Why my gender might not be like everyone else’s Part I

by dominicdemeyn

Like a lot of trans-people, I also knew I was different from a very young age.

When I could hardly even speak I was wondering what the deal was, who I was and what it meant. I kept asking the same questions over and over again: <<What is the [insert real name], what is the [insert real name]?>> I don’t think I really expected an answer from anyone, for if I couldn’t figure this out, how could they?

My concern at that time were a bit like every trans person’s: why do I feel different? However, at that time, I was also decidedly more concerned with species rather than with gender. While other girls and boys were having human role models, mine almost exclusively tended to be of the animal, robot, or other kind. I kept referring to myself in the third person, partly because I couldn’t speak properly, and partly because it felt just right.

I have three brothers and am generally pretty observant. Yet when comparing myself to them I never thought I was the girl in the family, I just thought I was a child. My brothers were different from me, of course, but the major difference I could perceive was how they were treated and how they treated me. The way they treated me made me different. The treatment and decisions of others upon my soul was what started the great divide between me and my fellow peers and relatives. I never asked to be treated with disrespect and ignorance.

After endless years of being made a stereotype by the taunting, the dominant behaviour, the ridiculous assumptions of humans, I put my identity aside and hid it from the world. Unfortunately, that also had effect that I lost access to it, myself, while I internalized every single bit of crap that I was told about who I was.

 

I played along for many frustrating, debilitating, physically and mentally damaging, plain fucked up years, until I finally reached that point where I could no longer go forward, nor back. I felt completely empty, …drained. I actually felt like I ceased to exist, like somewhere along the way I had died and somehow not really noticed when it had happened. I found myself in a really dark place. I had lost my sense of self and what I wanted from life (had I ever really known?), and didn’t know how to get it back; I had always relied on other people defining me (thinking it was for my own good) and when they finally were out of my life (because they didn’t really care in the end), I was stunned.

Scared shitless, I did not know where to begin to find myself. I kept thinking maybe someone else knows, and really had to force myself not to run to the next retard who had an easy answer for everything. I thought what’s the point of asking questions I might never find the answers to? So, for a while, I concentrated on just living, instead: I bought food, cleaned the apartment, visited family, ate, slept. I went for walks and that was a great achievement in itself. Every day that I spent living without having some moron meddling in my life was a little victory and brought me closer to myself.