For National Coming Out Day I'd like to come out and confess that I'm
very bad at meeting deadlines and remembering dates or appointments.
I'd also like to come out and confess I have no idea who Tom Hanks is.
Like I've heard of him. I've heard he's even in some of my favorite
movies. Fuck, I'll even tell people, "It's got Tom Hanks in it," when
describing said movie, even though I never recognized any individual
named Tom Hanks anywhere in any film ever. I thought I tracked him down
back in the 90s but it turned out to be Meg Ryan.
And for those still tuned in, which is hopefully no one at this point, here's a story about what it feels like to come out.
I was told I never appeared to have gender dysphoria. Dysphoria is an
interesting illness. Defined as a state of restlessness, anxiety or
fidgeting, it's the sensation of permanent and perhaps implacable
discomfort, like an incessant itch that cannot be scratched, one that's
existed for so long it's been forgotten about; dismissed as the way
things are, another unremarkable aspect of everyday life. Free of
comprehension, this unease retreats into the unconsciousness and
resurfaces as phantom pains and other ailments with opaque and baffling
origins.
For me, gender dysphoria was like being born drowning
and internalizing the sensation as underdeveloped gills rather than
lungs locked in a wrong environment. Only after I let my latent truth
emerge could I recognized it as drowning rather than ineptitude.
Simultaneously, I passed a point of no return when I looked back and
recognized the return to my old life as emotional suicide. I'd have to
live the rest of my life knowing part of me could never be born. I've
never had an abortion but the sensation felt as if I were stifling the
emergence of life itself. I was not just disowning part of myself, I was
salting the earth, denying a dance partner to the spectacle of life.
Here's the thing, I don't think this story is unique to trans people. I
think we all have dysphoria. No matter how well your essence
synchronizes with your environment, part of you is not a costume, and
part of you knows it. Part of you agonizes over it. This feeling that
something isn't right is inherent to our condition. It never goes away,
we only manage it, or get distracted from it, or occasionally peel back a
couple of its layers and engulf ourselves in the resulting absolution,
but I wager that no human is born without it, or at least without the
destiny to develop it. When I hear that I never appeared to have gender
dysphoria, I think of my friends, the ones that always seemed so happy,
the ones that killed themselves.
Disease is like a current
pulling you, alone amidst a school of fish, so it takes extra effort to
keep up with them and maintain the downstream trend. Mental diseases are
invisible obstacles so no one can even notice you're partially drowning
just trying to swim like a regular fish. But then there's this inherent
disease called the human condition where everyone collectively pretends
they aren't suffering because being sad is so boring and attention is
necessary to survival and if we just pretend to be happy then people
will like us, give us their focus and time and maybe it will fix us but
only if first we don't drive them away with our broken pieces.
I
don't pretend to understand the crucible it takes to get you out of bed
in the morning but I've been told I didn't seem dysphoric and I'm
telling you that the happiest people are not free of diseases, they
learn to count their gratitudes even if an innate willingness to be
grateful cannot be counted among them. Happy people go to war with the
part of themselves that's always fighting and they teach that part
peace. And maybe it's not so easy to swim downstream like the rest of
them but maybe they've all been taught to swim the wrong way in the
first place, and dysphoria is really the pull of gravity taking us down
the path of least resistance at the risk of bumping heads with the rest
of the clueless people that only think they know where they're going.
And these people are still my friends and family, but I can no longer
tolerate swimming into the mud for their peace of mind.
My
consideration only saves them from the realization that they are already
suffering and that they don't have to. My dysphoria is no different
from yours, and my healing didn't come from labeling my obstacles but
understanding the dysphoria, anxiety, depression and fidgeting intrinsic
in the human condition.
