Hormoniversary

One year ago today, I began hormone replacement therapy.

It took me over 40 years to figure out that I was a man. Four decades of messages about who I was and what I was and how I was supposed to be and it was hard to see anything else. Yet I could never figure out why everything about me felt so wrong. My shape and my curves and… my FORM. My form felt wrong. As I moved through the world as a child… an adolescent.. a teenager… a young adult…. A not quite so young adult.. a *gulp* grown up…. All of it. Felt so very wrong.

I remember being in school and the other kids making fun of me for how I walked/moved/existed… how I moved.. I walked like a boy. I carried myself like a boy. I dressed like a boy. Had I grown up in a world where visibility was revolution and trans rights were human rights and there were trans men and  trans women and trans people modeling to me what life could have been, things would have been so different. I can’t even imagine what my life would have been had I recognized Jackson at a young age. The turmoil skirted. The trauma avoided. And a giant leap over a muddy puddle of confusion and pain and shame.

The last few years has been a series of reliefs. The right to be handsome. Deep exhale. Jackson. Deep exhale. Gender affirming therapy. Deep exhale. Hormone replacement therapy. Deep exhale. Each step along this journey I have settled more and more into the man I was born to be. And each step along this journey I have become more and more free.

It started a couple of months ago. All of a sudden. Mr. Clark. Sir. He. Him. Gendered correctly. Consistently.

Something that a cisgender person can never fully realize is that when you are transgender, you notice EVERY SINGLE TIME you are gendered. You hear it, loudly in your ears… loudly and visibly in the room, like a flashing sign over your head. Right or wrong, you feel it every single time. Every time I am misgendered, I feel it. Every time I am gendered correctly, I feel it. And both evoke tears for very different reasons.

I never would have said that my features were feminine. There was never anything ‘girl’ about me except my woman’s hips and woman’s breasts and what was or was not between my legs.  But as I look back at a photo of my face a year ago, I can see so much femininity in my face. Lips. Eyes. Shape. My narrow neck and cheekbones and softness. I understand now as I look at this photo why I was misgendered again and again and again.

And now I am startled to see the effects of the masculinization in my face. Lips. Eyes. Shape. Thick neck and cheekbones and hardness. And I understand now as I look at this photo why I am gendered correctly again and again and again.

And I am so very grateful.

Many well-intentioned allies believe that now that I have had gender affirming surgery and am on hormone replacement therapy that I have transitioned. It is important for me to make it clear that transition is not defined by these things. I was a man named Jackson long before I understood that it was my name, long before I considered surgery, long before I began hormones. I transitioned medically and surgically because that was the path I followed - the right choices for me - and I was privileged enough to be able to make both things happen. A trans person is trans with or without surgery, with or without hormones, with or without legal name/gender marker change, with or without public acknowledge and acceptance of their transition. Trans is trans and trans is beautiful. 

Today, for me, I celebrate being authentically me. I celebrate visibility. I celebrate being a proud transgender man. I celebrate my freedom. And as I give myself my 53rd injection, I wonder how I will look in another year. Deep exhale. I will look like Jackson.