Perv.
I was nine years old when I first heard that word. My dad, as if he had to carry all of masculinity on his shoulders, came into my room, my burgeoning transness focused on nothing but the bra I swiped. I didn’t know what I was doing; I just knew that for some reason wearing a bra felt right.
In his eyes, I was a perv. Something any other young girl would have done was sexualized. Wracked with guilt, I suppressed.
Then it was reinforced by the media I consumed. Shrek 2 featured a scene where Pinocchio is wearing women’s underwear, played for laughs, implying that something was wrong with him, and by extension, me. I was a boy after all, right? Right.
Suppress, suppress, suppress.
According to my father, I was a beautiful “specimen” of a man.
I felt a pull, though. I wanted, no, needed to feel like a woman. Like an addict, I would overconsume then purge. Stealing thongs, dresses, dainty shirts. When I had my own money, hundreds of dollars would flow into Amazon to stem my desire. Then came the shame. That long-strained Christian guilt, knowing in the deepest valleys of my selfhood that something was wrong with me. Then a few days would pass, and I’d dive straight into my closet again. Breast forms, bras, panties, and dresses would adorn my body, and for a few sharp moments, I wouldn’t hate myself.
Then a glance in the mirror. My mannish figure exaggerated by the tight-fitting clothes, and in a blink, the clothes torn from my body, stuffed in a duffel bag, and hidden in the back of my closet. Just as quickly, I find myself under the covers, crying myself to sleep.
Suppress.
There’s a time I think about often. It was like any other night, up way too late, playing video games with friends, but unlike other times, I was wearing women’s clothing, a loose corset, stockings, and a long skirt to be exact. I wasn’t the best at the game, a tactical first-person shooter, but that specific night, something was different. I felt lighter, more focused, more at home. While I normally found my name populating the bottom of the leaderboard, that night, in my $17 Amazon corset, I was unstoppable, topping nearly every match.
My mind, while still not my own, was at least on loan.
Frequently, I wrack my brain, trying to drum up my childhood thoughts, rifling through my mom’s closet, searching for anything comfortably feminine. Her boots two sizes too big for my pre-pubescent feet, her dresses eating my lanky frame like fog, her panties offering me a sanctuary, a sanctuary I could keep to myself.
I don’t know why I did it, I just did. I felt like I needed to.
I also don’t know why I took those same clothes in a bag to a hidden cove in my neighborhood, quickly shed my boy clothing, and put them on. Like a religious act, or like a form of self-flagellation, what power did it have if I kept my secret hidden in my room? I wanted to feel the sky’s eyes on my skin.
I don’t know why. I just felt like I needed to.
I had an active imagination. Spurned by interest in magic, the mystical, and a wavering belief in God, I would practice spells, attempting to polymorph my masculinizing body into my female counterpart. I would pray to God every single night, begging, pleading to wake up the next morning in a body that loved me instead of poisoning me.
I’m an atheist now.
Instead of being seen, instead of being magically given a body that reflected me, I got to watch the life slowly drain from my eyes and molasses envelop my feet. I lost any connection to myself, to my identity. I thrifted pieces of personality from places that could maintain a semblance of masculinity without making me want to kill myself.
I still got close a couple of times.
Suppress.
Through my therapist, I’ve been urged to explore the work of Carl Jung, the Swiss psychiatrist, psychotherapist, and psychologist, who is one of the most influential people in the history of psychology.
Jung’s formative theory was that of the four archetypes. Those are the self, the persona, the shadow, and the anima/animus. I’m particularly focused on the shadow.
Complementary to Jung’s idea of the persona, which is “what oneself as well as others thinks one is,” the “shadow is that hidden, repressed, for the most part inferior and guilt-laden personality whose ultimate ramifications reach back into the realm of our animal ancestors…”
When I’m in my room, sitting in the dark, worrying about my flaws, my insecurities. When I masturbate to something I’m ashamed of. When I steal women’s clothing.
That is the shadow.
I think about my high school sweetheart. A beautiful, thoughtful, intelligent woman. But I couldn’t let her in. I couldn’t admit to her how badly I dreamed of navigating the world like she does.
She left me.
Suppress.
Navigating the shadow is navigating your own biases and projections. What you impose on others is likely something you feel internally. I think about a group of trans women who booked out a hotel I worked at. I couldn’t look at them. Before the event, there was a sensitivity training. The spokeswoman delivering it was taller than me, with a voice as deep as mine. In my mind, in that moment, she was a joke.
I couldn’t be like that. I couldn’t be a freak.
Disgust.
There’s an online document called the Dysphoria Bible. It’s a collection of anecdotes, scientific literature, and wide descriptions of trans existence. The point of the document is to help people who are questioning their gender and help them feel seen and connected. I remember going end-to-end through every page dozens of times, relating to every described feeling.
I still didn’t transition for another two years.
I’m thinking about Carl Jung again.
I spent the better part of my adulthood believing everything my family and media have told me. I was a deviant, I was a perv. I was a freak with a fetish, so that’s why I locked away my manhood and took pleasure in wearing women’s clothing.
I would drift into another realm while fucking a woman. Maybe this intimacy would finally fix me, and in the meantime, autopilot isn’t so bad. But they could always tell I wasn’t with them, that I was somewhere else.
Then at home, I could hear the duffel bag calling my name. I felt sick to my stomach. No one could ever love something like me. But then, in came her. A wolf in sheep’s clothing.
She was broken, just like me, in fact, maybe worse. I felt like I could be myself around her. Or maybe that was just the alcohol and the pandemic talking. The details are blurry.
The only person I ever alluded to my transness to was the aforementioned sweetheart. Accepting and open, but ignorant of my needs. Until I told her.
I was blunt with her. Open. I opened the duffel bag, like a boiling wound, giving her all she needed to control me. I told her I wanted to be a woman. She told me that I wasn’t one. I told her I wanted to be friends. She told me she wanted more. I told her that I couldn’t be what she wanted. She took things into her own hands. She threatened me. She said she would tell the sweetheart about our intimacy, about my deviancy. She had me; however, she wanted. She threatened me with the world, using my shame to control me.
“At worst, the shadow becomes inextricably entwined with abandonment anxiety so that its emergence can really feel like a matter of life or death,” writes the Society of Analytical Psychology.
You can’t run from your shadow.
I think about a very young me. No older than five, but likely younger. Wandering my babysitter’s room, her watching me, softness in her eyes. Seeing just how much I liked her boots, she helped me put them on. I spent the day hauling those tiny boots around the house, beaming. Or about the times I got to spend with my two younger cousins, just as excited with their Polly Pockets as they were.
I did an exercise with a late therapist of mine that has stuck with me and my self-perception. He had me bring in a handful of photos from throughout my life. A range of ages and circumstances. We looked them over together, examining what emotions they elicited in me, and looking for trends. Beyond anything else, I saw my eyes sinking, hollowing out by the year. At the time, I thought it was just growing depression, trauma, or dread. Now I know it was more. Now I know that my body was poisoning me, testosterone flowing like arsenic, just slower acting.
I didn’t know what I was, and no one around me cared enough to look. I didn’t cause a fuss.
Going back to the four archetypes, the self is opposite the anima/animus, and the persona is opposite the shadow. The self is true identity, the anima/animus is more instinctual. The persona is who others and ourselves imagine we are, and the shadow is the things we don’t admit we are. For the persona to more closely resemble the true self, the shadow has to be integrated. We have to accept our demons.
I think about when I started transitioning.
My journal entries during that time were sparse, with gaps of weeks or months in between. Frankly, I was in such a bad state that I don’t really remember what I felt; I just remember that I was at a precipice. I was running out of options, and I didn’t know how to be better.
The Dysphoria Bible was bookmarked on my phone, and I scrolled Reddit transition pages end to end. I was alone, confused. I, still so deeply ashamed of what I might be, couldn’t fully commit. I didn’t want to be trans.
But the world around me was shrinking, and I felt like I was about to suffocate. I was about to die.
My shadow, eroding my soul, leaving a husk. I had to try something.
So, I took a leap of faith.
In reality, it sounds more dramatic than it actually was. I reached out to a telehealth HRT provider seeking care. After a few video sessions talking about the struggles I faced, I was prescribed hormones.
Sitting on my childhood twin bed in my mother’s home, I plopped a light blue oval-shaped pill under my tongue and…
Peace.
It’s hard to define just how quickly my body began feeling like my own. The hands I looked down at became less alien by the day. Lines became sharper, light brighter. But pain also hurt so much deeper.
My chest was open, the wind slicing through my organs. I felt the world crashing around me. In reality, it was.
My friendships were dying where they stood, my vulnerability and new emotions too much, too raw. I was needy, listless, and drifting. I was too much.
I distinctly remember writing, “I don’t think I’d be anyone’s maid of honor.” That sentiment, significantly less true now, still cutting deep.
But now I look at it…
I was a teenage girl. At least hormonally. And so much was new, constant firsts flowing in like Instagram likes. I was a writhing mass of girlhood, a teenager at 24 years old.
The aforementioned leap of faith paid dividends.
I told myself that if HRT didn’t do its trick for me within a few weeks, then it wasn’t the cure that I needed, and hopefully I’d have it in me to try something else. I never stopped, and never plan on stopping.
Today I feel free. The little girl in my babysitter’s home, safe. I embraced my shadow and came out more whole.
Three years later, I have curves now. Tits too. I wear dresses, my closet overflowing with them, actually. I have Barbies hanging on my wall, and makeup covering my desk. I use the women’s restroom and navigate the world as one. When I look in the mirror, I see a beautiful woman looking back.
Most days, I feel beautiful.