Transition is Nonlinear

When I allowed myself to claim my gender identity, I learned that trans narratives are limiting and reductive. Once deciding to pursue medical transition, I quickly learned that the expectation of the trans body is suffocatingly simple. As a trans woman, my journey is from male to female, a once dishonest identity to a now-authentic one, or as a cis person grossly put it, from a “wrong set of equipment to the right one.” The assumed linearity of transness—point A to point B—opposes the single, consistent truth about transition that I’ve learned so far: every individual transition is its own. As long as gender operates within the binary, transitions will be reduced to a limited expectation of the trans identity. I often find myself wishing my transition would speed itself up, mostly in regard to my middle school, training bra, Limited Too breasts. On the other hand, I have a hard time keeping up with the constant emotional and mental changes. Love is Blind was a rollercoaster. My dysphoria has skyrocketed, as I now understand my body in a whole new light. The small list of changes I considered making has lengthened into a much longer list after watching hundreds of before-and-after transition YouTube videos. While publicly exploring my identity four years ago, I never imagined starting hormones, and now I’ve been taking them for a year and a half. Transitioning has never been a clear and easy, step-by-step process—Transitioning for Dummies has yet to be published.

Related article: Mariposa Health Redefines Trans Services The ways in which I expressed myself in the beginning of my social transition look drastically different from the ways I desire to express myself now. On my most dysphoric days, scrolling through old photos and cringing about my many different hairstyles, I sometimes chuckle, but am always reminded of how every expression has been necessary to my transition. Every identity of mine holds its own joy and pain. Taking the time to explore and hold each identity led me to better understand myself in the present moment. Perhaps my most authentic self is in fact one that looks more binary. Aligning myself with a traditional image of femininity offers a level of security and ease to my existence as a trans woman. I don’t want to walk down the street and be clocked as “other,” and one day, I hope to be loved and not fetishized. For other trans individuals, maybe their most authentic self is being as visibly trans as possible, their identities being a reminder that contentment of one’s self does not have to be centered around other people’s expectations. Our transitions in life, whether centered around our identity or not, do not always have to be pretty and tidy. It’s not about the before-and-after pictures and surely cannot be explained in one op-ed. I write this as a reminder to myself and to you, the reader, that wherever we are in our transition, and whatever our transition looks like, it is exactly what it needs to be.

Photo by Stu Osborne