so i saw myself
so i saw myself on my phone screen. i was filming myself skate. and i felt that jolt that i've felt many times. from seeing myself and feeling disconnected from that person. from feeling different in my body compared to what i see.
and i thought that it was a hotness thing. like a self esteem thing. i remember in high school seeing my profile and feeling ugly for what i perceived as a weak jaw. sometimes i still feel that. you don't see your profile often unless you seek it out. and now i also see how much thinner my hair is on the front of my head. or when the wind blows my bangs back i see my hairline. i mean shit these feelings go back to middle school when i tangled with having frizzy hair and feeling chubby and short and undesirable. it was a good feeling to grow some inches after freshman year. but then the acne started.. its always something.
i wrote those feelings off. labeled them as unhelpful and unwanted and tried to focus on how i feel in my body. i suppressed them. to chase fixing the things that created those feelings i thought would lead to them directed at a different part of my body. that i would be chasing the dragon. and that the path towards a healthy relationship with my body and appearance came from ignoring them. from focusing on what i love about my body. and what my body does for me. and mostly i think its been working for me. like damn am i good at suppressing my feelings or what. MAINTAIN CONTROL
but there's some wrinkles in the last couple years. i've been learning to release control of my self. to allow feelings to come without judgement. to not necessarily be the person that i constructed for myself. and therein what i thought to be a solid understanding of my gender kind of folded. it didn't come from my body feeling wrong or how people treated me feeling wrong but more from an inspiration and excitement surrounding femininity.
it has been euphoric and terrifying to untangle. gender is a hard thing to talk about. it is like fish talking about water. we live in a constructed society and to explore feelings around gender is to explore our relationship to that society. and i don't think its possible to untangle the two. so I've been trying to sit quietly with myself and try the things that the tiny voice in me is excited about. and see how those things feel. with every experiment my sense of my self and gender evolves and folds.
to cut to the chase I thought I'd found a point of stability in that journey. i thought I'd found peace in the unfolding. i've been taking feminizing hormones which do not create breast growth for almost a year. and it feels right. my emotions are bigger and harder to wrangle. sadness comes much more easily and I cry much more often- mostly from feeling overwhelmed. and when the sun comes out I am filled completely with joy from the depths of my gut to where my skin meets air. unbridled. I do not know what it is like to be born a woman. but i think i know a bit more about this small slice of it. and it feels good. i do not want to go back to the sameness of before.
now i put ribbons in my hair. i wear camis under my shirt. i talk a bit higher pitch. but i am still very much part boy. i love that part of myself. i feel like a tomboy. like a nonbinary tomboy. that is how i feel in my skin. that is who looks back at me in the mirror.
but i saw myself skateboarding. i felt that jolt and who i saw was not a tomboy. who i saw was not how i feel in my skin. and i'm wondering is that feeling dysphoria? have I been suppressing gender dysphoria? for how long? does this mean I should seek change my body? or is to open that box to seek an unachievable ideal which will only bring me pain?
i feel i've disturbed a great and terrible dragon within me. i hope i can learn to be her friend.
