Trans Motivation 101: They Say I'm Shallow, But I Think Deep As The Abyss
more raw verses the cis establishment didn't want you to read š
TRANS MOTIVATION 101
As I stabbed myself in the thigh with a vial full of Estradiol, piercing the 23 gauge needle into a meaty chunk of flesh pinched between my thumb and index finger, I was listening to Jeezyās Thug Motivation 101. Though Iāve only injected myself a few times now, it already feels easier than I remember, or maybe thatās just Jeezy in my ear whispering a mantra: āI gotta believe, I gotta believe.ā You apply a little pressure, itās in, and then itās out. There are so many points at which to overthink the whole thingādo I have the right needle, did I get all the air bubbles out, is any of this even workingābut somehow the methodically mundane process quiets my mind, the ritual and routine of it all, like following the instructions for a project in science class.Ā
Of course, the irony of listening to hustler music while filling a syringe full of a cloudy liquid and quite literally shooting up is that the whole thing feels more than a little bit like doing drugs. Like Father once said, Iāve never had to whip a brick, but I get the gist, and the chemistry set shit I have to do to grow some goddamn titties is probably the closest I will get to cooking something illicit in the kitchen. If āTrap or Dieā might seem an unsuitably macho soundtrack to the experience of feminizing my body, I find solaceāand dare I say motivationāin the self-help narrative of actualizing yourself and remaking your reality. The needle and what it gives me is more than words. In a world of fake shit, itās the only thing thatās really real.
Come close as I tell you a secret: Though itās not literally a scheduled narcotic like testosterone, estrogen really does resemble a drug. Like being stoned and paranoid that youāre the most annoying person alive, itās hard not to feel like everyone hates being around you once the estrogen starts to take effect. Like being on coke, sometimes you actually are the most annoying person alive once the estrogen starts to take effect, and everyone does actually hate being around you. Like an edible on a delay, you usually keep asking yourself if the estrogen is working until you realize that means that itās working. Like tripping on a hallucinogenic wavelength, estrogen makes it uniquely impossible to keep restraining emotions you have spent damn near your whole life trying to bury in the ditch behind the sewage dump that has become your heart, and all of the feelings you have ever felt in your life come spewing out all at once like some awful DMT excursion where every sensation hits you at once before you experience some combination of ego death and eviction from the womb.Ā
And like pretty much any drug at all, estrogen usually results in you doing more than a few things that are objectively and undeniably cringe. If you have ever tried to go through your daily life on a little bit of something, sitting through conversations while trying to convince the person on the other side that you arenāt about to burst into tears, then you have some approximation of what it feels like to be a grown-ass adult dealing with the most humiliatingly adolescent of all emotional processes.
Iāve technically been undergoing hormone replacement therapy for almost three years. Too often, our society portrays transition as a linear process of perpetual self-actualization, when in reality itās an awkward and halting shuffle. Thatās very much what my experience with estragon has been: up and down, back and forth, more estrogen than a cis man but less estrogen than a cis woman, less testosterone than cis man but more testosterone than a cis woman, stranded in some physiological limbo neither one thing or the other.
My understanding of testosterone is that it allows for something much closer to microdosing, as you fairly quickly start to see visible physical changes that allow you to almost test drive your new gender identity. Estrogen can be a little harder to quantify: the only āmicrodosingā thatās really possible is the bad kind of microdosing, when you donāt take enough of a thing to actually appreciate what youāre feeling and the world just looks a little muddled and gray and deflated. Whether itās an intentional psy-op or just an overabundance of caution, cis endocrinologists have a historical tendency to play it too safe with hormone dosages, which leaves your levels out of whack and your mind mixed-up.Ā
But sometimes even if the dosage is enough, the body just doesnāt want to absorb through the skin or the stomach. The only surefire way to know that it is unequivocally entering your body is to put it directly into the bloodstream. First, I tried the patch, which perpetually left a gunky residue on my ass and constantly came off due to sweat or shower, and then I tried the pill, which just didnāt really seem to take. For six months, the syringes stared me down as I delayed the inevitable, until I finally accepted that the needle was the only way that anything would ever feel real. Thereās been something weirdly comforting about not even just the chemical changes but the process of injection itself, which feels like taking ownership of my body in the same way that getting a tattoo does. Even if Iām not sure what is happening to my body, I know that something is happening, by putting it directly into my system instead of hoping that maybe it will possibly ingest into my system by sheer will alone. I know that Iām really doing it. Estrogen has peeled back the brittle armadillo armor I once hid behind, leaving me exposed and vulnerable to the wounding of this world. But at least that means I can finally feel.
After I discarded the used needles in a jar, I rolled a blunt, and then I got on the train to go and talk to an elusive SoundCloud rapper who had never been interviewed in-person before. Iāve often felt like being trans puts me at a disadvantage when it comes to interviews, because there are so many ways it could possibly go wrong: maybe they just slip up a little, maybe they out-right misgender me, maybe they actually fucking hate trans people and itās some kind of situation. Itās hard not to let the potential anxiety of it all keep me from being fully present in the conversation, or going for certain opportunities at all. Maybe itās the hormones themselves already working their mysterious ways, or maybe itās just the empowering autonomy I feel from overcoming my fear of something sharp and painful, but on the way to this interview it looks a little different in my mind.Ā
What if being trans is actually why Iām good at this? What if the fact that Iām a little gender fuck-y and a little hard to pin down makes me a better interviewer? Because being fluid means I can adapt and reinvent myself to meet them as whoever they need me to be. That might sound insincere, but I donāt feel like it is; even if you shapeshift, every shape you take is still just a part of the larger pattern of yourself. When I bro it up out of necessity, itās not not me; itās just only one small part, the side that feels most conducive to connecting with the person across from me, rather than the complete picture. In those thirty minutes, the connection we have matters more than how they actually perceive me: I still know who I am, even if they donāt. If I push myself, like I push the needle through the skin, I can be absolutely anyone at all.
A LITTLE POST-SCRIPT AFTER TWO MONTHS THAT RADICALIZED THE FUCK OUT OF ME AND WOKE ME UP LIKE NEVER BEFORE:
Some people lately have told me that I am being scary. But the only reason I am being so forceful and aggressive lately is because I am so scared. Not even because I am awake. But because I am awake and I recognize how frightening it is to be awake at this particular moment, especially as a trans person, or even just as a woman.Ā
People tell me that something will happen one or two years from now. And I say that I know that I will be here, because for the first time in my life I actually want to live, and I actually want to be here. But I donāt know if I will actually live, or if I will actually be here: not through any fault of my own, but because nothing I do will ever be enough in a world that fucking hates so many of us so deeply and wants to do everything it can to write us out of our own narratives. Even if I am still here in one year or two years, I am not entirely sure in what form I will even be allowed to exist, or where I will be.Ā
I finally left the closet. And the force of the whole fucking world wants to shove me back in there.Ā
You do not realize how little time so many of us have. And we cannot live on your time. We cannot live on your terms. We cannot wait for your permission. We cannot slow down. We cannot believe that the politicians arenāt really being serious when they throw our bodies into the meat grinder, that theyāre doing it just as a bit, that when theyāre actually in office they wonāt do the things they said they would do, which is what violent men always fucking do.
We cannot pretend we arenāt running against the clock, or maybe the clock is about to run out, or maybe it already did, but you keep running anyway.Ā
Every trans person I know is making preparations as if for wartime, because that is what it is: getting surgeries and changing names and getting your papers in order and fucking preparing for a world in which you might have to carry around papers more than you already do. I do not want to live in that world. I refuse to live in that world. Fuck the papers, fuck the government names, I am getting paper, and I am going underground, because that is where revolutions happen. Not on fucking Twitter, which is designed to spy on you, & make you snitch on yourself.
Sorry if I made you feel uncomfortable on the Internet. Have you been outside lately? Itās pretty fucking uncomfortable out there. And if itās not uncomfortable for you, maybe you should think about what youāre ignoring, and who youāre talking over, and which bodies youāve decided you can afford to step over.
And sorry if I could not afford to be some chill cool fucking girl, waiting for the daddy of digital media to break me off a little piece of shit that isnāt even all any of us deserve. I have to take it for myself, because there is not much time left for a lot of us, and so many of you have wasted your fucking turn. And Iām trying to show you how you can take it too, but you just want to sit around and wait to die. So fuck you. If you want to survive, listen to me. If you want to keep plugging your ears and doing discourse and using artists as human shields and playing with your fucking dick while the world burns, be my guest.
that's how we do it now: real underground shit. circling wagons. going to mattresses. preparing for wartime. no phones. cameras off. all props. snitches get stitches.
fuck copcallers.
fuck corporate media.
fuck you pay US.
If you always thought I was playing at being a radical: congrats, whoever called the cops on a girl coming out of dysphoric dissociation, an inherent & elemental part of hormonal transition that most trans people experience, radicalized the fuck out of me like never before
I USED TO GIVE A DAMN, BUT I NEVER GAVE A FUCK