Growing Pains

People say being trans is like going through a second puberty, which I think is entirely true without a shadow of a doubt since the sweeping emotions knock me off my feet and I feel like there’s a thunderstorm in my head just like I did in middle school. Your body changes, your brain chemistry changes, your mood shifts like a metronome in a jazz song, you feel excited and terrified and terrified and terrified and directionless and hopeless and driven and optimistic and terrified. Maybe that is more unique to my experience than I’d like to admit, and maybe I would like to admit that so very much because it sets me apart as an especially damaged creature among the broken dolls. Being broken was a key piece of my identity for so long, knowing I wasn’t right and knowing I could never be made right gave me strangely enough a sense of belonging. In knowing I was fundamentally wrong, I knew at the very least one true thing about myself that I hadn’t made up, or surgically implanted into my personality in order to fit in. Wrongness gave me a sense of self, and if nothing else, I knew I could always rely on the feeling of disconnection to root me in my reality. Like some vicious type of Stockholm Syndrome, I think I’m desperately clinging to the pieces of myself that feel incorrect because they remind me of stability. My self-loathing was one of the only things about myself I knew to be genuine, and if that goes away, I don’t know what’s going to be left behind. 

Growing up is difficult for everyone I think, grappling with who you are and who you want to be, trying desperately to push yourself away from the person you were, you’re a moth without a chrysalis, where every grotesque step in your metamorphosis is broadcast to the world around you, your friends, rivals, bullies, adults, parents, mentors and warning signs. Your body changes, your limbs grow at odd lengths, your body warps itself and twists into something new, your brain changes, the way you perceive yourself and others begins to fully form and you begin to understand the world around you on a more fundamental level. Concepts become more real, ideas more powerful, and dreams just that little bit less possible. You feel new things, think new thoughts, consider new possibilities, for most you start to think about romance and relationships, the difference between a friend and a partner, the difference between a boy and a girl, and the difference between you and everyone else. You learn what makes you, you, and what makes them, them, and what makes us, us. I think there’s a beautiful aspect of discovering these things surrounded by other kids all learning these new things at the same time, a sense of community formed from disconnection, as each individual is carving out the person they are, they are together in experiencing that journey together (despite none of them ever saying a word about it haha). In that way I think those kids who have to grow up fast and hard, who are forced to a level of maturity unfair for their circumstances really notice at this point in their life, how truly different they are from their friends, and in my experience, how utterly and completely alone that can drive you to be. 

My parent’s tell me things about myself sometimes that sound very sad if a moment is spent to consider the truth of the statement, and one of those things is a true fact about my childhood that is brought up every once in a while like a fun little childhood whimsy, but leaves a bitter taste in my mouth like ash and sand. When I was a kid, little, like playground age maybe preschool, I told my parents that “My superpower is making friends with anyone” which is such a sweet thing to say as a little kid, and I’m sure my parents remember that fondly, but as I grew up and my life has become so intertwined with feelings of disconnection, alienation, deep and profound loneliness, it feels almost mournful to remember the person I was when I compare it to the person I became. The little kid who would go up and talk to people 3-4 years older than me, or little kids younger than me and barely making their way through the sandbox, talking and laughing and having fun with a person I’ve never met and would likely never meet again. The little kid back then was less than a year or two from becoming “mature for my age” and growing up hard and fast by circumstance. I was a few years away from my superpower becoming my kryptonite, as I was going to transfer from a kid who knew very little, to a kid who knew more than they should, and like all things that incite rapid change, it’s not pleasant. 

I can’t quite remember if there was a time before my dad was like he is now, but if there is I don’t remember it clearly enough for it to feel true in my mind. When I was young, acting like young kids do, my father would become angry and it was often without warning and at random. His anger was never physical, but it was tumultuous and frightening, and the instability and randomness of it made it all the more difficult. Like storms over mountains his fury would sweep through without warning, clouds cresting over the mountains so that by the time you saw how dark the sky was turning there was nothing to do but wait it out or pray a place nearby could shelter you from its wrath. In many cases my shelter was my mom, who always saw me and sheltered me and walled me off when the storms got bad. In many cases as well it was friends, my father would never dare show that side of him to a guest, so when friends were around, the skies were clear, even if I could see the storm clouds building at the mountaintops. I could also leave the mountains altogether and look for gentle valleys, which I fell to more and more as I became older and more independent, spending many if not all my afternoons at a friends house, and as much of my weekend trying not to venture too far into the mountain ranges. I’ve never had a child, and I’m not sure I ever will, but even so I feel deep in my heart as I grow older and understand myself and my family more and more, that it was deeply unfair to develop these instincts when I did. My home was manipulative and unstable, ruled by a capricious and unpredictable ruler, and for a very significant part of my young life, that was only supplemented by similar treatment from my classmates and friends. Like I said before my superpower became my kryptonite, and the people I made friends with broke me in a way I don’t think I ever healed from and maybe never will.

When I was in grade 1, I became friends with my 2 bestest friends in the whole wide world, my ride or die, the homies. They were my two lifelines, and my sense of worth and stability became intrinsically linked to them because I had no way of keeping my footing at home. I considered them my only two true friends, and they were each best friends with each other, and not with me. In games they would pick each other and leave me out, at recess they would play with each other while I sat and watched. They would chat to each other and hang out with each other and play with each other, and oftentimes forget or not bother to involve me or let me know what was happening. I remember vividly the moment I mentioned this to my mom, saying “that’s my hill” as we drove past the schoolyard, and when she asked I explained that when all the kids played I would sit on the hill and watch cause they didn’t want me to play with them. I can’t remember the expression she had in that moment, but knowing her I think thats for the best because I don’t know what kind of person I would be if it had lived in me. She is a deeply and unfalteringly kind woman, someone who I cause nothing but trouble for as I struggle to make the slightest of forward steps. I think in that moment driving past the schoolyard with her maybe 8 year old kid, I think it broke her heart in a way that maybe will never heal fully. In the moment she realized I was not the little kid who could make friends with anyone anymore, and was instead the kid who silently sat alone on a hill while my classmates played games because I felt already in my heart I wasn’t worth standing up for, I don’t think she ever stopped worrying about me. My memories of my mom are always her defending me, standing up for me, protecting me, supporting me… I would listen at the bottom of the stairs as she would argue with my dad about how he treated me or what he said, when things were too much she would speak for me while I hid myself away. I know now she always saw me, she saw me as I was falling apart, and always tried her best to hold me together in whatever way she could. Being a mature child is a response to trauma, I was quiet and careful, I only said the words people wanted to hear, words to make them happy, or impress them, words that made me equal or better no matter what. Never admit fault, never admit weakness, never show insecurity. Only speak when confident, only say things you know to be true, even if they’re not necessarily true about you. It’s like I was building my social interactions based on sparknotes instead of admitting I didn’t know and reading the book like everyone else. Stay quiet if I have nothing helpful to say, even if it means not saying the thing I desperately wanted to, never make an assumption, never take a leap of faith, apologize first and flee second. I had friends through the rest of my time in school, but they were only ever people I was friendly with. They never truly knew who I was, because I lost sight of that person all those days I sat on that hill only to come home and listen to arguments from the basement stairs. Arguments about me, how I didn’t act right, how I wasn’t saying the right things, how I wasn’t thinking the right way. I think when I matured as a little kid, it was in fragments and pieces, like twinkling shards of glass, collecting into like barrows on my hill, on the stairs, in my room, in each half truth and stayed tongue, in each moment of fear, and in the regret for my choices. I tried to stand up for myself and was broken by the consequence, I stayed my tongue and was crushed by regret. I cracked and shattered into stardust, like frost on a sidewalk in the lamplight, and in the end no part of me was glass, and I became mirror. Nothing could see the inside of me, I showed you only what you truly wished for. I was pleasant and jovial, funny, goofy, lighthearted, but even I could no longer see what was inside of me, I only reflected back at myself the things I wanted to see, the worst parts of myself. The muck and the mire and peat and the bog, and I convinced myself that that’s all there was, and in that moment, I froze myself in time. 

I don’t think I ever truly grew up. I am fueled by vices, I lack the self-respect needed to value myself. I isolate myself and then complain about how lonely I am as if I didn’t choose it in the first place. I think ill of people, think I’m better than people despite thinking I’m beyond worthless, and the irony of those thoughts only fuel my self-loathing. I fall into my bad habits constantly, I lie to myself and my friends, I can’t open myself up, I make people worry about me because I don’t understand how much they care. I get angry and stupid things, I get frustrated with people for not keeping pace with my jackhammer of a brain. I’m comprised of contradictions and am unable to determine which part of me is true and which is convenient. The burden I place on my loved ones crushes me with guilt and regret and yet I find myself incapable of changing. I desperately want to die but cling to life with an iron grip. I fear the future, hate the past, and lose track of the present. When you’re growing up, I think you are supposed to work on these things, you are offered the freedom as a child to fuck up and screw around, and the consequences are supposed to be lower and you are supposed to fuck things up and learn from it. It’s not right to blame outside forces for my inability to overcome the hurdles everyone else seemed to glide effortlessly over, but when I stop and think about my life and the circumstances and the responses I had, I don’t think it’s any more right to blame that kid for learning hard lessons before they should have, and refusing to want to learn anything that hard ever again. I don’t think it’s fair to that scared, glass little boy, who needed to hide what was inside their little glass heart, I don't think that little kid covered in mirrors who learned how to survive the storm has to take the blame. Sometimes life treats you poorly, and sometimes you aren’t strong enough to push against the tide, and sometimes I think it’s okay to cover yourself in mirrors to ease the pain in that little glass heart. Still I also think as a certain point I can’t keep my heart in a cage because I’m afraid it’ll crack and chip, or break apart, and trying to convince myself I don’t have that little glass heart anymore because I can’t see through my reflection is an uphill battle I’m destined to fight forever. 

Transitioning means a second puberty for a lor of trans people, and with it come all the familiar growing pains of a real puberty. My body is changing, my hormones are crazy, I can’t always control my mood, I spiral into despair and crest into seeming boundless confidence at random. Maybe that’s a good thing though, because I never gave myself puberty the first time, I never let myself be stupid, I never let myself learn, or grow, or overcome. I never confronted that part of myself desperate to stay entrenched in that familiar cold despair. I never let myself be vulnerable, discover what I liked, what I was passionate about, what I valued most of all, I felt that the little glass heart in my chest would be nothing but a target, and maybe I was right about that. Maybe it will become the target and maybe it will get cracked and maybe it’ll break someday and I’ll have to spend long nights putting it together again. But a heart is meant to be used, like fine clothing or expensive liquor. It is precious, valuable and irreplaceable, I only will ever get the one, but why go through all the pomp of buying that bottle of champaign if you never intend to open it up? Why spend all that money and time buying beautiful clothes if you let them rot on a hanger? It’s meant to be shown off, it’s meant to be passed around, it’s meant to feel and to ache and to cry and to sing. Maybe on round two, I’ll find a way to let it out and give it to my friends, for them to keep safe also, maybe someone more than that who can treasure it as much as I do. Maybe it will be dropped, maybe it will be thrown away, but who’s to say if that will break it anyways. Maybe I’ll find out after spending all this time keeping it safe, it was stronger than the cage I put it in anyways. 

And maybe, I’ll learn what it means to grow up. 

Growing Pains.