Walking the rainbow road — My 20 year tranniversary
If I ever get asked what my greatest achievement is in interviews my first thought is simply being able to live as myself, though this is not the sort of answer they expect. It is easy to see the passage of time as one of those things, the flow of which we are simply swept up in, without really taking a moment to appreciate what mountains we have actually climbed. Back in my teens I always wondered what this woman in me would become, what she would achieve, and what person she would turn out to be, a boy looking wonderingly at she might carve out of him. Twenty years on, I think I did him proud, though there were a lot of speed bumps along the way.
Trans experiences are usually framed through struggle and sacrifice, the crosses we bear, and the travails we undergo to emerge from our previous forms. It is one of battle, a good fight for our better, best, selves. I know in the dying embers of 1999 I had already set things in motion, telling people that I was going to transition, but everything was still up in the air. I read, I learned, I tried to understand what it would entail, and yet as 2000 came along it was like the moment at the apex of a trampoline bounce, hanging in mid-air waiting for gravity to take hold. My coming out happened in phases, and while March 2000 saw my legal emergence, it was only in September 2000 that I was able to fully embrace my new identity when I started university. The usual framing of trans experiences with pain and sorrow do not really gel with my initial steps int the world, I was just one more awkward kid who was exploring their identity.
Womanhood fits me well, at least in my thirties, and it was the gradual easing into myself that was the strangest and most profound experience of the whole journey thus far. Its hard to describe just how content and settled I am in my gender, to the point that the external is something almost incidental. There is a deep-seated calm, a serenity about it all, womanhood defined tripartite in biology, identity, and presentation, aligned to my own axis rather than preconceived notions. Twenty years ago, my head was filled with a certain notion of how I wanted to be, the looks, the external; now, it is the inner me that is the part that feels whole.
As I transgressed the boundaries between the binary genders, I had a certain roughness, not quite understanding the small details of womanhood that lie beneath all the social construction we have. The barriers, the preferred routes, the chasteness, the desire to temper any excess. Messiness was something for the boys or those girls whispered about round the water cooler. It took many interesting and rounded women for me to deconstruct this, to see the messiness as intrinsic to who I am. One part DJ and teacher vibing the crowd, one part solidary researcher hunkered down with her PC, another part hockey goalie taking the hits, another part rights warrior determined to fight against injustice. Many more facets engraved along the way, all making me a woman no longer anxious about being all of them in context.
Eight-year-old me knew that this was my path, a clarity that shaped so much of what I became. There were no doubts, no hesitation, no fear. Simply that I am boy writ woman, a womanhood defined by pushing myself to be better, to compete only with myself. Where I fell short was on my own terms, where I won was my personal goals. Many hands shaped my clay, moulded my philosophies and made my womanhood what it is, yet it was my responsibility to learn and define myself. Self-made is very much a misnomer; rather, I am the sum of all those amazing people, amazing women, whose patience and grace helped me understand and learn. My trans experience is walk through the garden of knowledge, Eve and Nix companions of honour as much as teachers and sages.
What makes a woman from boyhood clay? I used to ask that question a lot, but the peace of twenty years renders it moot. Womanhood is defined on my own terms, accepted at face value by those who know me. In grace I am not questioned, in compassion and understanding I am gifted a serenity of personhood that I wish I could bestow on others. My doubts and depression stem from biochemistry, not societal discord. Possibly the best piece of advice I ever received is to surround myself with people who uplift and graciously challenge from the best of all places. If anything, the last twenty years has affirmed just how important it is to have folk around me who nourish my soul and provoke me into new ways of thinking.
Some of you may wish for a more grounded, gritty, experience. Fleshed out details of struggles and battles. Yes, there have been hard moments, my suicide attempt among them. The hardest part has always been the desire to be a mother, keenly felt and probably the single thing that I really wish I could change about myself. It is talked about within trans circles, but not that openly. Trans folk have a tacit understanding this is the current trade-off with externalising and medicalising our genders, that would lose reproductive capabilities. It sits deep, a decision both eternally easy to make and forever haunting. Mine is doubly so as two ex-partners miscarried babies early in my transition, and that is something on more if-buts-and-maybes days that I ruminate on. Life has blessed me in so many ways, and a natural bairn is not one of them. Yes, I am considering adoption, so maybe when I write the 30-year version of this who knows. That is the grit in my mill, the hardest fact I have had to confront, and one thing I cannot quite square away.
Ask teenage me if they would be proud of 38-year-old me and I think they might be a bit starry eyed. Hindsight is a wonderful thing, yet if you could have offered me this life there are few, if any, things I would change. My greatest personal achievement is getting a First on degree, as it fulfilled everything I had wanted form the moment I dropped out of university. Being the woman I am today in all my totality runs a close second. I have pride in my trans identity, yet it is just one small part of who I am. I am the woman he saw in the mirror and hoped to become, someone he, me, is utterly at peace with. Twenty years as my complete self is one more mile marker on my rainbow road, and who knows what the next twenty years will bring. All I know is that this woman I became walks easy on the path.
