The Shoes that Brought you Here

a little story about you

Let me tell you a story. This is a story about you.

You were born like any other child. You were happy and free, you sang and danced, you ran and played. And when you were still too young to notice, someone put a pair of shoes on your feet. They did not fit you quite right, but you didn’t know how shoes should fit, and so you kept dancing, you kept playing, and you still sang.

As you grew up, you began noticing that your shoes felt tight. It was a minor inconvenience at first, but over time you found your toes nagging you more and more. Interestingly, lots of people around you celebrated their shoes in ways that felt oddly over-the-top. Some people would show off their shoes. Others would remark loudly and often at the delight of how their shoes fit their feet.

You never felt this way about your shoes.

If you said anything about how your feet felt, you were met with frowns of disapproval, looks of misunderstanding, and something about those looks told you that you should not discuss how poorly your shoes fit you with anyone anymore. After all, everyone else was so happy with their shoes, how could you not be? And the sight of those shoes on your feet was always met with the biggest, warmest smiles from your family and friends. They loved how those shoes looked on you.

After decades of wearing those uncomfortable shoes, your toes started feeling stunted. Sometimes they would go numb for hours, and no matter how much it hurt, you knew you could not take those shoes off.

Once, just once, you had a fantasy (only in your head) about wearing an entirely different pair of shoes. They fit you so sweetly, cradling your feet, lightening your load, allowing you to skip through your day in happiness. But someone caught you with a look on your face in that moment of imagining, and you cleared those thoughts away, never to consider them again.

Well, there might also have been the briefest of moments when you imagined how incredible it could feel to go barefoot, but let’s not think too much about that.

As the years went by, you learned to accept the aches and pains in your feet, up your calves, into your thighs and lower back. Some moments felt like you couldn’t manage another step, others faded in intensity and you plodded on mindlessly. Good things happened in your life. Many good things. But in every single one of your cherished memories there is the nagging presence of cramped toes, blistered heels, sore everything from those damn shoes. You cannot think about your beautiful wedding, about the days each of your children were born, without also recalling how your feet hurt.

Everything in your life has been tainted by that pain, by knowing something wasn’t right and could not be fixed no matter how much you tried to believe the pain away. Sometimes you spend so much energy convincing yourself that those shoes fit just fine that you really do begin to believe it yourself, but it never lasts. And then the aches come back more fierce than before.

One day, when you knew you could not take another step in those horrid shoes, when you knew that your body and soul were begging you to stop, to give up walking, to do anything other than move forward on your feet, you broke down and cried out loud, “I hate these shoes! I have always hated these shoes. They don’t fit, and I want them gone, and instead, I’m going to wear-” Your voice faltered. The words abandoned you. Somewhere deep down inside there was a vision of the shoes you wanted – no, that you needed. If there was any way to continue living, those new shoes were the answer.

But asking for them? When everyone knew that you’d always been wearing something six sizes smaller? Well that just felt… terrifying.

Alone, in the dark, a daring secret box in your lap containing size 11s you’d bought “for someone else” at the shoe store, you cried silently. What if they didn’t fit the way you wanted and needed them to? What if everyone hated how they looked on your feet? What if… What if…

Desperation took hold, though, and you knew this was a journey you had already decided to embark upon.

Removing those old shoes, however, proved to be harder than you expected. You pulled and pried, and the laces at least loosened a little. The more you worked at it, the more they let go, and you started feeling the sting of circulation in your little toe, the one you thought had maybe died in that shoe ages ago. It hurt to feel it now, after all this time, after some part of you had given up on it, and it filled you with grief and regret and a hollowness that had been eating you alive for longer than you were aware of. The desperation grew again, and you knew now that you’d have to cut the side of each shoe to remove it fully.

You sat with that understanding for a long time, struggling to explain to yourself how you could do such a thing to those shoes that had brought you all this way in your life. Some deeply held part of you wished there was a way to keep those shoes safe and whole, but freedom from them was vital.

Your hands moved slowly and carefully along the stitching as you cut through each thread. And sooner than you imagined they fell from your tired, cramped feet, exposing them to air all around, to nakedness, to light. It was too much. You closed your eyes and curled your toes in shock at the abruptness, your hands swiftly covering that tender skin until your breath slowed and your heartrate steadied.

And then?

Well for at least one glorious moment, you simply stretched and felt the world around you with that delicate skin. It wasn’t trapped or hidden anymore. And in your exploration of the world, in the sensation of your feet on the ground for the first time since early childhood, you let go of all the fear and anxiety about this moment, and you simply… felt. You felt things you never knew existed. You felt things that were familiar, things that had been memories tucked neatly away, things that were exciting and scary.

Your hands slowly felt around the edges of that new box until you were ready to open it, to stare down at the larger, more suitable shoes inside waiting for you. They were lighter than your fingers expected. They slipped onto your feet like a second skin, like an old tune you’d forgotten that suddenly came on the radio and you still remembered the chorus. And the first time you stood up in them, every bone in your body finally felt right. It felt like coming home after a really long, exhausting trip. It felt like relaxing in a swaying hammock on a warm summer day.

And those first steps were anything but pretty. You stumbled. You fell down more times than you thought could be normal, but who could you even ask about this sort of thing? Everyone else you knew had always fit their shoes just fine. But you – you were isolated in this difference. In this otherness.

Only you’re not. None of us is. It’s funny how many people around us are wearing shoes that don’t fit or feel good, and most of them will never breathe a word of it to a soul, let alone to themselves. We don’t all need new shoes to feel whole and relaxed and calm. But some of us do. Some of us need a closet full of shoes. Some of us need to run barefoot in the grass.

And you?

Well here you are. And those shoes look marvelous on you. But they cannot compare to the smile you now wear, to the relief of each breath you take, to the happiness you express all around you.

Take a walk with me and tell me about your shoes.

Your trans friend,

Robin

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Trans Day of Remembrance is this coming Monday, November 20. I invite you to take a moment to learn about our many Transcestors who have been lost to violence as a result of transphobia and hatred. I’m choosing to honor this day as more of an introvert. There is no right or wrong way to grieve. If you feel so inclined, please consider donating to the Trevor Project or to Trans Lifeline to help provide resources and support to the transgender people you love and to the ones you have yet to meet.