#samantharogers tgdetroit transgender aging

[sammierogers]

One More Twist in the Road – The Aging Trangender Woman

“Aging is an extraordinary process where you become the person you always should have been.”

David Bowie

Every transgender woman, or girl, or boy, or man, or queer … knows the feeling. That feeling...the feeling that comes over you when the right combination of factors fall into place, and... for the first time...you look at your reflection... and, you see the face you have so longed to see...the face that represents who you are...who you have always been...always longed to be seen as...always longed for... when the face staring back was just never before “right”...when the face always reflected before was... just not you.

Every transgender person knows... or remembers...that feeling.

It is intoxicating. It is pure heroin injected straight into the cerebral cortex. It is amazing beyond amazing. And it is addicting.

I learned awhile ago... I can't remember when... awhile ago... I learned that hormones create puberty. Yeah...lol... I know...like, duh...right? But, seriously...I never really thought about how the hormonal process of maturity would play out on the emotions of adolescents. I mean...my own adolescence was back in the Pleistocene era and that hell mostly forgotten. And for the rest of my time on Earth... well, I had my own issues...forgive me.

But, in reflection now, puberty has to be hell for young people...especially young women. Girls feeling themselves changing...becoming women...and, becoming women amidst all the BS signals and expectations our crass, over sexed, paternalistic, fucked up society lays on girls. Yikes. Ugly. No wonder the drama so famous among middle school students.

So...as weird, tough and fucked up as it has to be to go through that at 13, with a correctly aligned vagina... or penis... imagine doing it with a misplaced penis...or vagina...at 40...or 50...or 60. Imagine having spent all those decades wearing the costume of another gender...playing that role...while your life led you through all the trials and experiences and adventures that form you and teach you and mold you and make you able to function and survive in this world... all in the wrong role. Imagine going through all that weird, body-changing, hormonal nightmare, puberty shit.... all over again. Only this time at a point when every other mundane little piece of your life's roadmap to function is locked into the perceptions and reactions of a learned but totally wrong gender identity...that is decades set in it's ways.

Can you? Can you imagine that?

Can you imagine what that is like?

That is the experience for a later life transitioning person first starting on hormones.

Ok, so now let's look at aging.

When we are young...when we are kids... I think... there is a desire to be older... to be more mature... to be able to move in the circles that older people move in. To be able to do all the things that adults do....with all the power that adults “seem” to have... doing all the “cool” things that adults...even young adults...seem to be doing...at least, from our childish viewpoint. I think that is part of the normal process of maturation.

But... as we grow...there comes a point... there comes a stage...altogether too brief... when we feel “right”...when we feel empowered in the world...when we feel that perfect balance of maturity, power, wisdom, and potential..combined with some form of confidence in our appearance...to whatever degree our genetic makeup allows us. There comes a time...for many of us... when we feel good.

And in the blink of a hungover party girl's Sunday dawn that minute is gone.

The wedding, and the first house and the first birth and too many hours working for less than the man next to you while you ran home to make sure the laundry is done and the homework completed... and bang...the face you once thought might, in the right light, with the right smile and the right wink...just might be attractive and seem “cool” and “hip” to the right partner... that face is looking back at you no longer young. That face is suddenly sporting fine lines, and...ugh... wrinkles...and...OMG...jowls.  That face is suddenly, horribly, subtly, awfully, unforgivingly, undeniably....old.

Yeah

So... now try to imagine spending decades of your youth in a “role”... like being inside a Disney character costume. A costume that, the wearing of, taught you many things, some of which were good...even great. But a costume nonetheless. And a costume with a face that isn't you.

And then one day... one day... that miraculous , euphoric, near orgasmic moment comes upon you and you finally see that real you in your reflection. And you take the pills. And your body changes. And you start that crazy rollercoaster of emotional mayhem.

And for this brief, shining, sparkling, amazing, giddy moment... you are happy. Beyond happy...your smile is visible from Alpha Centauri. And the emotional rollercoaster takes you. And you don't care...you absolutely do not care, because for the first time... the first time in your life...  you feel free, and honest and real and just plain right... and... dare we say?... you feel pretty.

And in two tenths of a nanosecond...it is gone. The euphoria of authenticity is quickly matched by the staring eyes of prejudice and intolerance. The giddiness of girlishness is rapidly ground down by the steady onslaught of the everyday. The roller coaster ride of pubescent emotions matures into some semblance of a return to adulthood. And what took many years the first time around the second time lasts but months.

I always think of late transitioning people as living in “dog years”. One year into hormones and transition carries us more like seven or ten years down the road to a new found maturity. We may have been set back to being 13 emotionally, and had to repeat those horrible years, but the maturation process is accelerated because so much of the “normal” learning that takes place  during puberty– dealing with anger, self discipline, balancing a check book and getting the oil changed in your car... all these things have already been learned. What must be experienced and understood is simply the complexities of dealing with now living in a “new” gender, exacerbated by the affects of a massive influx of life changing hormones. We start feeling 13 again but a year ater we are 23 and another year brings us to 33 and soon we are caught up with the years we have actually lived.

But for the late transitioner, much damage has already occurred. Years of testosterone poisoning has left scars in the form of receding hairlines, broad shoulders, hirsute bodies and deep voices. The first moment of authentic gender recognition comes with giddy euphoria as the disphoria is lifted and replaced by joy. But as time passes, the pink fog lifts and the eye begins to see clearly the effects of aging. And their comes a dawning of all the irretrievable time that was, not lost, but somehow misspent. Youth is gone and those years are not coming back and the knowledge that the joy of authenticity is now savagely limited by the lack of remaining years...can be damning.

The mirror begins to be no longer our friend. The mirror becomes a daily reminder of every new line and wrinkle. The mirror reflects our mortality like a rapidly emptying hourglass. The mirror, along with every new selfie, relentlessly pounds into us the reality that our moment of authenticity and joy is brief and ebbing swiftly. Try as we may to stave off the withering effects of age through surgeries and makeup and enhancements (and filters), we are fighting an enemy that must ultimately prevail.

It took a lifetime to arrive at the party only to discover that the party is nearly over.

It is heartbreaking.

But pain is how we grow. A bodybuilder grows large by first experiencing the pain of breaking open the blood vessels in their muscles so that those muscles may grow back bigger and stronger. Emotional pain, fully experienced and not denied, acts in the same manner to grow our heart in empathy and wisdom. The pain of aging, properly experienced and not denied, brings with it an appreciation for the pain of others and, hopefully, the wisdom to accept oneself with grace. It isn't easy. But it is just one more twist in a long road we have already survived.

At least, that's the lesson I am trying to learn. It ain't easy. Wish me luck.

And I'll do the same for you.

I promise.