shopping

One of my best friends wrote this. I'm so amazed by her courage. -kj

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Tonight, a really good friend helped me get over a really big hurdle: I went shopping for clothes I wanted. I went into the women's dressing room, I tried them on, and I purchased them, with money.

The guy running the dressing room makes sure twice that I know they are women's garments before he lets me proceed. I somehow manage to look him in the eye, say something along the lines of "you just counted four articles of women's clothing, and then you're like, are you sure?" He seems a bit taken aback. (I am, as usual, disheveled, nervous, sweating bullets, thoroughly unladylike. I regret my manner and tone.)

When I exit the dressing room, the gentleman apologizes for his discourtesy.

Only two of the tops fit.

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Being transgender is easy.

It's a truth, a state of being. I can't change it. Actually -doing- things that conform to my gender identity is indescribably difficult. It is a crushing social anxiety. It's the manifestation of a struggle to come to terms with emotions and feelings that I have spent every moment of my life swallowing as shame and self-loathing.

Never talk about it. Laugh it off. Be the center of attention. Be a wallflower. Do anything to fit in. Seclude yourself. Give yourself sensory overload. Learn everything. Try, try anything, to feel nothing. 

Nothing is easy.

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Later, after having parted ways, waiting for a train home, I get a message from said friend saying that she's proud of me.

And I realize, shit, I'm proud of me too. I looked (and probably smelled) like rotten hell and put on at least an air of confidence, then accomplished a goal. And I did it with a five o' clock shadow.

The further and further I go, the more and more I realize that it's these little acts of confidence that are, in reality, much larger acts of defiance, against an externality that is, for want of a better term, oppressive. But the trick is that external oppression isn't directed, it's systemic. And systems change all the time; so too then do the people that don't even realize they're acting in one.

Until you do, at which point it's probably in your best interest to stop waiting.