Reflecting on my Isolation and Dysphoria

I’ve been thinking a lot about the feelings of isolation I’ve experienced over the past few years, and I’ve come to a realization that I wanted to share with everyone. Throughout my time in high school I was struggling to comprehend the feelings I was having towards my body and who I was as a person. I didn’t express those issues to anyone close to me (to my own regret), and now that I’m a bit older I’m realizing that I started to isolate myself quite a bit earlier than I had ever considered. I thought that I felt isolated because I was living on my own in Victoria BC, because I struggled to reach out and connect with others, and also because my family lived across the country. But the reality goes so much deeper than that. My dysphoria and the internalized shame that I was feeling towards myself and my body when I was younger (and even to this day to a certain degree) was a massive contributing factor to the loneliness, isolation, and depression that I experience as an adult, and it started as soon as I started to realize that something is different about me than other kids around me at the time. Not different as in having obscure interests or having strange personality traits (though I also certainly did have those too) but different in the sense that I did not feel comfortable or at home in my body or with the gender identity that was given to me at birth, and also how I was unable to express who I was to other people. As soon as I became aware of the complexities of gender and sexuality (as early as high school, puberty and my teenage years) I started to isolate myself. This is because I felt it was necessary to hide who I was, because to be different in our society is to be deviant, and I felt an increasingly intense amount of internalized guilt and shame.

In the end, all I was doing was hiding from myself and denying those who I interacted with an authentic relationship with me based on who I actually am as a person. What I’ve come to realize is that I’ve been doing this for the majority of my life, and as I’ve aged it’s started to take a massive toll on my mental health. I struggle with depression and anxiety among various other mental health issues. I have difficulties trusting and loving others because I struggle to trust and love myself. I was hiding my authentic being from the world and from my relationships, and I’ve come to realize that I was actually running away from myself and how I feel about who I am as a person. Being trans is difficult in our society because we teach our children that being trans is wrong and that difference is something to be disdained, and to be honest I fed into that logic as a teen. To be honest I still find that I feed into that logic subconsciously even though I know better.

I’ve come to realize that the reason I moved away from my family and my friends to a province where I knew no one was because I wanted to distance myself. I wanted to be able to explore who I was without exposing anyone I cared about to that process, but I also think that I wanted to subconsciously run away from who I am. I think moving to this province gave me the opportunity to reflect on who I am as a person, and to be more honest with myself about my feelings and how I traverse the world, but now I face the issue of not knowing how all of that fits into my relationship with my family. I’ve started to navigate that more with those who are very close to me, like my mom and dad, but I also want to know where the authentic version of me fits into our larger family dynamic. I’m sure that it will be the same loving and supportive family that I have always known, even more so now that I am able to develop authentic relationships with my loved ones based on who I actually am as a person, rather than as a performance of someone else.

I don’t want to feel so isolated and alone anymore. I don’t want to struggle to love and accept who I am. I want to be able to connect with others, love them authentically and never deny myself or others the opportunity to explore our relationships. Hiding myself was one of the most selfish things that I ever could have done, because I eliminated the possibility that I had to create relationships with others. I felt like I was lying to everyone that I ever met, and that only further contributed to my feelings of isolation. I realize that I did this for a number of reasons: internalized shame, ensuring a sense of security from others and myself, avoiding the situation altogether, and running away from who I am. I don’t want to deny myself an authentic life anymore. I’ve decided to embrace everything that makes me who I am, because I deserve to be loved and have authentic relationships. Because of this I want to reconnect with my family and move closer to them. This means that I will likely move all the way across the country to either Ottawa or Toronto once I finish my last year at university in Gender Studies. I want to know what it feels like to interact with my family and have them really know who I am, and for them to be able to see the authentic me with their own eyes and to connect with me based on that honesty.

Note: I don’t mean to say that trans people are being dishonest towards their family or to anyone else in society. There is a sinister narrative in our society that says that trans people are deceptive, and I don’t mean to feed into that narrative here. What I am saying in this article is that I have found it difficult to be honest with myself about who I am as a person, and thus before I came out as trans I was dishonest about that both with myself and others. When I was still closeted I was pretending to be someone that I wasn’t, and through that dishonesty I isolated myself and struggled to connect with others. For me to  be able to say that I am transfeminine is for me to be honest about who I am as a person.

A Recognition of Truth

Three generations of women
a conversation about our lives
our shared feminine experience

But one doesn’t feel as though
she belongs in this discussion
an outcast not recognized

Because she was raised a boy
her identity and reality denied
unable to express her truth

Two women and one erased
no voice among loved ones
an exile in her own home

But she fights to be heard
and her elders turn to listen
unsure but filled with love

Their son becomes a daughter
as a beautiful tale unfolds
a child’s truth now recognized

My Own Reflection

After a shower I stand naked in front of a bathroom mirror
vapor and steam swirling around the enclosed private space
as it conceals all the horrible aspects of my own masculinity.

For once I do not turn away in disgust at my reflected visage
as clouds of water droplets present a much softer appearance
I’m now able to imagine what it would be like to feel feminine.

Unable to see body hair, an Adam’s apple, or broad shoulders
and more apparent is the luster and beauty of my supple skin
through the mist I can imagine myself as a vulnerable woman.

At first this brings me shame and guilt in denial and misogyny
but then I come to realize that there is some hope in this image
the desire to accept who I am and grow into my own reflection.

Trans Healthcare

Sitting in a doctor’s appointment
with a supposed medical “expert”
who knows less about hormones
and gender-affirming surgeries
than me, a trans person with no
post-secondary medical education.

But of course this is to be expected
in a society where my own identity
as someone who is transfeminine
is perceived as more controversial
than all the imprisoning ideologies
which enforce gendered falsehoods.

And so I wish we lived in a world
where “professionals” were humble
and could admit to their mistakes
but instead I am the one expected
to contribute the emotional labor
required to create positive change.

Silencing the Demons

Fuck all the limited assumptions and labels
that encourage you to view this body as male
because I am a bad ass transfeminine tomboy.

No, I am not your stereotypical trans princess
and I do not exist to meet your toxic standards
so confident in my femininity and expression.

But there is always a voice that whispers to me
and it claims that my feminine is not authentic
so overcome with internalized hatred and doubt.

So when I tell people to go and fuck themselves
for trying to pigeonhole me to false conventions
sometimes I wonder who needs to hear that most.

Distant Shores

Dear Body,

I’ve never hated you.

You’ve carried me through this dangerous world,
despite the assumptions, the shame, and the violence.

And yet the world decided you were nothing if not male,
but they never asked you, in all your clarity and wisdom.

They could never understand that you transcend their vision,
that you are far more than their assumptions and stereotypes.

Because you are the vessel that carries my soul home,
towards that luminous beacon on those distant shores.

You are my salvation.

“A Prisoner In My Own Vessel”

I’ve been mulling over a line that I wrote in a poem called Desolate Lands where I explained that sometimes I view myself as “a prisoner in my own vessel.” I wanted to deconstruct all the thoughts and emotions that I was processing in that moment. Though, Before I delve into the nuance of trans issues and the relationships that we have with our bodies, I wanted to explain a more about the method I use to write poetry. To me, the creation of an authentic and visceral experience in my writing requires me to allow my various thoughts and emotions to travel through me to fill the page untethered with any doubt for what I am feeling in that precise moment. This means that I will often return to something I wrote in the past and learn that my thoughts and feelings on the topic have dramatically changed. This is the reason that writing is so cathartic to me, because it is able to help me learn about who I am as a person and how I traverse the world. It also helps me deconstruct complicated thoughts, emotions or opinions, and thus it functions as a catalyst for me to process trauma and my overall experiences in life. Thus writing is a healing activity that allows me to be able to move forward and understand who I am.

I think we’ve all heard it before, the overtly common and limited narrative that suggests all trans people feel trapped in their own bodies, or as “prisoners in their own vessels” as I described in Desolate Lands no more than a day ago. I understand that there are many trans people who might feel this way about their bodies, and that’s valid and real. In fact, I know that this is a feeling I have harbored towards my own body that comes from dysphoria, hence the inclusion of the line in my recent poem, and I’m not here to debate the reality of those experiences, quite the opposite. However, I do want to emphasize that many trans people, including myself at times, don’t always feel this way about their bodies and also might feel totally comfortable in their bodies, and that doesn’t make them any less authentic.

There is a quote from Alok Vaid-Menon who explains that “[they were not] born in the wrong body, [they were] born in the wrong world.” This quote has always resonated with me as I’ve tried to come to understand my feelings towards my body. Alok Vaid-Menon draws attention to a toxic gender status quo and encourages us to move beyond a “Western colonial system that’s invested in categorizing everything about us.” I’ve realized since writing Desolate Lands that I don’t necessarily feel like a “prisoner in my own vessel” but rather lost in an ocean of stereotypes and false assumptions about my body and how this supposedly defines who I am or how I traverse the world. There is no monolithic trans narrative, and we all have unique relationships with our bodies. I agree with Janet Mock when she explains that the “trapped in the wrong body” narrative can inevitably function to “place [us] in the role of victim, and to those who take mainstream media depictions as truth [we are] seen as a human to be pities because [we are] someones who needs to be saved, rather that a self-determined [human] with agency and choice and the ability to define who [we are] in this society and who [we] will become in spite of it.”

Desolate Lands

Invasive vines,
coiling around me,
bursting from the earth
that is my own flesh.

A deep and hollow rumble,
the vibration in my chest,
that feels like an earthquake
rather than my own voice.

A tumultuous flood,
rushing water over barren soil,
intrusive thoughts and emotions
the deluge of my own uncertainty.

A prisoner in my own vessel,
exiled to these desolate lands,
a constant struggle to feel at home
in the caverns of my own soul.

This might all sound hopeless,
but our eyes tell a different story
of a limitless and expansive galaxy
that is our own to explore.