Anyone ever pull out their old high school year books, and go "ick!"?
I have my year book from my freshmen and sophomore years. I was sitting at my computer listening to music, and k.d Lang came on. Yes, I listen to her from time to time. I spent my entire teenage years listening to her because of all the singers in the world, she came closest to what I was before I realized I was ftm. Now I keep her on my playlist as a sort of reminder of my past. Oh, I was such an awkward child.
For some reason, the music made me want to look at my yearbooks, which I might add, I've considered cutting out all pictures of me, destroying them, and tossing out the books. I looked at my sophomore yearbook first because it was the first one where I had short hair. My dad once said that I look like a young nazi in it. Jerk! My hair is parted on the side, and I never realized it before, but I look really pissy. I don't remember what I was thinking or feeling that day. But now I am seeing it as some symbol of my younger, pre everything self. Those miserable days when no one understood me, and I longed to find someone who would explain what was wrong with me. Little did I know that the person I was dating back then was going through the exact same thing. I discovered years later after finding my high school partner on facebook, that I got dumped because he was dealing with thoughts that he might be transgender (ftm), and he thought I would not understand. Life really is funny that way sometimes.
I then turned to the dreaded freshmen yearbook. I had long ago blacked out the actual school pic because I hated myself that much, but there is a picture of the freshmen girl's basketball team I was on that I vaguely remember being in the yearbook. My hair was long, and I looked like one of those unkempt, awkward girls who just failed at being a girl. My hair is messy, completely unstyled, I have big nerdy glasses, and I stick out like a sore thumb. All the girls around me did their hair and makeup for the pic, and I basically look like I rolled out of bed and stumbled in. Two girls down from me, I had drawn a little devil goatee, pitchfork, and tail on one of my teammates. She had tortured me all through that basketball season. I hated being on the basketball team. I hated the attention, and I was uncomfortably shy. I quit after one year. I remember cutting my hair off sometime during that year, and that's when the rest of the school decided I needed to be tortured. I had rocks thrown at me. Everywhere I went it seemed like someone was shouting "dyke!" at me. I got mooned once on the street by some boys I went to school with. A boy in my welding class called me Sh** face once. The teacher took care of it, and went as far as to call my mom and talk to her about it. I was extremely popular in high school in a very bad way. Everyone knew who I was because I was the dyke on campus, or the girl who looked like a boy.
It was an awful time, and I really don't know why I still have those yearbooks. But sometimes it is good to have them around to remind myself how far I have actually come. I am 31 now, and I am still working on myself. Maybe I will never stop, but at least life is not as bad as it was back then.
