I always felt different. And so follows the opening sentence of every LGBTQ child’s coming out speech words arranged along a pathway explaining key experiences which convinces zer that ze is gay/lesbian/bisexual/transgender/genderqueer. I think I’m genderqueer or transgender. And I’m also bisexual.
Or maybe I’m just confused. Maybe I’m just a tomboy. Try as I might, I cannot recall whether I ever declared as a young child the infamous words “I am a boy”.
But I do know that at age 4, sitting on the bed with my grandfather with a sheet of temporary tattoos that my parents had sent me, I could not decide which one I wanted because they all seemed so off, so unappealing. All of the sparkly rainbows or pink and purple unicorns looked so ugly, so not me. I ended up picking a tiny black archery arrow because I wanted to see how the transfer mechanism worked. Then my neighbor came in, and immediately begged to have the giant purple unicorn with a white mane. I remember not minding at all and wondered why someone would want something like that on their arm.
I also know that at age 5, at pre-k when we learned to sing songs, I would stare enviously out the window at the boys playing soccer outside. Oh how I had wanted to ditch the humming and singing and run around with “the people like me”.
And at age 6, after YMCA summer camp swimming lessons, I dropped my spare pair of shorts on the ground after showering. My friends, not knowing whose they were, started joking that they were boy shorts, and that there was a boy in the girls’ shower. I remember thinking that “NO, they are not boys’ shorts (most unfortunately)” and wishing that my mom would buy me the right type of clothes.
And when I entered puberty I constantly looked at my chest in the mirror, convincing myself that I hadn’t quite yet, and that I wasn’t going to turn into a huge chested woman with huge hips and legs and that I wasn’t going to forever be stuck in the wrong body. But I sort of did.
But when I didn’t get my period as expected I was so so happy. I begged god to please please please let me have androgen insensitivity syndrome, to please please please let me actually be a boy with XY chromosomes. And when my pediatrician said she thinks I have AI, I was so so so happy inside. That there was therefore nothing wrong with me, and that I was supposed to be a boy.
But then this summer I did. So I don’t have AI. Because whatever hormone imbalance that had been saving me for the past 4 years righted itself and now I will be just like everyone else on the outside but so different and mismatched on the inside. It’s happened twice now, but unlike everyone else I feel so disgusted with myself, so upset that I am not ME, so wistful that if only time could be turned back 2 and a half months; Why didn’t I appreciate every day before????
Maybe my hormones will unbalance themselves again. And I will continue to have the high androgens and low estrogens which resulted in my not-too-wide hips and sort-of-broad shoulders and sort-of-long arms. And maybe I will not see any more coagulated red and black. I used to like blood; needless to say I do not anymore.
And like many FTM transgender teens after…after menarche ihatethatwordandanyotherswhenaffiliatedwithme I have impulsively bought a bunch of girls’ clothes, expensive ones, to wear to school even though I don’t even know why. I think it’s because such a blatant, impossible to ignore reminder has been delivered to me that I will try once more to conform to the body I have been given and the expected corresponding gender. But I want you to know, if you read this because therefore you are one of my best friends, if you see me in those clothes, that I am different inside. I am writing this now partially because when school starts, I will look and dress more like a girl than ever. I want you to know who I really am.
In my dreams I am always a boy. In my nightmares I am a boy stuck in a girl’s body. When not unwitting my certainty of being transgender wavers like my spiritual faith.
When I was a child in china there would always be naptime, but I could never ever sleep during the day. Consequently I always pretended to be asleep and kept my eyes closed and lied very still and breathed shallowly, just to conform to the preschool teachers’ expectations. Oh how nice she is! She always lies so still when sleeping, and always goes to sleep right away!, they would say. Similarly, in front of parents, teachers, adults, and professional places I always maintain an image of being normal. I smile and thank them when they say, oh what a nice/pretty/smart girl/daughter! Even though I am Clarance, I respond to the name Jessica, just as I respond to my chinese name, the mockery of my chinese name, Melissa, ‘hey you!’, and whatever else people have gotten used to calling me. So please, don’t tell anyone who doesn’t come here the contents of this post.
And now you know why the owner of this blog is Clarance. But maybe you’ve always known.
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