#tsstxt

i see it now, too, in the girls around me. i'll ask if they want care – a home-cooked meal, relaxed company, sex without the expectation of reciprocation – and they say no, no, thank you, i don't need it; what would you like, what do you want, because in their head they're still doing that awful calculus, still training themselves to disappear in the eyes of the people around them.

i don't think i'd have died without transition – not in the conventional sense, at least – but to take that leap, i had to stop thinking of myself as a human experiment in fuel-efficient living and start nurturing the anemic, atrophied flame of desire in my heart. i had to learn to eat well, to exercise, to style myself beautiful, but harder than that, i had to learn to ask the people around me to work on my behalf in order to enrich my life and give me the things i wanted.

and i did it; i learned. and it was agony, but courage is a muscle you can train, and every day i get better at accepting gifts with the hungry gratitude i never learned in my years and years as a sad, scared, lonely boy.

so be patient with the trans girls in your life. better than that: be proactive, attentive, generous; be forceful, if you have to, and learn to distinguish real discomfort from the terrified reflex of self-denial that so many of us once learned to rely on.

i am being assailed by invisible demons

but the thing is that you don't like driving. you have this car by some, i don't know, some accident of fate – your dad left it to you, or something – but it doesn't feel good to operate. like for some reason it just feels gross.

and nobody listens to you when you say that! they're like, dude, you have a car! that makes you powerful, capable, exciting, and you're like, no, honestly, i'd really rather i didn't have this, and they're like, but as long as you do, can you drive me to work? can you help me get this cabinet off of craigslist?

and you begrudge them, cause you don't wanna be selfish, and also because you sort of feel like they could ruin your life if they wanted, but it still sucks to drive, even after you've gotten good at – hang on, i'm getting there, i know this is long.

right, so then one day, your car breaks down. and it's such a relief! but everyone's like dude, fix your car, i gotta be out of my ex's place by sunday, i gotta get to the airport tomorrow, but, like... that's your car.

you control if it works or not, and now you get to say no thanks, i can't do that, not anymore, and as a matter of fact, you can never ask me to do it again.

i stood apart from boys, neglecting my friendships with them, in the hope that one of the girls would see me all forlorn and take me in. they'd release me from my obligations to be fast and strong, to be cruel; they'd teach me the chants and hand-games they played in circles on the schoolyard. of course, they didn't; why would they? i never asked. i didn't know how.

so while the boys ran and wrestled, and the girls gathered in the grass and whispered gossip in the secret languages they'd made for themselves, i built fairy houses in the tree-roots far off on the edge of the schoolyard. i hoped someone would notice how sensitive, how gentle and small, i was being, and would... well, i didn't know what it would mean. i couldn't see over that precipice.