FRACTURED UNDER THE WEIGHT OF ONE TRUTH: Fragments of Forgiveness

PROLOGUE

Though not strictly a part of my “10 Years Later”-series of diary entries revisited, this non sequitur entry does share a relevant theme; coming out, … fiercely. Borrowed from an excellent book, “Transgender History” by the celebrated academic Susan Stryker, I wanted to share a quote from early in the book that sparked some modest contemplation and additionally, I wanted to explore or reflect upon my moments right as I was coming out to my friends and family. 

What exists below proposes and delivers no answers. It has no conclusion. It is but the start of a internal philosophical exploration for which most women in my position and lived-experiences, struggle with.

STAGGERING INTO THE LIGHT

The quote below, from Suzy Cooke—a self-described “radical transsexual”—stirred something deeper in me than simple agreement. Her defiance, her refusal to bow to anyone’s expectations, jolted loose a memory I’ve carried for two decades. It made me think not just about where I began, but how I began: clumsily, anxiously, and with more missteps than triumphs. I was desperate, bewildered, and trying to survive a mystery with no map. In that fog, I lost people I loved. Some drifted; others fled. And I can’t pretend I always handled things gracefully. I didn’t. But I also didn’t know how.

“I was wallowing in the happiness of having a lot of friends. Here I was being accepted, this kinda cool/sorta goofy hippie kid. I was being accepted by all these heavy radicals. I had been rejected by my parental family, and I had never found a family at college, and now here I was with this family of like eight people all surrounding me. And as it turned out, even some of the girls that I had slept with were thinking that this was really cool. All the girls would donate clothes to me. I really had not been expecting this. I had been expecting rejection, I really had been. And I was really very pleased and surprised. Because I thought that if I did this then I was going to have to go off and live with the queens. And I didn’t.”

In the weeks leading up to the outing of my great truth, I staggered it out in trickles. Who found out first wasn’t a measure of affection, but an instinctual calculation of who would hurt me least, the likelihood of abandonment, and the relative ease of the conversation. First in, last out. Though it may have seemed to outsiders that I was blurting things out hastily—perhaps because of the order in which I came out, or the misunderstood manic energy of my youth—it was intuition in motion, a desperate effort to protect myself and the relationships I still had.

By the time I began to speak my truth and socially transition, I had carried it for fourteen years. For me, this was a slow unfolding of identity; for everyone else, it was a shotgun blast, the recoil of which we would all feel. The only fear I truly harboured was the unpredictable reactions of others. I did not fear the physical or emotional implications of medically transitioning. My fixation was the despair of losing the few friends I held close, the belief—still unshakable—that my survival was inexplicably tied to the conservation of the collection of friends I had and continue to have.

Cooke’s words pushed me into an uncomfortable but necessary conversation with myself—about the person I was in those first fragile months of acceptance and transition, and the person I became after the dust settled. They made me confront the blunt truth: my “outrageous choice” to finally appear as the woman I had always been inside was, to some, a personal betrayal. A breach of expectation. A violation of their version of me.

Though I am often the first in the queue to criticize Sabrina Hill, this is one of the few errors I made in my youth that I am prepared to forgive. I can forgive the person I was then. I will grant myself a pardon for attempting to walk a path alone, uncharted, without a guiding light—because each step was blind. Everything was unfamiliar, a foreign language, as alien to me as it was to those with whom I shared it. I think we can all commute our sentences.

When someone finally admits that their assigned gender and their lived gender have never aligned, there is no script to follow. There is no correct choreography for coming out. Only trial. Only bravery. Only trying to make it through. Even now, in an era of supposedly enlightened attitudes toward sexuality and gender, many people who have never struggled with these questions cannot fathom the despair, uncertainty, and raw fear that come with telling the truth about who you are.

Transition is hardest in the beginning: those first weeks and months when everything is tender and terrifying, when reassurance is oxygen and support is salvation. And yet that is often when it is least available. This isn’t just a modern phenomenon. Trans people in the 1920s, the 1960s, the 1990s, and today have lived some version of this same abandonment.

I did too.

Friends I had known since childhood—bonds I thought were unbreakable—fractured under the weight of one truth. Decades of shared history evaporated because I dared to finally be honest. And while I can look back now and acknowledge that I made mistakes, that I stumbled and lashed out and fumbled my way through the mystery of becoming, I also know this: there is no perfect way to come out. There is only the best way you can manage at the time, with the courage you have and the hope you guard.

In the end, through the process of coming out and reflecting over decades, I have found peace, clarity, love—from both chosen family and myself—and a type of resilience that only trans individuals can know.

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• PART 3 – NO PERMISSION NEEDED: What Was Once Shame Has Become Pride