The hints were there all along that I wasn’t born in the right body. But it wasn’t until recently that they started making sense.
Hi, world.
When I came out to my amazing wife earlier this year, she understandably had questions like “What?”, “Wait, what?”, “No, seriously, what?”, and “Have you worn any of my clothes?”
Then she asked how and when I knew.
And all I could think about were processed carbohydrates. Specifically, breadcrumbs.
My own acceptance that I was trangender didn’t happen until semi-recently. But part of that acceptance was recognizing the long trail of breadcrumbs left over the years and making sense of them. These were the little lifelong hints that on some intuitive level, I already understood that my shitty luck at winning raffles (i.e., I never win them despite being only one of 2 raffle ticket holders in any given contest) began at birth by missing out on the body I was supposed to be born in.
So what were some of these breadcrumbs?
An interesting imagination: Even as a child, and even without any notion of what it meant, I’d often imagine things as simple as going to school…but through the perspective of being a girl.
Having a thing for strong female characters: I knew that, for me, seeing badass female characters in movies (Ripley in the Aliens movies, Naru in Prey) wasn’t a case of “I love battle babes in skimpy attire.” My fascination was more akin to admiration, and a tiny little voice in my head saying, “That’s how I want to be” that only kept getting louder over the years.
Always playing with female characters in video games: Whether it was Chun-Li or Sonya Blade or any female playable character, I always picked her. Of course, when a friend at the arcade called me out on it and joked, “You want to be a girl or something?” I laughed and begrudgingly picked a random male character.
Always admiring and emulating female musicians: Without revealing my musical idols, let’s just say that, as I learned to play guitar, it wasn’t Prince or Jimi Hendrix I was emulating as I imagined myself playing onstage…
Realizing there was more to my likes: We all have our turn-ons. For me, I always thought that women in skirts and boots or heels were the sexiest. But then I began to notice that it wasn’t just a case of “Oh, that’s hot,” but rather, “That’s cute…I wonder what it would be like to dress like that…”
I loved lesbian love: And no, I’m not talking about that. But series like The Haunting of Bly Manor that featured love between two women always really hit something deep in me. (I’ve since discovered the term transbian, so I think I finally get it…)
Feeling euphoria: The first time I dared to wear a pair of tights and a cute pair of red heels was the day that I realized I was a woman because of how free, how liberated, and how euphoric I felt at finally being me. Like, finally, I was dropping the mask I’d been wearing all my life and allowing myself to be the person hiding in the shadows all along. Okay, maybe not a breadcrumb but more like an 18-wheeler full of croissants careening into a crouton factory…
There were more breadcrumbs throughout my life, but these are the ones that came to mind as I sat there with my wife, trying to explain when and how I knew.
Whatever they may have been, I can reflect now and understand that the signs were all there. Signs that, at some point in my life, the incongruence of the body I was born in, and the woman I knew myself to be, would come to a head, and I’d have to decide what to do about it.
That, and having to explain to my wife why I had something in my eye at the end of Haunting on Bly Manor.