachings of those who adhere to beliefs that reject science in favor of slavery to what is beyond understanding. I can be thankful for all those who have gone this path before me who were willing to brave the prejudice and bigotry, and set a standard by which those following don’t have to see those things to such an extent. I can be thankful for the people I have met and shared so much sorrow and joy with since coming to terms with the decision to be myself and stop living my life solely to appease people who refuse to be appeased.

I can be thankful for the simple fact of being thankful. Thankfulness is a choice we can make or not. If we choose to be thankful we will find reason, just as we will find reason if we choose not to be thankful. Life is hard, even under the best of conditions, being transgender isn’t the best of condition. Maybe in the not to distant future it won’t be as hard for someone who is transgender to be accepted for who they are. For now I will choose to be thankful for everything I have, and mostly because I am one of the few who knows what it is like to live between the gender binary.