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| Image from Claudia Love on UnSplash. |
Have you ever been accused of just going through a phase?
Drawing from several comments from other transgender women
and trans men, including myself, I have heard us being accused of just going
through a phase when it comes to being transgender.
There was a time in my life when I seriously hoped I was
just going through a phase when it came to my love of dressing in feminine
clothing and makeup. I wanted it to be just an innocent hobby I could put down
and walk away from at any time. As years went by, I found I couldn’t replace my
so-called hobby with anything else in my life. I did the worse possible thing,
I tried to internalize my feelings hoping I could somehow ignore them, and the phase
would go away. Of course, it never did.
I always thought my mom knew I was trying on her clothes and
putting on her makeup but never said anything because she thought I was going
through a phase. Obviously, she was wrong! She never had the courage to call me
out on what I was doing until I brought it up to her in a very ill-fated
attempt to come out when I was discharged from the Army many years later. She
quickly rejected my attempt to clear the air by volunteering psychiatric care. Of
course, I refused her offer because I knew I was not mentally ill. I just
wanted to live a transfeminine life on my terms. We never mentioned it again
for the rest of her life but at least I tried to explain my deepest secret to
her.
The phase idea came to be one idea I always ran from. I did
not feel deep down my feelings were a phase but still was afraid to face the
truth. I ended up moving many times and trying many new jobs just to try to outrun
my gender feelings. It all was exhausting to my already fragile mental health.
In fact, my initial gender therapist diagnosed me as being bi-polar when all
along I thought I was just terribly depressed when I never thought I could
achieve my dream of living as a full-time transgender woman. I was depressed
when I considered the extreme distance I still had to travel, just not as bad.
As I still managed to progress along my gender pathway, I
still encountered phases I needed to go through. The major one was what I
called my teen girl dressing years. As I survived my urge to stuff my oversize
male body into skimpy fashions, I was quickly laughed back into my closet
several times before I learned the proper way to attempt to blend in with what
other women my age were wearing. Easily, it was the most difficult phase I
needed to deal with. Mainly because I was so stubborn.
It turned out the stubbornness I possessed was just what I
needed to keep going. Deep down I knew I was in the middle of one of the most
complex journeys a human can take, and I could be successful if I tried hard
enough. It all meant I needed to earn my way through the feminine gatekeepers I
faced to be allowed to play in their sandbox. I was petrified when I needed to actually
begin to talk one on one with other women. Very early on, I was frightened of
their reaction when they learned I was not a cis-gendered woman. This was
before I learned my path to womanhood was as valid as theirs. I just came to
mine along a different path. Amazingly to me, the doors were opened to me, and
I was permitted to play behind the gender curtain.
It was around this time when I began one of the most
powerful phases of my life, when I made the correct decision to begin gender
affirming hormones, or HRT. I say powerful because the new hormones I was prescribed
by a doctor turned out to be everything I dreamed of and more. If anything,
else, the hormones proved my whole life was not a phase. Now I felt as if I was
arriving home in the deepest sense. If you compared my hormonal life as a
circle, I was completing mine. The effects of HRT made me feel whole as a
transfeminine woman. I could feel deeper, be more emotional and enjoy the world
as never before.
I proved, more than ever before, my life was not a phase, I
was much more than just a man putting on a dress. I proved all along I was a
woman putting on a male face and clothes all along. At the least, I could rest easily
knowing what my gender issue was all along. Not a phase but my life.
