open letter to the nonbinary kid starting hormone therapy

*2023 Writer's Note:

The following is a personal essay written in December of 2021 on the one-year anniversary of my first testosterone shot. The essay is an open letter to myself, one year before, as I was just about to start on T. It includes my reflections on the first year of my so-called "medical transition," as well as real excerpts from my daily journals during this time (shown here as italicized quotes). I share this essay here because I looked for similar personal narratives during this time of my life, and hearing other Queer people's stories gave me immense comfort and hope. I also hope to provide a positive and alternate viewpoint to the current societal dialogue on gender and bodily autonomy. Queer and trans people are valid in their experiences, and mine is one of many.

_________________________________________________________________________________

“There is no end goal with gender.” -Andrea Gibson

It is okay to want to stop feeling blurry when you look in the mirror. It is okay to want to come home to your body for the first time. It is, in fact, possible to have a body that feels like coming home to. You have always been this way, and the better language was enough for five years, but not any longer. I know you are scared, mostly of what others might think, or say, or what punishments await you on the other side, but as with everything, the things you fear are the things most worth doing.

“My body is a vacant house, and I am squatting to survive the winter.”

You are frustrated about what others say but don’t mean. You wish you could change how people see you. You wish people could see you at all.

The doctor will ask you what your end goal is at the first appointment, an hour away from home in a body that has never been, and you won’t be sure if you should tell her the truth or what you think she wants to hear. The truth is you just want to live in your body full-time. The truth is you want to be confusing, neutral, expansive, in-between and neither-both. The truth is you are tired of other people deciding for you. There is no end goal with gender, but you must be assigned one when you are diagnosed. Your gender will become a diagnosis, a medical history, proof that you require fixing and that you deserve to be fixed. Your gender is not a diagnosis. Your body is not the wrong one. People take hormones all the time, for all kinds of reasons. It is easier to be cisgender and miserable than it is to be transgender and happy.

The first time you press a needle into your stomach, you will shake and sweat and the doctor will congratulate you on a job well done. She will be impressed at how quickly you do it. It will feel like a lifetime that you stand there, breathing, trying to muster the courage to stab yourself, knowing that you will have to do this weekly for the foreseeable future. The doctor will call you “her” in front of you when telling the front desk to fill your prescription. The pharmacy will never have your syringes, or your needles, or your hormones. You will have to wait and fight and call every three months. You will make the voyage through the corn four times a year, and then two, bruise your fingers and scar your tiny veins for the required testing. You will be asked about paths that are not yours right now. You will take a dose that is under the “therapeutic” level, but the results are therapy enough. It will not be easy, but it will be worth it.

“I am trying to become as the world is ending around me. I am taking testosterone weekly as a promise, as an act of survival, of rebellion.”

In a millennial frenzy to document your life and the crumbling world around you, you will capture in relative fullness the changes that happen in your body more quickly than you’d anticipated. You will become ravenously hungry in a way that makes you empathize both with teenage boys and their caretakers. You will shift, subtly at first but then sometimes all at once. Your circles will sharpen into triangles and squares. Your fears of baldness will quickly be dissipated as your hair grows thick and weed-like [2023 writer's note: ironically, you will go bald by choice in just a few years!] At the grocery stores, people will sneak glances more frequently than when you were just some lesbian. You will look in the mirror two months in and not immediately recognize yourself, but you will see the reflection for once. You will survive the weekly shots, the fighting that you’d hoped you wouldn’t have to do, the second puberty in the Midwest. You will survive and on the other side, you will find yourself happier than you thought you were capable of being.

“I am not at home in either camp- a guest, an outsider in both. I sit between and wait for others- for anyone- who is also lost in the middle. Who might also somehow understand.”

You will quickly learn that outsiders like you may be allowed to move through the world, but they are not welcomed fully. They are not encouraged to participate. You will never be in the right place, doing the right things the right way. You will have too much hair on your legs and arms and stomach for the women’s locker room. You will have too many curves for the men’s bathroom at the grocery store. You will discover that it is best not to stop your car when you drive through Indiana. You will become used to the eyes on you when you are in public, especially when you are out alone. Men especially will feel that you are theirs to judge, to steal, to linger on. It can be lonely in the middle, where on either side are warm groups with solidified places in the world. It is lonely, but it is better than playacting a part prematurely assigned. There will be others in the middle with you, and together you are nothing, and you are everything.

“I am an ecosystem- complex, the sum of my parts and more. I am merely exploring an existing biosphere of possibility, a scientist testing, discovering, documenting a gendered life.”

You are so lucky to be queer. It will not feel that way every day. It is not an easy life, and for so many it is a much harder life, but it is a life that can be full of expansive and freeing why-not. You deserve to have a life, and you deserve to live it on your terms. Being queer will allow you to live your life with curiosity, asking “why?” when you encounter a “must” or a “should.” You will be able to explore your place in this world, how others see you, and who you are without it all. It is a gift to be able to write your own script for your life. It is a blessing to be able to discover yourself as you truly are. There are no rules or roles that you must follow except for the ones that feel right in your life, on your path.

“Queerness makes me believe in souls.”

You are not in transition. You are not moving from one thing to another. Rather, you are becoming who you already are. You are gender-less, gender-full, and you are taking some measure of control over how others perceive you. Your soul is queer, your body is queer, and now everyone can see it too. Over the course of a year, pictures and mirrors will come into focus. Your hair will grow longer than it has in a decade. You will surprise yourself with how far you have come, and how far you can go. You will finally learn the lesson that change is constant. You will learn that the voice in your head saying “what if” was right all along- what if it is better than you imagined? What if you can be comfortable, and growing, and happy?

What if this is only the beginning?