2018: I Happened on the Way to Being Me
2018: I Happened on the Way to Being Me
In which I discover that life as a trans girl is like the Shoney’s at the living-authentically exit.
In which I discover that life as a trans girl is like the Shoney’s at the living-authentically exit.
In 2018, I happened on the way to being me.
I not only came out MtF transgender, I discovered I was trans in the first place — as much news to me as it became to the world. I relate my gender confirmation elsewhere, if you want to know the whys and hows. But the death and rebirth of the calendar this night bids me recount that, in 2018, I became more me.
One could hope that every nanosecond anniversary we become more ourselves, but that road trip is not an expressway progression. Some years are better than others. At this time last year, to quote Hot Fuzz, I had “a great big bushy beard.” A year later, I’m growing breasts! Yes, real breasts, as I hit my real puberty. Some years are worse than others. The years, four decades ago, when my body writhed in its male-assigned puberty, were the most horrific of my existence, made so because I had no idea what was happening and proceeded, for the next 40 years, to hate myself for it.
I lost me — the real me, disappearing in my rearview mirror.
I understood what the physiological changes were. But I lost me — the real me, disappearing in my rearview mirror. Hitching a ride in place of absent me came anxiety, depression, and OCD that, teamed with my smarts, gave me the roadmap to plot out that I was miserable but to frustrate every effort for the next 40 years to grasp why.
In what I thought at the time was a valiant effort to keep the tires between the lines, I sped through ideologies and tribes, one after another, to find a home, or at least a way-place where I could drop the rusting, screeching, tail-lights-out trailer that was life, if only for a few seconds. Every rest stop was as unfulfilling as a kid dreaming of Disney World, only to see that Exit 123 is another fucking Shoney’s.
I swore off rest stops and found that the car breaks down if you don’t gas it, change the oil, and fill the tires. So, about 15 years ago, I took antidepressants and therapy like a performance vehicle takes synthetic oil, to belay the inevitable breakdowns.
The thing is, I didn’t know why life was this goddamned Interstate trip. I just kept running on empty, a la Jackson Browne and Forrest Gump. “Run, Babsie, Run!!” Except I wasn’t Babsie. I wasn’t even me, and I had no idea that life didn’t have to smell like pounding asphalt, glaring headlights, and XXX video stores at the seediest exits.
Then I met Bethany (aka Babsie). God, it was falling in love for the first time — which I was (and still am) with myself, my real self. T. S. Eliot describes it in Little Gidding as arriving “at where we started [to] know the place for the first time.” Shit, folks, I’ve been up and down this Interstate on countless trips, but, damn! I’m seeing Bethany billboards of me for the first time and finding I like Shoney’s.
I’m seeing Bethany billboards of me for the first time and finding I like Shoney’s.
I really enjoy coffee with Babsie. She’s fun. She doesn’t blow up at inconsequential shit like the cruise control not working. Babs and I most often get the French Toast, with the fake maple syrup. We appreciate the wait staff, especially Cora, who keeps a gross of pens in her bouffant but keeps on smiling — not in spite of working at Shoney’s but because she works at Shoney’s.
Bethany went through my male puberty, locked in the trunk. I didn’t hear her banging the hatch with the tire iron till I’d run out of gas and settled on walking the interstate, noting roadkill. Bethany didn’t yell at me when I let her out of the trunk. She didn’t yank out my beard or tear at my nipples demanding they become breasts. She hugged me. And she hasn’t let go since.
It was then that I noticed I’m not on the road. I’m at home. With me.
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