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Accepting your body as your self
There comes a point when transitioning is a hazy memory so distant it may as well be another lifetime. Twenty fives years ago I was a blossom waiting to become fruit, and with the right pollination I became me over the next five years. Transitioning in a world without rapid fire social media or any accessible trans content was a weird space to be, especially when I am more inclined just to do my own thing rather than play by social and cultural rules about what ought to be done. To become me was about having a body that simply was, rather than one which felt wrong and out of place. This was how my fruit emerged, over time and with the help of those around me, yet still my how shape and mode of being.
This is the curious thing about getting older, realising that your younger self was full life and vitality that you never realised you had until it begins to ebb away. As someone who transitioned right on the cusp of adulthood my womanhood has always been there with me, there was never any man, so my vitality as my self has been this core of Rachel. Seeing myself get old, beginning to feel that sense of youth slip away, is both a blessing and a grasp of sadness for the things that will never come. This is not raging against the dying of the light, it is a realisation that the world is built to exploit the young, that to be young is not to be aware of that exploitation, and once you realise…
