18 Years of God Damn Bullshit: A Memoir

Love Letter to my Trans Body

Dear body,

I remember as a kid the three things I said I liked about you.

1. My eyes. An earthy hazel, outlined in smoky black. They were often the source of compliments, and really, how could you go wrong with eyes? I remember the guy from __________'s 21st birthday party who said he liked them. I think that was the first time I felt a crush on a man.

2. My hair. Curly, and thick, and one of the few things that tied me to my mixed race. I remember my mother telling me how my white grandmother asked her if she put a perm in my hair as a baby. I remember how it was so difficult she used to use the pink hair products that smelled sweet and rich in it. I had been too tender-headed then, crying when she tugged and pulled it into hairties. And most of all, I remember being jealous of the white girls at school who had hair that didn't need detangler to brush through it, yet they always touched mine as if it were some found treasure, and said how they wished it were theirs. I burned my hair straightening it.

3. Lastly, my feet. They were wide, and I always needed a size bigger to accommodate their width, but I loved them because I thought they made me a better swimmer. I'm not sure how true that was, but thinking so had made up for how much they sweated.

I remember when I first became aware of you the way I would be for the rest of my life so far.

It was the summer I spent with my father. He spoiled me with sweets and takeout, and I began to gain weight. I was in the shower one day and felt my hips were suddenly wider than they had been before. Where they used to go straight down, they now blocked my hands when I ran them down my sides. I remember brushing it off, not thinking much, but somehow knowing it was strange.

After I got home, my mother sat me down to talk with me about my weight, and for the first time in my life I understood why you were wrong.

Glass became reflective surfaces for me to make sure I wasn't becoming what I learned to hate. I fell in love with the silhouette of my flat chest under the same hoodie I refused to take off even in the 90+ degree weather. I learned to emulate the legs of my male classmates who seemed to eat everything and stay curveless.

I wonder how I failed to see it for so long, how blind I was to everything.

There is so much about you I have to learn

To understand

To heal from

I imagine loving you someday

All of you

I imagine holding you and feeling so right in your skin

And being able to show you to others without it being wrong

I will look at you and feel you are mine, instead of that of some spectre that wanders the world

Unknowing of itself

Unknown

I will be older then

Wiser

I will not be that girl I was anymore

I will be someone new

Someone I can't foresee now

Someone adult, and free, and happy in a way that makes me cry because I never knew it was possible

For how I still hurt you, I'm sorry

For how I squeeze you and shame you, I'm sorry

I am learning how to love you instead of hating the parts of you that keep me alive

I am learning the difference between love and indifference

Between acceptance, and love

I am beginning to live for the first time