A Meditation on Childhood Transitions

My whole previous life, I wished I were a girl.

Because I was always certain that was the better version of me. That was the me I should have been.

That was the me that was right.

And I was wrong.

I didn’t know I was a girl. I knew I should have been one! I wished I were one.

When I got older, I soothed this dysphoria by repeating “this is the life I have”.

And I liked girls!1 And girls like masculine men.2 And I wanted a picket fence. And a million other social reasons!

So I tried to shape myself into the man I thought I should be.

I did try to build my own mold. Always some zest, flair and x-factor. I was a “character”.

It’s funny, the dam really started to break when I fell in love with a woman who liked me being cute and cutesy.

I felt like my true self. This wasn’t bedroom behavior or role play. This was me.

What sort of person do you present to the world? What is your presentation?

Does that presentation square with who you are? Do other people see you? Or just a mask?

My mask had just cracked.

My twenties were a slow descent into mental health hell. The true torture was knowing that I was falling and powerless to stop it. Nothing helped.

Then a mental health disaster. I’ve written a lot about it.

Manic psychosis doesn’t make you not you. You’re you with wild risk preferences, self-aggrandizement and paranoia.

But you’re still you. And I wanted out. Out of everything I had built. Out of corporate law, out of slacks, out of my rapidly heading towards marriage relationship. OUT!

So I got out and collapsed for a year. You’ve read it before: live with parents, deep depression, psych ward for suicidal thoughts.

Things really turned around when I started writing again. Trying to explain the experience of two people negotiating the future of one brain.

It helped to conceptualize it that way. To acknowledge who I really was, and who I wanted to be.

I cherish the life I had. But I deeply regret every moment I had to live it. It’s ok to feel both ways at once.

I wouldn’t wish the pain on anyone. Feeling wrong every moment of your life is not acceptable. No one should be forced to feel that way.

I was too scared to even tell anyone my wish. That’s how clearly “wrong” it was.

These kids don’t have to live my life. They have a chance now. A choice.

Don’t take it away from them.

Donate to the Human Rights Campaign or a local charity. You can afford it.