(*the sign reads: “The only war that matters is the war against the imagination” ((thanks, Diane Di Prima)))
Right now I’m trying to think of something to write but I keep circling around the topic and it comes out wrong. I have deleted the first couple sentences of this post at least five times. There’s a feeling I am experiencing that is difficult to communicate. I saw something that upset me earlier, that made me feel called out. The content of this thing is not super important. It forced me to confront a feeling of powerlessness that I have felt for most of my life. Of having very little agency. For years, I didn’t know what was wrong with me. There was clearly something that set me apart from the other kids around me. They could smell it on me and I was bullied from the time I entered preschool. Some kids just didn’t like me, and I don’t think even they knew why at first. Eventually, they started to assume I was queer. I didn’t even know at the time that that’s what was going on with me. I knew I liked women, I knew I found some men attractive. But the idea of doing pretty much anything sexual was foreign to me, so the accusations and such were baffling.
I didn’t know what being transgender meant until I was in my mid 20s and I started to know some trans people in real life. I lived my life off of social media entirely until then as well. It was something I had decided to opt out of since the early days of Facebook and MySpace. I did use LiveJournal somewhat and Deviant Art here and there. Message boards related to my interests. The internet was different, blah blah blah. Skipping the coming out story, being trans was a surprise to me in many ways. I saw myself as eventually being a father and husband, until I didn’t. Until the other option felt easier despite being harder in every measurable way. Being a trans woman was the only way for me to continue living my life – I was unable to establish myself before making this change. Some trans people will go out and try to live a life as the gender they are assumed to be. Only finding out that they can’t continue doing it. For me, I couldn’t get started for real until this issue was resolved. Call it selective mutism if you want, but I simply could not talk to most humans. I could write and I could talk to a small handful of people, but mostly I found myself cut off from humanity. Not by choice.
This powerlessness was intrinsic to who I was then. It manifested in all areas of my life. Coming out as trans was the only way for me to claim any sort of power or agency over my life that I could see. Suddenly, the version of myself that used to exist pre-puberty was allowed to grow into an adult. I could start dropping the mask. But it hasn’t been easy to establish a life from scratch starting at 30. I began this renewed life with a bachelor’s degree in English and about ten years of work experience mostly in warehouse. I moved out of my hometown and found a home most of the way across the country. It was comforting to be a stranger from a far away place that almost nobody knows. It was also terrifying. But this is the fundamental difference between Joelle and [deadname]. He was too afraid to move out of his mom’s house. Joelle took over and made the choice to make a clean break and start fresh, redefining everything that I had taken for granted. I was no longer content to wallow in obscurity, I wanted to be someone that people know.
Wanting and achieving are two different things. I still struggle with putting myself out there and being confident. In fact, that was the main issue I had in beauty school. Lack of confidence. Part of me is still that bullied preschool kid who was scared into timidity. When Big political things happen and I feel threatened, it sends me right back there. Sure, in some ways I am small and weak. I bend and give way for people. I struggle to hold firm boundaries at times. People have referred to me as a doormat, a minion, and a jellyfish. Spineless. To that I would say that I have withstood more than some and come out the other side. I endure, and survive. But also I help others. I do not act in my own self interest to the detriment of the people around me. I have ghosted people because I don’t know how to navigate communication with them in order to make myself heard. When I have done this, it is because all of the methods I’ve tried have failed and there is no clear path forward. Things that slip away so easily were not ever going to last without significant effort from myself. The effort I put into interpersonal relationships is often greater than the benefit I receive from being involved in them. This is why I now forge relationships and build rapport with people in order to provide care for them as my job. “If you’re good at something, never do it for free”.
At the beginning of my medical transition, I worked with a therapist who helped me use my words more. She helped me make the transition from someone who is afraid to communicate, especially with regard to boundaries, to someone who can protect myself without becoming kind of feral. I would describe my pre-transition self as a wounded animal. Jumping at everyone and everything, afraid to trust anyone. I stayed in isolation because it was “safe”. Incubating. Watching. Seeing the world go to shit even more without being able to do anything about it. The idea of joining or starting a movement was ludicrous. I couldn’t even leave my bedroom. Those years taught me that loneliness is something I never want to allow myself to be okay with. Being alone at times is fine and good, even healthy. But being alone against your will for years at a time is catastrophic to mental health. It is soul crushing to yearn for a conversation with someone and not be able to access it. To have no one to call, and nothing to look forward to. I would try things like dating apps, going to events, things like that. It never went anywhere. The problem was stemming from how I was perceived, and many years of habit.
The past few years since I’ve moved out to New Mexico, the theme has been “Taking My Power Back”. It’s a phrase that gets bandied about on Instagram sometimes. In popular psychology and spirituality. But what does that look like for someone in my position? What kind of power would I be taking “back”? It was news to me that I had any to begin with. I started to realize back in Boston when I worked at Starbucks what was going on here. You give away power unconsciously. Playing by the rules is all well and good. But when you are a reliable employee in a high turnover position where people frequently don’t show up…you can get away with a lot. We had a rule at Starbucks that you couldn’t have a drink at your station while working. One day I made myself a drink and loudly said next to my manager, “I’m going to keep this right next to me so I can drink it while I work. Who’s gonna stop me?” My manager, a gay man at least five years younger than me, simply laughed and kept working. I realized that nobody could stop me from doing what I want to do, within reason. Free will exists. My next move was across the country.
Maybe our generation is meant to realize that we can simply take the power we need in order to make the changes we want to see. Millennials have had to eat a lot of shit sandwiches in order to get a single piece of avocado toast. At the end of the day, I don’t care if someone disapproves of how I live my life. Whether it’s someone older, younger, cis, trans, whatever – it isn’t their life. We all have our own lives to live. We can decide to accept each other for who we are, flaws and all, or we can nitpick each other to pieces and fight over things that ultimately don’t matter. The only thing that really matters is that there are those with a vested interest in keeping us from imagining a better world. Especially in keeping us from bringing said better world to fruition. People who benefit from us dooming and pessimistic, at each other’s throats. I’d rather they didn’t get their way.