What god doesn't give to you

So, I started estrogen a few weeks back and the court date for my legal name change is tomorrow.

My egg has been a nesting doll. There are a handful of reasons for that:

• Religious repression baked into my being
• The "Pure O" OCD making it a complex process (almost a decade of therapy!) to confront and deconvert from that repression
• The difficulty with trusting oneself that stems from said "Pure O" OCD
• The ways I had been trained as an Autist (and by family trauma both related and unrelated to the Autism) to diminish my own feelings
• Autistic inertia and interoception issues commingling with the OCD
• Gatekeeping attitudes in the trans community - especially within the punk scene
• Ableism within most leftist communities
• The fatphobia I was raised with teaching me to hate my body disguising any gender dysphoria
• A deep-rooted imposter syndrome created by all of the above and, more than anything, the countless times I was called "poser" by bullies growing up. And in college. And, in a more roundabout way, via the purity politics of the punk scene AND the queer community.

I went to my first therapist because I was almost certain I had OCD, and in the ensuing years came out as bisexual, began exploring gender, and started to understand what religious trauma is. That therapist wasn't trained/versed in queer issues, and like most therapists, knew almost nothing about religious trauma, let alone what it was like to grow up in the turn-of-the-century American Evangelical Industrial Complex. In late 2023, insurance issues made the need to find a therapist familiar with these issues more urgent, and I started seeing my current therapist. She is a forensic psychologist with a focus on - among other things - neurodivergence, queer issues, and religious trauma.

The past two years have been a windfall of emotional and psychological growth. And over that time, I've come to realize that, without fail, when I get a certain type of that nasty feeling rooted in defensive/competitive jealousy, it means I want to do/be the thing sparking those emotions. So I've worked to stop the immobilizing anxiety, trust myself, and do them. No cisgender person has the feelings I've had. I needed to stop equivocating and just act.

I was raised to think that "I think this will make me happy" was not a justification for doing a thing. To paraphrase an early aughts punk meme only a few of my friends will remember: Words cannot express how much fuck that.

I have never felt connected to my body, but I've learned that is a typical Autistic experience. Many Autistic folk say some version of "I've always felt like an alien piloting a human body." For me, it was "I've always felt out of phase with everyone else." It's taken time to learn to listen to it, to interpret sensation into the associated desire.

To rely on binary language for succinctness: I'm not a woman, but I'm closer to that than I am being a man. I've never desired top or bottom surgery. I don't think I'd feel any different about that if I'd been born into a "woman's" body. And there's still a neurodivergence-related disconnect from my body that is not rooted in trauma or dysphoria, but sensory issues. However, I do know that when I look in the mirror, I see a body that doesn't match my self-concept. When I'm in meetings at work, I see a face reflected back at me from the laptop screen that is far too masculine, especially as I age. I want to look and feel more feminine. I want my weight to distribute that way. I want thinner body hair. The changes to posture, hip rotation, body odor, etc. I want to feel the way other people feel about their bodies when they look at them. I want other people to see me the way I see myself. (And, hey, as an aging musician, the reduction of high frequency hearing loss is a nice knock-on effect!)

So, basically, I don't know exactly what the end of this road looks like. But I know, after years of experimentation and growth, that this is the next step, and it's so fucking exciting.

On a related note:

This is the song referenced in the title of this post:

For anyone unaware, Against Me! was fronted by a trans woman. Shortly after this song was released, she came out. I drove to work the next day sobbing to this song*. I hadn't even fully figured out my sexuality and was years from even starting to paint my nails, let alone shaving my beard and wearing dresses and heels. But I knew then. To some degree, I always have. To quote another song that used to terrify younger me even while I was enamored with it (and which I'm fairly certain I was unintentionally queering):

So tell me it's okay
Tell me anything or
Show me there's a pull
Unassailable
That will lead you there from the dark alone
To benevolence that you've never known
Or you knew when you were four and can't remember

*An old trans friend and I initially bonded over the opinion that, though Grace wasn't out when it was released, Against Me's White Crosses is, emotionally, a more profound statement on trans dysphoria than the following semi-autobiographical LP, Transgender Dysphoria Blues.