Gender dysphoria - like wearing an ill-fitting Halloween costume that you can’t take off, ever. Getting dressed in the morning is like getting done up for a fancy dress party (or a theatrical performance, or a formal dance), in that you have to ask, “What would I wear if I were a ______?” but you have to do it every fucking day. Looking in the mirror is like looking at a picture of someone else who looks quite a bit like you but isn’t you.
That is a fascinating description. A question, if I may: If the person you see isn’t you, but rather someone who looks very similar to you, how do you ever know what the “real” you looks like?
OK, I have two more. One good, one bad.
The bad: I have a slippery SI joint (where the sacrum and pelvis join), and every once in a while it wiggles out of place. But wiggle is too cute a word for it. I don’t think it moves much, but it feels like the world’s coming to an end when it does. It starts with a feeling of something releasing and then catching again, and then it’s a horrible, dull, pervasive pain. It kind of radiates and feels like it’s going through my organs and everything. When it first happens, all I can think of is finding a place to lie down. Later, every move hurts–sometimes like a knife in my back and sometimes just that awful thudding pain. Ugh. I thought of this today because I’m getting little warning signals from that part of my back. I’ll be taking it easy for a coupla days…
The good: I’m a creative director at an ad agency, and part of my job is reviewing ideas that the creative teams come up with. When they hit on a good one–a really, really good one–I get a kind of tingly feeling in my belly. For me, that has become the signal that we’re on our way to the big idea. And once the big idea gets going, it feels a little like hopping on a rollercoaster. It’s gonna move fast and go in unexpected directions. And it’s gonna be a blast. I love my job.
Good question. It’s not so much that you know that you should look like ____. It’s more that you know that the face in the mirror isn’t you; as you transition, you find yourself saying, “Oh, that’s just me.”
Try this: When you picture yourself in your mind (no cheating with a mirror!), who/what do you see? When you dream about yourself, what do you look/feel like?
Passing a kidney stone (female.)
First, you feel like you have to pee really badly, but nothing comes out. Then, there’s a red-hot wire running up inside you, and you rock back and forth on the gurney in the ER because maybe, if you concentrate on the movement, you can distract yourself from the pain.
You keep trying to pee, and every time you hope more than a dribble comes out, but no such luck.
So you rock and rock and rock and then you get some beautiful drug that starts with a T, has an X somewhere in the middle, and then you can float away.
(They gave me Demerol at first. And I thanked them for making my head feel like it was stuffed full of fog, but it wasn’t helping with the pain.)
I’m not sure this exactly qualifies, but here goes:
Have you ever been hit by a car? In my opinion it’s a very odd, very fast-but-slow series of events.
I, at the foolish age of about 13, attempted to cross a moderately busy 4 lane road in front of a shopping mall on my bicycle.
What happened instead of a normal crossing was this: First, I had that shocking realization that I would not in fact make it across the road. I was going to get hit. Second was Oh hell, I’m now rolling sideways over the hood and windshield, without my bike. Next was picking myself up off the road behind the car, looking at the next car that had thankfully stopped short of my landing zone.
I don’t remember much beyond those sort of strobe light moments where things seemed to freeze momentarily. My bike was of course destroyed, and the nice police officer drove me and my wrecked bike home. It being a simpler time, there was no obligatory trip to the hospital.
Thank you for this! I meant to reply sooner, but I had to reread it a few times and sorta let the meaning (and enormity) of it sink in. I greatly appreciate your fighting my ignorance, and wish you the best in being who you are - not who others think you should be.
As for my own indescribable experience, certain music has a rather profound affect on me, that I’ve never been able to convey accurately with words. (Here goes nothin’!! Songs that have a deep personal meaning to me, that have happy memories attatched, provoke a physical experience bordering on nirvana. (No, not the band’s music, haha. They’re good but not THAT good.) On top of the normal euphoria that comes from jamming to some good tunage, and the inevitable happy tears - I am such a crier - my whole body thrums. It’s like an orgasm crossed with a deep spiritual awakening, and…something else that I can’t quite put my finger on. Shrooms, perhaps? (Yet another indescribable thing!) I shake all over, and alternately go hot and cold, and often it feels as though if I could just believe hard enough, I could fly. You’re probably smirking now and thinking “Mm-hm, that be the drugs talking there!” but I’ve been this way my whole life, and don’t do drugs anymore, so that’s definitely not it.
I desperately wish others could feel this way; it’s the coolest feeling ever, and I almost feel guilty and unworthy that I’ve got such an awesome gift in that I can experience it.
[Side note] I reread what I just typed, and it sounds so stupid and corny, but I really don’t know how to explain it any better. Sorry. [/end side note]