GARCIN: Open the door! Open, blast you! I'll endure anything, your red-hot tongs and molten lead, your racks and prongs and garrotes - all your fiendish gadgets, everything that burns and flays and tears - I'll put up with any torture you impose. Anything, anything would be better than this agony of mind, this creeping pain that gnaws and fumbles and caresses one and never hurts quite enough. Now will you open?
[The door flies open with a jerk, and he just avoids falling.]
Ah!
[A long silence.]
INEZ: Well, Garcin? You're free to go.
-No Exit by JPS
People say transition is meant to be when you actually start living your life, but for me at least, I feel like that never happened. Now most of you probably don't know this, but right after I was first diagnosed with gender dysphoria I moved abroad for an academic exchange. The diagnosing psychiatrist said it was perfect. A temporary fresh start where I could figure my identity out. I was terrified to be honest, the day I arrived for my course was the first time I'd even been to the country. It felt like a tall order to just transition on top of all that.
It was there where I first started hormones, where I first found queer friendships, and where I first felt like transition was something I could *actually do*. I never did end up coming out to my classmates on that exchange. I still see some of them, and they still don't know. But despite that, I wouldn't call it a failure.
It's weird but I think my life since then has been pretty muddled. I've been stuck on this stupid tightrope between the path I used to be on, and the life I actually want to live. Balancing my social life between the people I've told and the people I haven't. And then when life gets hard, I backslide. I fall back into that easy discomfort of masculinity. Or more often now, I just retreat to my bedroom.
What do I want out of life? That's something I've never figured out. I think it has to be, at least in part, because I'm stuck in this process of becoming. I'm like a caterpillar stuck in the cocoon. Gooey, half formed mess, wrapped up in a shell, pissing away the days wondering what kinda flowers I'm gonna like. Fuck, there might not even be any flowers if I take much longer.
The truth I have to believe is that there's no way out except through, and that that way out is there. I just have to charge through the nettles and pray. Five days ago I passed three years on estrogen without even realising it. Where will I be three years from now? Still stuck at the bottom, living by the convenience of others? I hope not. I can only promise myself that I won't be here.
Honestly I've been crying so hard tonight I've given myself a stitch. I had a pretty big rejection that really hurt quite a lot, so sorry for the rambling. I just needed to get it out. To sweeten the deal, if you've read this far, I'll end with a snippet I quote far too often. The author has since wiped her presence from the internet, so I feel I should leave out the citation:
We view binary transition as the ultimate form of transition; the zenith of trans
validity against which all transness is compared; but when the transgender girl stands at the summit of trans identity, she also stands at the foot of womanhood's cordillera - surrounded by newborns. With her shed skin buried in snow, she steps from one plane to another, an action that represents the apocalyptic finality of trans identity: to unbecome.