This post was originally published to my Substack blog on August 22, 2023.

I’m trans.

You mean you’re going to turn into a woman?

Not exactly. My internal sense of gender has always been feminine.

So why did you wait so long?

Because I didn’t know I was trans.

But you just said…I’m confused.

That makes two of us, hon.

When you realize you’re trans later in life, your mind lunges out in different directions, trying to make sense of it all. Am I a woman now? Was I always a woman? Why didn’t I see it before? Was this or that event a clue I should have seen?

However long it takes, the process of hatching is hard. You will look at the core of your being more closely than you ever have. You may wonder if you have two personalities. You may wonder who the real you is. You may wonder if there is a real you. You may ask yourself, “Is this my masculine face?” And you may ask yourself, “Is this my genuine voice?”

As the days go by, you may find yourself crying more in one week than you have in years. But at some point you will figure out who you really are. It may take a week, or a month. For some it may take years. But after you discover your authentic identity, one question may remain:

Who was I before?

I think about this question a lot. As I write this, it has been two weeks since I emerged from my existential uncertainty as a trans woman. I’m still equal parts terrified and excited–although I’m more joyous than either of those emotions. Every hour of every day, I celebrate who I am. 

I’ve never done that before. After years of ups and downs, dealing with depression and constant change, I had settled into a comfortable pattern of content existence. I felt like I wasn’t a special, unique individual, just another person making his way through life. The egg metaphor is significant. I feel like my life began the week I hatched.

So what does that say about who I was before?

Near the end of my hatching week, I confided in a new friend that I wasn’t ready to lose my old self, to let him fade away. (Dammit, Mae! Your webcomic is so beautifully poignant!) I was terrified of losing the person I was in order to transform into the person I would become.

But I realized that I don’t have two wolves inside of me. I’m not losing any part of myself that matters. The man who lived his life, trying to be a good person (failing more than I’d like to admit, but still trying), was always me. She will always be me. She just wasn’t a man.

So who or what was I?

I keep asking this question, and the only answer I have is, I was me. My “actual” gender was questionable. I lived most of my life as a man, not as a woman, at least performatively. I had everybody fooled…including myself. But it’s not that simple.

Gender is not a hard-coded binary attribute. (Neither is biological sex, but that’s a whole article in itself.) My transition was eased somewhat because I’ve long recognized some of my feminine traits. It’s been over 15 years since I tried to get my beard lasered away. At that time, I was back in school (long story), and my best friend was a classmate who happened to be a lesbian. We got along fantastically well from day one, and I opened up and let her see the real me. 

One thing she knew very well about me was that I was attracted to women, but also wanted to be friends with them (and had almost no interest in friendships with men). Because of this, she referred to me as “a lesbian trapped in a man’s skin.” In that way, she saw me better than I saw myself.

I’ve always had a strong feminine component to my personality, even when I ignored it, pushed it away, or hid it behind a mask of exaggerated masculinity. Does that mean I’ve always been a woman? I honestly don’t know. But the conclusion I’ve come to is,

It doesn’t matter!

I was me, and I am me. The person who was George is the person who is Violet. I’m just being more honest now, both with the world and with myself. Having a masculine body doesn’t make me less feminine. But having a feminine body will make me feel more complete. It will make me a more confident woman, fulfilling my deepest existential desire: to be one of the girls.

And, of course: more hair!