Gender Dysphoria is a Bitch

Gender dysphoria is a bitch. Never feeling comfortable in your head, your heart, or especially your body, takes a daily toll. It beats you down in so many ways. As long as I can remember I have been weary, not just tired, but weary. Every day is a struggle, emotionally and physically. Demons of doubt inhabit both waking and sleeping hours. I attribute much of my constant struggle with suicidal thinking through the ages to this dysphoria. There is something wrong with me. That has been a constant theme from childhood, something wrong and shameful. Something to be hidden at all costs. Exhausting. As I said, weary. I was a secretive child who grew into a secretive adult. If, as they say, we are as sick as our secrets then I have been very sick indeed. I was not like the other boys I grew up with. I was small to begin with. Always the smallest kid in the class, small and weak. And I was rarely interested in the activities of the other boys. I hated playing sports. They were always another chance to be humiliated and marked as different and defective. I felt like my skin didn’t fit properly. I had an aching and longing in my heart that could never be satisfied. As I grew, I retreated into a world of books and fantasy. Adolescence was a special circle of hell. As I look at pictures of myself during that period, I am struck by how androgynous I appeared. I was bullied unmercifully. Everyone thought I was gay. Even I eventually came to that conclusion myself. That would explain why I was so different, why I never fit in, why I felt so uncomfortable all the time. Naturally, this was yet another source of shame. I found solace in drugs and alcohol. They took me out of myself and let me, albeit only for a short while, to leave my daily existence behind. I dropped out of high school after my sophomore year. I could no longer take the bullying and gay baiting. As soon I could, I took the GED test and began attending the local community college. I had been involved in theater in high school and I decided to major in it in college. Surprise, surprise, there were actual living, breathing gay people here. And the theater crowd accepted them as part of their own. The problem was I wasn’t gay. I found our in short order that I wasn’t attracted to men. My brief sexual encounters were an ordeal. I was attracted to women, so did that make me straight? It was very confusing. I didn’t know who I was. When I left college, I retreated more and more into the straight world. I tried desperately to fit in. I moved out into the adult world of work. I kept my mask on twenty four/seven, suppressing any feelings of difference, trying to hide my otherness at all costs. My drinking and drugging grew proportionally. I was spiraling out of control. Nothing was working. I didn’t know who I was and I felt empty and hollow inside. I finally spiraled down to the point that I found myself in drug rehab. This helped me with my drug problem but left me with all my other demons, bubbling up to the surface now that I wasn’t hiding them by being drunk or high all the time. I first began to think seriously that I was supposed to be a woman and not a man. Of course this was a deep, dark secret. The thoughts grew more and more insistent and I worked harder and harder to suppress them. How could I possible be transgender? I was married with kids. I would have to live this way for the rest of my life and make the best of it. My suicidal thinking grew ever more frequent and intense. I had never been comfortable in my body, but now I grew to loathe it. I hated my penis with a passion. Sex grew more and more infrequent and finally ceased to exist. Life was hell. When I finally began to transition I thought my problems with gender dysphoria would end, but they only intensified. Starting hormone replacement therapy was like starting puberty all over again, with all its angst and drama. At times I felt like I was fourteen, obsessed with makeup, and hair, and clothes. I would burst into uncontrollable tears at the slightest provocation. The mirror became my best friend and my worst enemy. My beard shadow horrified me, as did my enormous feet. My deep voice seemed to mock me every time it boomed out. My body wasn’t built to wear women’s clothes. The list went on and on and on. I had laser hair removal treatment to deal with my five o’clock shadow. I started wearing Doc Marten boots, which were androgynous enough to partially mask the fact of my humongous feet. My breasts grew, albeit only to size A. Have you ever tried to find a size 50-A bra? I had gender confirming surgery. My hated penis was finally gone. I had thought this would finally get rid of the dysphoric feelings once and for all. I was wrong. Every time a clerk in a store called me sir instead of ma’am, every time someone gave me a second look on the street, every time I stepped inside a women’s restroom, I felt uncomfortable, ashamed, less than. I’ve dealt with some of these feelings through the years. I’ve given up hoping to ‘pass’ in public. I dress somewhat androgynously. I no longer wear makeup, or a lot of jewelry. My dreams are no longer of matching wardrobes, but of tattoos and facial piercings. Some of the dysphoria remains. I hate looking at my feet, or my tiny breasts. I tell myself that if I ever win the lottery the first thing I’m buying is boobs, great big boobs. Unfortunately, there is no surgery to make your feet smaller. I feel more and more comfortable in my skin as time goes on. I no longer worry about passing. I am generally happy with who I have become. But, boy, that gender dysphoria is a bitch.