Compressed Coming Out
I'm sure almost all of us remember the painful process of coming out. I suspect every one of us experienced some version of this:
Each time we added some new gender marker, we had to work ourselves up to go outside the house. Women's jeans, a woman's plain top, maybe some women's tennis shoes, nail polish; each one took another shot of courage to leave our safe haven. (Of course, we'd all been underdressing at that point for quite a while.) Each time it got a little easier, but the big changes were the hardest. First time with a bra. Maybe with the hair down. Makeup.
Incrementally we changed ourselves and gingerly dipped our painted toes in the water. Each time it went well, we built a little more courage to try something new. If it didn't, we retreated and licked our wounds.
There were the actual talks, always expecting confusion, harsh words, rejection. Some of us got that and dealt with it in our own ways. I didn't get it at first, and it made things easier (never mind that in the end, not everyone kept their end of the bargain. At least in the beginning, when I was least able to deal with it, I was spared that pain).
The point is, all of this took a lot of time - some more than others, but very few of us had the internal fortitude to just jump into that freezing lake. Most of us took our time and dealt with it one silent test at a time, until one day we looked back and realized, Hey, I'm living as myself now. When did that happen?
I dealt with that this week again. I am in a beautiful setting, surrounded by people who have the wherewithal to afford to vacation in a place like this. Yes, it's a town known for such things as cosmetic surgery, so the people who live and work here are accustomed to people running around looking like they've just been rumbling in Paris. But the tourists, unless they're here for surgery themselves, must be a little freaked out by someone fresh out of the operating theater - especially a transgender person getting FFS. Right?
Those were my thoughts as I sneaked back to my hotel room after I was discharged from HC Hospital. It was going to be a long week and a half stuck inside that room, as luxurious as it was. There was no way I was going to let anybody see this carved up mug, someone doing their best to convert an old face into something feminine.
But there was no avoiding the taxi driver. He called me señora. I couldn't hide from the folks bringing my room-service meal. They called me madame. The room service lady said, "Gracias, ma'am." Um, what?
On the third day I had cabin fever. I wanted to get out of the room, but that old feeling of swimming with the sharks came back. Though I've been living full time for over a year now, I remembered that scary feeling.
But I remembered too how I'd conquered it, step by step, and how in the end it was alright. The telephoto lens of time compressed all those experiences into one big event, and I knew all it would really take was that first step out the door.
I took it. Down four floors to the nicest restaurant in the nicest hotel I've ever stayed in, with penguins serving food and comparatively wealthy people all around.
And it was fine. If anyone looked I didn't see them, and, to put it bluntly, screw them anyway. I got good food, was treated well by the staff (with flawlessly perfect gendering), and have eaten all my meals except breakfast downstairs ever since. I even took a long walk down the beach last night, culminating in a trip to a grocery store where I couldn't read the labels and the cashier couldn't speak English.
All the anxiety of coming out was compressed into minutes of just putting one foot in front of the other. And I not only survived it, I thrived on it.
Stephanie
