The presentations and seminars I have done or been involved with have had the side effect of helping me learn more about myself and what it means to be trans. That's the great thing about working with many different people, you can't help but learn something new.
One thing I have learned has really resonated with me. The idea that many trans people have a difficulty developing a sense of self. When I first stumbled across that I raised an eyebrow and thought "oh yeah? Hmm, that makes sense" and carried on. Since then though it has filled in the gap for, what seems to be as of now, an endless stream of confused feelings. A hole in understanding that has become a part of me just as much as the feelings of confusion.
I first started wondering if that was anything to do with why people made so little sense to me. I would wonder why or how people could feel so attached to things, or so willing to put all their eggs in one basket, so to speak. I don't mean that negatively, I mean how people decide, "yep, I'm a veterinarian" or "I'm a cat-lady" or whatever.
Then I realized, I think, that's not it at all. People don't "decide" these things, they just are. They just simply know who they are, what they like, what they want.... they know themselves. A feeling that is utterly foreign to me.
Living that way, not knowing who you are and not knowing that you don't know yourself or why you don't know yourself, is draining. People tend to get aggressively defensive when their lack of self awareness gets challenged, teenagers in particular and I imagine I was no different back then. What eventually happened to me though is I became a passive observer of my own life. Fighting only gets you so far when your opponent is a shadow in a lightless room, when the path out feels more like a bottomless pit down. I didn't know the person living the life I was fastened to any more than I know any of you.
But here's the thing, I didn't realize any of that until recently when I came across that tidbit of information. For the entire time I thought I did know myself, I hated myself but I knew who I was. I guess the truth is I knew who I wasn't, I wasn't someone I cared for much at all.
It has been difficult parsing this out from the other feelings that trans people have to deal with. Being a developing teen/person we are all searching for some sense of self, and it's a struggle, for everyone. It's a part of life that is unavoidable and can often turn ugly, for anyone. Take a moment to thing of the trans person though. When people are discovering things about themselves like, where they want to go in life, what drives their passions, progressive or conservative, and some deal with liking boys or girls, the trans person is starting at "Am *I* a boy or girl?". A six word question to yourself that shatters the world around you like few other questions will. For me, it led me down a path of questioning everything about life. How can people know what they are talking about when it seems none of them are capable of taking the most basic question one can ask oneself, seriously? But I suppose that's another story.
So it seems what I am left with now is the task of making sense of my feelings compared to my fears. I guess as a way of keeping myself sane I passed off most of my unanswered questions as unanswerable questions or I went with the assumption that everyone has these questions and I'm simply the idiot who hasn't figured them out yet, like I was 10 years late hitting puberty. I also get a minor (an these days welcome) hit to my ego. Every now and then I'll pause and think "Wait, I actually don't know what I'm feeling here.". It makes me a little sad, sad that I've gone so long ignoring me, but then I pick my head up and remember this is part of the process.
I'm not quite sure what my point is to this post. I think I mainly want to say, to trans people, the fog of confusion is not your fault. When the rules everyone else seems to agree on just do not apply to you, there is little you can do to avoid having the world around you make little sense. To cis people, this is why trans health care and training is so important. When you give people the power of knowledge, it can be transformative.
