This past week, I came out as trans. Nearly everyone has been exceptionally accepting and supportive, but all the support in the world can’t take away the gender dysphoria I feel today.
I want to try to explain this, and a lot of it may seem contradictory, but just try to stay with me. Anyone who knows me personally knows that I have quite large breasts. I wear a 42DD and they’re heavy bitches. I hate them. Every part of me hates them. I hate the way they look, I hate the way they hang off of me, I hate the way they make me feel. Like everyone looks at me and unconsciously thinks, “That’s a woman.” Even worse, they make me feel like they’re the only reason people have ever been attracted to me.
I want them gone. Now. I went to a surgery consultation a few years ago about getting them reduced and was told that I needed to lose weight in order to be a good candidate for surgery. Did I lose the weight? No. Did I in fact gain even more weight? Yes. Depression works in mysterious ways. Anyway, it’s recommended that you’re close to your ideal weight when you get top surgery. That means I need to lose about 140lbs. It feels utterly, utterly impossible. It feels hopeless. It’ll take me so long to lose that weight, and I don’t know how long I can stand this gender dysphoria.
If I had a flatter chest, I think I would be totally on board with starting testosterone. The research that I’ve done says that trans people generally feel a lot better when they start taking hormones, but I just don’t know. I fear that I would feel even worse gender dysphoria about my breasts if I had a hairy chest and a deeper voice. The way I look now, I pass as female. No one looks twice at me. Sure, I look like a butch-ass lesbian most of the time, but no one tries to kick me out of the women’s restroom (which like… restrooms are the stuff of nightmares now that I’m transitioning in my brain). Yes, I use the women’s restroom for now, but it feels wrong. I use the women’s room because it keeps me invisible. Using the men’s room would only draw attention to the fact that I don’t look like a man either. Where I work, there are no gender neutral bathrooms. My stomach does a little nervous flip every time I have to pee. It’s ridiculous.
I have all this anxiety about performing gender for other people. Trying to fit into a binary, even though I know I’m happier outside of it. Letting people believe I’m a woman for the sake of convenience and their own comfort. When will this stop? When I look more androgynous? Will it change then? Will I ever feel trans enough? These are the questions plaguing me today.
There’s no right or wrong way to express gender. Everyone is valid in their gender identity and expression, and I really believe that. So why can’t it apply to me too? Why do I have such a hard time wrapping my mind around how I should exist? Because of this body I was born into? I don’t know. I have so many questions and so much to learn.
Joelle Jacoski 