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The hallways of Worley Middle
School were a crush of adolescent throngs dancing the elaborate dance of emergent
sexual beings: girls in clusters clutching books to chests and giggling, boys
in packs of raucous false bravado, and the occasional co-mingling of these
polar opposite creatures in the first attempts at flirting and what would today
be called swagger. Pubescent
mysteries drove them to mostly work in same-sex groups but to begin to seek out
the other. The strange social
rules that dictated teen behavior materialized out of thin air it seemed, and
all the other kids at school seemed to have the playbook, seemed all too happy
to engage in the elaborate human mating dance that began at this age. I had no clue where to even begin.
My role was that of the wallflower, the kid at the dance
who stands aside and merely watches.
I had to wear a label that this time in my life was forcing to be much
more evident not only to others, but to me. I was not yet in puberty as a 7th-grader new to
this junior high with 95% of its inhabitants old friends already. My identity was not as cut and dried as
all of the other kids who ran around comfortable in their skin, or as
comfortable as adolescents can get in their own skin. They had no questions about their sense of male or female,
at least.
The social groups and cliques formed like water drops
beading up on the leaf of a tree: initially what was one very large thing was
turning into very distinct smaller things. Jocks, preps, cheerleaders, artsy kids, band geeks, dopers,
ropers, you name it; they all gravitated to each other effortlessly. I felt myself to be a jock and I had
joined band since this school had no way for me to continue my orchestra
studies, but other lines blurred like wet ink on a page. In my heart I wanted to play football
but the soul under the skin doesn’t matter. Other people could not see what I really was so I tried out
for volleyball. Whatever would get
me into sports at school so I would have some type of group to belong to would
be the only way I could begin to survive in this place.
Being cut from the volleyball team added insult to
injury. I had never played before
but my athleticism was easily in the top 1% of these girls. I had even been singled out by the
coach to do a great push-up, which to me did not seem like anything
monumental. Being cut was a slap
in the face that stung all the way to my core because while I didn’t
necessarily want to play volleyball as it was nothing compared to football, I
was labeled ‘girl’ and therefore had to be with the girls. To then be left out while girls I knew I
was superior to athletically played on the teams was another crazy dimension in
my already very crowded and confused emotional landscape.
Still, I had won the respect of many of the girls there
and I did what I could to be part of the group. I volunteered to call lines at the games because it was
evident that these people were going to be my first group of friends in this
new school and I had to survive, right?
I also needed to show the coach what athletics meant to me, what being
part of the team meant to me.
Oddly enough, when my parents asked the coach why she cut me, she said
she didn’t think I really wanted to play.
Initially I was offended (why would I try out if I didn’t want to play?)
but looking back, it seemed like a strange sort of prescience on her part, like
some type of secret intuition she had about me. (Still, I did end up playing volleyball and was a 3-year
letterman in high school who turned into quite a threat as a hitter and a
blocker.)
So here I was, the only 7th grade “girl” who
wasn’t shaving “her” legs yet, who wore Jams shorts and Nike shirts to
athletics class and my Levi’s jeans, Casio calculator watch set precisely to
the school’s times so I knew exactly when the bells would ring, and t-shirts or
boy button-downs to class. I was
the ultimate enigma, the bizarre conglomerate of nerd, jock, boy, and
girl. On the first day of school I
overheard some girls talking about how everyone thought a cute boy had
accidentally gone into the girls’ locker room that morning. It made me feel weirdly embarrassed and
proud at the same time. Here I was
the kid in the hallway whose body hadn’t fully betrayed his heart and soul yet
so a bra wasn’t a necessity, thereby baffling the two very juvenile and typical
teenage boys who were going up behind girls and snapping their bras in the
back. I remember one of them
pinching the shirt between my shoulder blades and pulling back only to have
nothing in his hand but shirt.
Somewhere they were pretty sure they had heard I was a girl yet found no
bra to pop! Holy shit! After their mission had been sabotaged
by my pre-pubescent androgyny, the one who had tried it said, “Oh man, sorry
dude!” and they scurried off red-faced and confused. Clearly bras and boobs were the real test of what made a
girl a girl.
It has been almost two full years into my
transition. At this time last year
I was returning home from Florida from my top surgery and I would miss all of
our professional development recovering enough to return to work the first day
the kids came back even though I was supposed to be out at least another
week. But hey, I have to survive
and missing work doesn’t pay the bills.
Here I am over two years from the last time I laid eyes on my parents in
the flesh and going on two years of not having spoken to my mom at all. But hey, I have to survive and the body
I was given was not going to allow for that. I already factored everyone else’s feelings into my
decisions for so long that it was time to choose me for once, and I suppose my
mom can just live her life angry with a living son rather than live her life
complacent with a dead daughter, which is highly likely where I would be had I
tried to hang on another minute in that prison I walked around in.
So much more lies in between the two points discussed here,
and so much came before my junior high years and much will come after
today. I see the world in a way
that very few people can, do, or ever will. I cannot walk around with the automaticity that most people
possess regarding their gender and who they are. It’s still a marvel to me to walk around in the world today
and feel the things I finally feel.
It’s like living life in HD, for which I’m grateful, but there is a
price to pay for that vantage point.
No one reaches the top of Everest or travels to space without some
pain. For almost 38 years, I
became adept at survival, a modern-day Rambo in this jungle of life, capable of
just staying under the radar and making it through another day. As I approach my 40th
birthday in a few months, I both celebrate my experiences and lament them. On one hand, I learned to survive some
tough situations and gain a glorious perspective on life where others really
take it for granted. Yet on the
other hand I tell myself that if I die at the age of 60, I would have only lived for about 20 years. I guess that means at this point I have
to follow the advice of Andy Dufresne from Shawshank
Redemption: get busy living, or get busy dying. Survival is a good thing for sure, but it’s basic and primal
and instinctual. Living is
purposeful and meaningful and spiritual and why we are really on this earth, so
I’m looking forward to finally being able to do that. If it’s 5 more years or 50 more years, at least I finally
know what living really is now.
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