I'm going to take a minute to detour from my darn endocrinology thread and expand on a particular theme.
In my ongoing search for metaphors to make sense of this whole complicated transgender thing, lately I've been thinking of the image of a snowball rolling downhill.
This came to mind after I had to use the men's room at my tdoc's the other week and felt so out of place and alienated, and I figured out that it was because my own internal sense of comfort with my freshly-realized gender had shifted faster and farther than I'd known.
Sure, I was surprised, but I also wasn't surprised. The same sort of thing had happened before. When I quit drinking and my gender issues started popping up, I thought it was the stupidest thing in the world. Yet they persisted, and they solidified in therapy a lot faster than I ever thought they could until I finally had to admit how real and true they were.
But then, of course, what was I supposed to do with them? It's not like I'd be buying women's clothing or anything... until my friend suggested she take me with her on a shopping trip, and I found out I was ready to buy some leggings and a couple of blouses. Then I surprisingly quickly started wearing them to sessions with tdoc.
I guess anyone can wear nail polish, right? Turns out it's a short hop from a little gloss to a very pale pink to doing a new color every week. I favor jewel tones. Makeup? Why would I ever? But I do have beautiful, long eyelashes, so why would I even think about leaving the house without mascara?
Transition wasn't a practical possibility until I woke up one morning and it was. Hormones were far in the future until I woke up one morning and it was time to get started right away. You've read about estrogen and my darn endocrinologist. Then nippleshurt nippleshurt nippleshurt. Ready or not, here come the bras.
At some point I realize that I'm fine with it all. That nervous flutter inside is gone. The self-judging, the fear that Everybody Is Staring. Resistance is futile. IDGAF.
The snowball rolls downhill. There's even a verb: "snowballing."
Snowballing denotes a process that's both growing and out of control. It can only move in one direction. It gets bigger and bigger as it goes, and it only goes faster and faster.
So goes my transition, whether I like it or not, whether I know it or not, whether I want to admit it or not.
The final part of this metaphor that springs to mind goes back to the old Roadrunner cartoons. Hilarious to children, tragic to jaded adults. Everything the Coyote tries, all his plans, his hopes, his ambitions, all come to naught, and all end horribly, humiliatingly, lethally. OSHA would have a field day with ACME.
So why does the Coyote do it? Why does he put up with the pain, the embarrassment, the failures over and over? What makes him persist?
It's because he's the Coyote. He can't not. It's what Coyotes do. Coyotes hunt Roadrunners. Elmers hunt Wabbits. Bugs Bunnies play tricks. It's what they do. They can't not. It's what they do.
Why do we transition?
Why do we put up with the pain, the embarrassment, the failures over and over? What makes us persist?
We can't not.
It's what we do.
I think I remember a Roadrunner cartoon where the Coyote develops some harebrained scheme to wallop the Roadrunner with a giant snowball. He's at the top of a snow-covered mountain, and he kicks off the tiniest little smidge of snow, which dutifully snowballs downhill.
Being the Coyote, he puts on skis and gleefully takes off after it. Also being the Coyote, he somehow gets in front of it. He's doing fine keeping his distance for a while, but eventually he realizes that this thing is creeping up on him, waxing bigger and bigger, faster and faster, and he can't ski fast enough anymore.
Why doesn't he get out of the way? Beats me. That's part of the gag. Maybe because he's so focused on the snowball that he can't think of anything else. The look of terror on his face, though! You can imagine the thoughts running through his head. "Oh, no! The snowball is going to hit me! I can't get out of the way! It's going to subsume me! It's going to roll me all up inside it and I can't to do a single thing about it!"
Wouldn't that just be so dreadful?
Wouldn't that just be the most terrible thing if the transition took hold outside of our conscious control, if we didn't have to think about doing it, and without any effort it just happened for us automatically, as if by magic? Nobody could ever possibly want that, could they?
In the cartoon, Wile E. does get subsumed by the snowball. You see a whirling mass of ears and paws and skis and snow tumbling down the hill, over a cliff, and his eventual plummet to dusty death.
That'd make it easy, too, wouldn't it? Give over control to the process, let everything happen by itself, and then – once all the hard work is done for us – never need to cope with the consequences?
Yeah.
That'd make things pretty easy, all right.
I'm scared. I'm scared that things are happening without my consent. I'm scared that things are happening without my control. I'm tickled and pleased and joyous and laughing and relaxed and confused and IDGAF, but most of all I'm scared.
I don't want to be the Coyote. We laugh at him because he's a reflection of our deepest fears. Satire is the cruelest art, for when we paint the world in clownish colors, it doesn't seem so scary, but we can only be distracted for a little while.
The terrifying part of Wile E's life is that every time he tries to assert a little bit of control, it all blows up in his face. Everything the Coyote tries, all his plans, his hopes, his ambitions, all come to naught, and all end horribly, humiliatingly, lethally. Funny in a cartoon, not so much in real life.
I know where I'm going. I know what I need to do. I can't not. It's what we do.
It's just that it's kinda scary, what with Coyotes and snowballs and stuff.
