Original Link:
http://missjessicasmith.tumblr.com/post/33324655251/understanding-trans
It’s strange to me to think about the fact that I was born trans.
I can accept that I was born with blue eyes, brown hair, and a cute smile. I can accept that I was born intelligent, that I was born to a mother and a father, that I was born in the United States, that I was born with the correct number of fingers and toes.
All of those things are things I can see, things I can verify, proven things that myself and everyone else has acknowledged.
But that I was born trans, that doesn’t seem to fit into that same pattern. I know it’s true, because I’ve been this way since I can remember. I know there wasn’t some moment, or trauma, or event that changed me from a cis male into a trans female. That never happened, this is just who I am.
To be born with completely incongruent physical and mental identities, to me that doesn’t make any sense. Truly, I can’t even come up with any comparable examples. It just doesn’t happen. In almost every human being, and most likely in every other animal, your brain and your body are one. You are your body, you are your mind, you are just you. There’s no need to second guess, or doubt. You don’t ever look at your body and think “This is just a shell. This isn’t me, this is just what people see me as.”
For example, many people have low self-esteem because of their appearance, be it their weight, or their height, acne, hair color, nose, freckles, or anything else you can think of. They feel like they are a worse person because they see their body as being inferior. But their body is them, it’s one and the same, so when the see their body as bad, they themselves are bad.
And this true with trans people as well, we are not immune to the same worries, doubts, and loss of confidence due to the normal spectrum of body image insecurities.
But we also have another issue, that causes even more emotional turmoil than these ‘normal’ insecurities. We have the constant feeling, the constant thought and understanding that ‘this isn’t me’. It’s not that these aspects aren’t what society says they should be, they may or may not be but that is not the point. The point is that they aren’t right. They shouldn’t be here. As if I were to look at my hands and have lobster claws, instead of hands. My brain would instantly reject it, because it’s incorrect. My brain knows what I should have at the end of my forearms, and it’s certainly not claws. So when a trans person looks at their body, and generally any part or aspect of their body, they see an incorrect shell.
And who are you supposed to be then? We don’t have anyone to model ourselves off of. Cisgender people do not carry a book or a guide of who they are, to identify themselves. They just know what they should look like, how they look like, what they want to be, how they want to act, and everything else. They are themselves, and so they will be themselves.
Transgender people don’t have that luxury. We not only start from scratch, with nothing, we have to create our identities while rejecting our old identities. We have to try to decipher what gender roles we were forced into, what gender roles we want to put upon ourselves, and what gender roles we will fit into when we transition, even if we don’t want them.
We have to decide what we will look like, to the extent we can. Do we want surgery? Hormones? Should I grow out my hair, or cut it? Should I wear makeup, or should I not? Most of us do this in the absolute privacy of our own lives, we don’t have people we can get feedback from.
We experiment with ourselves with no rules, no guidelines, no methodology. We just try to find the look, and the feel, and the identity that will give us the feeling that cisgender people get everyday without ever realizing it. The feeling that when we move, we talk, we act, and when we look in the mirror, we see ourselves.
So I do understand when cisgender people say they don’t understand us. I don’t understand us. I don’t understand how this could happen, that the mind and body could have such a disconnect from each other. But I live this disconnect every day. I’ve adapted to it, as humans are wont to do. It impacts me in every single way, permeating every moment, every aspect of my life, day to day and year to year.
But I don’t think I will ever understand how or why I was born this way. I just was.
