April 4th, 2024
This is my first journal entry. I'm sitting outside of the student union on my college campus. I've just coded this website.
I've been thinking a lot about how I might be trans. That's a terrifying sentence to write - not because it might be wrong, but because it might be right and I have to think about what that means for me and my life.
I guess I've kind of always known something about me was different or outside of the norm, but there was a lot of myself that I hid or put away, intentionally and not. There's a lot of myself that has only just coming rushing out of me; something that probably makes sense considering I've only just put myself in a position where I can breathe. I had a complicated upbringing that resulted in ignoring lots of my own personality and selfhood.
I'm not sure what to do now. Simply put, I don't have time to be trans--it entails uprooting a lot of my life (not that that's particularly well-rooted yet) and reengineering it. I know what other people, especially ftms, might tell me: the solution is transition. It will make you happier and get rid of that awful feeling that follows you like a funk only you can smell. But I'm still afraid.
I need to cut my hair, is what needs to happen. I already like wearing men's clothes, but people just read me as vaguely butch--or as wearing a male partner's clothes, because I'm quite short. I'm not good as picking up on my feelings, and I can't decipher the subtle differences in feeling free and feeling afraid. Fear and freedom are quite linked, I think, but I'm supposed to be able to know what they mean.
Reasons why I think I might be trans:
- Unease with my highly gendered name
- Always feeling out of place when surrounded by women
- Sense of relief when binding or using alternative pronouns
- Looking at other people's transitions and desiring how in-place they look in maleness
- Wondering if I might be intersex because it would explain why I feel disconnected from femaleness
- Unease with being ungendered completely--although not at strongly as unease with being gendered as a woman
- Fascination with trans men in real life: I wanted to know everything about their transition and what it meant for them and to them
- Always wanting to be included in "male" activities [not that things like camping are particularly male, but my religious upbringing was heavily gendered], not necessarily because I felt I was a boy but because it felt like where I belonged
- Disconnect from secondary sex characteristics
- Disconnect from the lesbian label despite primarily being romantically and sexually interested in women
- I do makeup willing sometimes, when occasions call for it or when I want to dress up
- Dresses aren't that bad
- I enjoy feeling pretty, and I don't think I would be pretty if I transitioned
- I could just be nonbinary?
- I could just be GNC?
- I could just be butch?
- I can survive being a girl
In other news, I think my college is (maybe?) saved. I switched my calc class to S/U grading so it won't affect my GPA and dropped my physics class. The physics was really killing me--my teacher didn't post any grades, and I had to email him and ask for my grade. There's only a month left of the semester. He responded with a completely nonsensical answer and didn't address anything else I said in the email (which was, please post the schedule so we know when our tests are!). I'm so, so glad I dropped it. I think it will influence my future plans, which is my only caveat about it--I'm planning to go to medical school after my bachelor's degree, and a withdrawal doesn't look fantastic. But it's what I had to do to keep my scholarship (which is pretty major - it amounts to about $45k). I'm frustrated with myself--I wish I would've just not taken the class instead of dragging myself into it--but proud, too, because I made my choice and I'm sticking with it.
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