When one is conditioned day after day to embody and embrace (rather, endure) norms and behaviors antithetical to her identities, a certain dissolution can occur. That demarcation between internal and external crumbles. She herself blurs, at last, internalizing that which she has exhausted every breath trying to ward off.
I awake early Saturday morning, unable to shake the schedule of my week even for rest. A nightmare lingers at the fore of my mind nestled indistinguishably between the conscious and unconscious. I’m confined to a building, then a single room. We had been seen. With my husband and father, I sit, pleading. Dreams as this recall the terror of that day in March, when I am not yet 18. I wonder what it is that will not let me forget. As the details of the imagined event fade, my emotions stand, rooted, concrete. I heard recently that, when the brain experiences trauma, it loses the ability to distinguish real threats from false, as the frontal cortex is impaired. Hormones demand that hyper-vigilance and hyper-sensitivity ensue. After how much trauma is this biology irreversible? Reaching, patting. I grab my phone. It’s no later than 6:45.
There would be no pleasure in fighting the body on this — I can not hide waking recollections from an unclaimed sleep. It would not be restful anyway, tainted, I convince myself. Drained and groggy, I leave my bed, succumbing to that emotional hangover, built steadily by others over two weeks of unwelcome umbrage and excess. My shoulders ache, knotted and wound like a crumpled paper ball. No amount of stretching has yet ironed this pain. These creases seem permanent, inscribed in my flesh, a memento not invited.
My stomach rumbles. Still alive. Unsure of the last time I went to the market, there’s no food. I default mentally to the closest source of nourishment, a Dunkin’ Donuts across the street. A glance at the bathroom mirror reveals my curls tousled, a nest mangled and abandoned. Tired, I will not shower. I will not do anything today.
Running my head under the cool sink water, I lay my hair flat, dripping. I will not put on make up. More an afterthought than a refusal, my outfit emerges as a product of laundry put off days too long. A baggy cream sweater covers the silhouette of my breasts. Tight green pants expose visibly a lump. My only accessory: a chunky necklace, multicolored, handed down from my mother.
A return to the mirror and I stand before myself, demure, unimpressed. Not the glamorous girl from social media. It feels, a reversion, a familiar expression. She looks like a boy. Questionably femme, certainly cis. And yet, stepping outside, the world seemed not to miss that girl from the pictures.
No one said much to me that day. Though I left my house only for breakfast, and later, for liquor, I took note of the calm around me. Often I feel anxious when in public alone, dodging those who invariably begin serving harassment in open spaces or closed. Make me choose, and I’d take open. Bystanders in closed spaces have never been of support. Barriers themselves, they constrict my possibilities for movement. Confined again, now to a bus seat or train car. There is usually no escape at all, only endurance. I take her laughter, his words, their pictures and flash. I pray. Let it end there.
But this day was unique. She was a boy, white. Her femme was relegated, a descriptor, not her essence. And she was spared.
This post is part 1 of 2, inspired by the series, What I Wanted to Wear.
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