I guess I should call it something.

Personal poetry

I don’t consider myself a poet (Much more comfortable as a novelist) but I enjoy doing it on occasion. Written as a way to process my upcoming surgery / ground I’ve covered in transition.

A letter to October 2008

If at first you are excited, wait.
Your brain will receive for the first time in its existence
the hormones wrongly denied to it from birth.
You will dance. You will sing songs of joyful elation, shouting notes at the top of your lungs,
revelling in the way your mouth forms the syllabus over and over again, as if in a fit of sneezing:
“I’m going to be a girl!” 
For three hours you will experience a happiness not unlike sex, or enlightenment, or nirvana and

Then

the mood changes.
Over everything a tight-lipped fear like gauze
realizing that there is no going back.
You’ve tasted freedom and can never be a man again.
Claustrophobia: I’m stuck in a boy’s body and have to get out!
Anxiety: My family will hate me!
Trepidation: I’ll never get a job!
Don’t panic:
you will be a successful girl
eventually.

Now is the time to talk to your parents:
not a month from now,
not when you go full time,
not when you have to go over
and try to act like nothing is wrong
even though you’re wearing a sports bra
to press down your new breasts
and mom gives you a hug
and realizes what you’re wearing
and this wide-eyed look of terror
shrouds her face—
Tell her now.
Honesty will save her heartache later.

And don’t make it dramatic—
You are not a lifetime special.
There will be no sad piano music when you tell them
and there will be no soft focus when they start crying;
coming out is like the five o’clock news.
Get in, get the point across, get out.
Headline, nut graph, quotes.
“I’m a girl”
“I’ve always felt like a girl.”
“The medicine makes me feel better.”
Do this, and nothing more.
You will thank me later.

Be patient.
It won’t happen all at once.
Puberty doesn’t happen in two days, or two weeks, or two months.
You are thirteen years old all over again, only now you have to relearn everything.
You will think you pass. You won’t.
You will wear blouses and dresses you think look cute on you. They won’t.
You will talk to people you think don’t know your history. They will.
But you’ll do it anyway
because all thirteen-year-olds
have to fail before they get it.
You are no exception.

Yes, this will hurt you. This will frustrate you.
It’s not society’s fault, not God’s fault, and it sure-as-hell isn’t your fault.
It’s just the way growing up is.
You will scream in abject frustration when your voice drops down to the male register while you’re ordering food at a restaurant and the guy switches you back to the “sir” column for the rest of the night.
You will want to throttle every well-meaning woman who walks into your life to say “You’d be a better girl if,” followed by some unsolicited advice about makeup or clothing or hair.
(Later, you’ll realize it’s just small talk. Trust me.)
You will stare into the mirror for hours, wondering what about your face screams “boy” even though you paid hundreds to burn off all the facial hair in countless painful laser sessions, spent hours practicing your walk, your voice, your smile, your gestures.
You will spend nights crying and wondering what in the hell possessed you to say this was a good idea, when everybody stares and laughs as you walk past, hot mess that you are, a raging tweenager in a twentysomething body.
You will want to quit:
not once, but many times.

But hang on, sister.
in two years you’re going to be me
and things are going to relax.
Transition is like zen: the less you think about it the better you do.
I know you won’t believe this now, but
you’ll get to a point where you can choose to talk about being trans, and in your silence women discuss their periods, and their sex lives, and their favorite bras, and hot guys (and girls!), and vibrators, and all the other topics of conversation men never know exist,
and
the person you’ve worked with all weekend, seeing a woman early in her transition, says “you never know what’s under a heshe/s skirt,” and you rebuff him by saying “You never know when you’re talking to a trans person” — twice — without him putting two and two together,
and
when that guy behind the lunch counter, after undressing you with hungry, intense eyes, shoots a crude “We like getting girls wet” pickup line your way as you order your queso burrito
and
when you say, “I don’t get men!” to your girlfriends and realize that you completely, totally don’t think it’s an ironic thing to say—and why would it? you’re a girl. Men aren’t supposed to make sense!
and
your memories start morphing, the boy slowly being written out of them, until there comes a point that you look at old pictures and can’t even hope to recognize yourself, and you vaguely remember that at one point there was this jerkwad of a guy who lived your life for two dozen years, even if you can’t remember what it was like to be him,
This all will happen. Trust me.
You will assimilate, and despite a few existential crises regarding your own queerness you’re going to like it just fine.
It’s all a matter of time.

For now, though,
dance. sing.
The first step. Always the hardest
Walk. Come through the mirror and
wonder
how this was even difficult in the first place.
believe it or not, this pain will all be forgotten.

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