Transcestors
To all of my siblings in this month of Pride
June is Pride month. There are an approximate 1.6 million transgender people over the age of 13 in the United States alone, and those are tough numbers to figure out, especially when politics forces many of us into hiding. Unlike other marginalized populations, there’s nothing about us that links us visibly or that helps us find our community. It is only through our desire to be seen and to find one another that we can connect and become visible.
Transcestors
I do not know you. You have a name I have not heard, and it might be your second, your third, one of a string of names you will give yourself over the course of your long life. You are defiant and will never change your name because there is nothing wrong with it. And if there is a name you no longer use, I will never utter it, even if it’s known to me, because I respect who you say you are.
I do not know you. You come from a small town. You grew up in the Midwest like I did, in farm schools set amidst the fields, bussing long roads in the dark of earliest morning, hiding the best parts of yourself from the bullies, the teachers, the world. You come from a thriving city, a bustling street of traffic and corner bodegas, a network of subway lines and els and bus routes, a coastal harbor of bike lanes and ferry rides. You come from a country I have never seen or felt. You come from everywhere.
I do not know you. Your family was large. There were so many siblings. Cousins. Family around all the time, all of that pressure to be like them, to hide your uniqueness, to conform. You come from a small family who treasured you, who believed in you when you announced yourself as a small child, who raised you in defiance of what the world said about people like us. You were your own family. You raised yourself, maybe your siblings, too. You remember social workers and government systems the way I remember Christmas morning with my own family, in a detached way, from the viewpoint of isolation.
I do not know you. You are struggling. You are thriving. You have so much love you are bursting at the seams with joy! You are fearful every moment, waiting, hoping that something better is around the corner. You are fighting to exist, to accept yourself, to have the one person you love acknowledge who you are.
I do not know you. I saw you once on the train on my way to work, and our eyes linked over the crush of bodies busy with their phones. We brushed arms passing one another in the library on a Tuesday. You left me a tip once when I worked in a steakhouse and bussed your table. You answered the phone when I called to inquire about a charge on my account.
I do not know you. You have written beautiful things that you tuck away in a journal on the highest shelf of a bookcase. Your boss reprimanded you for poor performance, but she didn’t see the way you cared about your coworkers and tried your hardest. You work yourself to the bone to provide for your child. If I close my eyes I can hear you singing as you drive the length of the interstate to get to that funeral. You are balancing moving to a new state, finding a good job, and packing all of your house in only three days, and the exhaustion is the only thing keeping the panic at bay.
I do not know you. You see the same news articles I do. We read them in sync with one another, thumbs scrolling on phones as we pass on the street, our arms pulled along by our dogs who would sniff noses if not for us whispering to “leave it.” At night you close your eyes and worry. So do I.
I do not know you. You cannot bind for the pain in your ribs. You are growing out your hair, but it never quite behaves the way it should. You stare in the mirror for hours hoping to see yourself. You take selfies every single day. You shower with the light off to ward off the dysphoria. You have had terrible thoughts about your body. You are elated at the sight of how thick your beard is after all this time. Someone said just yesterday that you look hot, and it felt… amazing. When you held that door open for her, she said “thank you, sir” with a grateful smile. It was incredible. It was soul-crushing. Sometimes you glance at your elbows to see if they will sprout hair soon, too. You take off your shirt at every single opportunity, and it feels just as good as you imagined it would. You realize now that messenger bags and breasts were never meant to get along together. When she hugs you, your skin tingles.
I do not know you. We both struggle with how to fill out forms correctly. Do they mean the sex on your driver’s license or passport? Or both? They don’t match. You spent years getting all of your documents lined up, and still there is anxiety that someone, somewhere will discover the mismatch. You don’t know which letter to choose. You have always known which letter represents you. You want to pick more than one, and I want that, too.
I do not know you. You came out at ten. At sixteen. At fifty-seven. At forty. You have not yet found your voice. You are not yet safe in this world, and the closet you live in is your protection from its brutality.
I do not know you, but I know with certainty that you are there, needing to know that you are not alone, that you are not the only one to feel the way you do.
I do not know you. But you are my family. We are connected.
Your trans friend,
Robin
I am sobbing. And sharing this with some of my people who are having a tough go of it.
What a touching essay Robin. I am glad to have a friend like you that has taught me things I would not have known otherwise.