I was talking to my best friend on the weekend.(1) We were talking about smiling, and how it comes through when you really feel it. I sent her this picture, which was taken on April 16, 2023. 

I took that picture shortly after dying my hair purple for the first time, three and a half months before my awakening.(2) That’s about as brightly as I ever smiled in my selfies before I transitioned. Just now I was looking for a selfie taken just before I transitioned, but I don’t have one. The closest one I have was taken in May. 

I never used to take a lot of pictures of myself. I created a folder for my selfies in late November because I had started taking a lot more. I went back two years to find old selfies. My new folder contained 19 selfies taken in the two years before I transitioned, and 91 taken in the four months since. As of today (January 29), that folder has 227 pictures in it.

This is a common pattern among transgender people. When you start loving yourself, you take more selfies. A lot more. This one is my favorite:

This picture was taken on January 6 by the person who had just pierced my ears. In 54 years, this was the first time I had gotten a piercing. I was happy. My piercing artist was very affirming. She had just said something that made me smile, and she took three pictures in short succession. 

For days, I couldn’t stop looking at this picture. I had smiled before transitioning, of course. I had been happy once in a while. I had smiled specifically for pictures. I smiled when my son was born, and when I got married. But I had never smiled like I did in this picture. 

Immediately after leaving the studio, I sent this pic to a bunch of friends. I received replies throughout the day. Everyone said I looked great. I looked so happy. My sister said she had never seen that smile before. 

When I got home, I started changing the profile pictures on all of my online accounts to this selfie. I had never loved a picture of myself so much. Before transitioning, I had never loved a picture of myself at all.

This picture is me.  

So who was in the previous picture? I looked at the first picture again this morning, and I didn’t recognize myself. It’s me, but not me.

At the most fundamental level, of course I’m the same person. I’ve retained a lot of my thought processes and some of my behavior patterns. But I feel different. I express myself differently. I interact with others differently. And I look different. Part of that is three months of hormone treatment, but more of it results from how I feel about myself since I figured out who I am. Before transitioning, I didn’t look in the mirror much. When I did, I was looking at something specific, not at my face overall. Now I look into the mirror and I see myself. 

Look at both pictures again. They’re not the same person. The first picture is a shell I used to hide behind. Me, but not me. The second picture is me.

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(1) With this friend, that’s like saying the sky is blue, water is wet, etc., but I have to set the scene for this paragraph.

(2) But there were no signs!