Earlier this week my older sister Sus sent me a couple of photos she took of me in 1979, when I was 17. It was on a winter's day at the Los Alamos, New Mexico ice rink. When I saw the first picture, the full-body shot here, I burst into tears.
Oh my, I thought, that's me. There I am.
To explain why these pictures have affected me so deeply, I need to
mention again that I only became consciously aware of my trans identity
a year ago. When these shots were taken I considered myself, as did everyone around me, to be a boy.
True, I did wear my hair long from about age 8 on. At the time I couldn't explain why...it came out of a wordless feeling of defiance. By age 17 I had stoically endured almost a decade of taunts, presumptuous observations, and double-takes in bathrooms. I had heard hundreds of times "you look like a girl"...but I never consciously agreed with that observation. If pressed for a reason, I made something up about counter-culture non-conformity.
In retrospect, my unconscious response was a contemptuous, "Duh...I am a girl."
Why couldn't I see that? Why couldn't anyone see? Not once
in my first 46 years did I ever look in a mirror or at a photograph and
see what seems so obvious here--a truth so plain and yet so strange it remained invisible to me, and to those who loved me.
These pictures are for me a proof I have still felt I needed of my trans identity. Coming to this knowledge so far along in life, naturally I have doubted, I have second-guessed...has this really been true since the beginning? It was all so long ago, and I have done and felt so many mannish things. I have mistrusted my memory and accused myself of wishful thinking, of bending the truth to fit what I have feared is actually just a wild whim or a phase. But look...look at the natural girl I was, without even trying. There I am, shining out, as my sister put it, through the boy-flesh.
And, hey...I'm pretty. I was taught that it is wrong to care about that (something I want to write more about some day), but I do, and not just for memory's sake. It gives me hope for the future. When I transition, I do so want to be a pretty woman...and for the first time I feel I might have a chance at that. My heart leaps up at the thought.
If that's shallow, so be it. I was there, and I am here, and I am real...and I do feel that I deserve now to step out into the light.
With all my heart, Sis Sus, thank you.
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