My First Moments of True Transgender Joy

Being queer filled my life with joy! A Prism & Pen writers prompt

Its funny, it wasn’t until this writing prompt that I realized that the only reason I haven’t experienced the natural joy of being transgender all my life — to the point of taking my gender for granted like a cisgender person — is that others have chosen to hate, vilify, mock and threaten to physically harm me. All because I am transgender… for no apparent reasons other than societal ignorance and, in some cases, pure hatred.

As a transgender person, I have had to fight for every moment of queer joy I have experienced, and they have been wonderful! I have spent enough time in my life feeling painful rejection and talking about unjustified hate.

This prompt is about joy and I want to share three moments of my queer, transgender joy with you.

They all happened in October, 2018. I like to think it is my official transgender birth month.

I was medically and psychologically diagnosed as a transgender female earlier in the year. After 60 years of denial, it took months of scathing personal analysis and deep professional therapy to accept the reality of that diagnosis. I still did not thoroughly understand it nor was I ready to reject a lifetime a male experiences and male relationships.

I had my doubts. I still do.

Part of my ongoing gender testing was a series of professional makeovers. The goal was to prove to this alien female presence that I wasn’t female and that I could never pass.

It was a tragic miscalculation by my male ego.

Not only did I pass, I was reasonably attractive and the wonderful smile in every photo showed the same, heartfelt joy. It was a reflection of my soul seeing ME for the first time. It was genuine, honest and undeniable.

I was finally me. I was not a crossdresser. I was a woman.

That October, after my fourth qualifying makeover in private, I walked out into the world as me for the first time. I was going to simply walk from the stylist’s salon, across Manhattan, to my therapist’s office. Neil Armstrong and I had similar exciting and alien experiences in our first steps, his on the Moon, mine on the streets of New York as Emma.

It was to be the first of my three transgender joyful experiences that month.

Stepping out of the doorway that first time scared the hell out of me. I was waiting for everyone on the crowded streets to stop, stare and pointing accusatory fingers of mocking hate at me.

But it didn’t happen.

No one saw me. No one noticed me. I was normal (in a New York City kind of way).

Homeless people asked for money. People flowed around me. I got one look from a elderly woman with a face that screamed lemon-sucker but I think her disapproval was just about my chosen my outfit. Even taking the crowded elevator to my therapist appointment drew no notice. I could really tell because I kept nervously glancing at the mirrored walls of elevator looking for stares of horror and revulsion . Instead I saw bored faces waiting for the elevator to take them to their floor.

In the waiting room, my therapist walked into the room and did not see me. She was looking for a guy desperately fighting gender dysphoria, refusing to accept he was female.

Then she refocused and saw me!

She walked up close to me smiling a genuine heartfelt smile and asked if she could hug me. I felt my heart say with desperate release, “YES!”. She then gave Emma her first hug! It was my second joyous gender moment of the month.

The third joyous moment of my October, 2018 birth month was leaving my endocrinologist with my first HRT prescription to start my female hormone therapy. The pharmacist was in the doctor's office. When they handed me the bag I had a flashback to the first time a pharmacist handed me my first condoms in a plain brown wrapper. I felt I was secretly being judged, my motives and morality questioned. I was, of course, totally wrong but my Catholic-trained, binary sense of guilt still had a hold on me.

As I left the office, bag in hand, I ripped it open as I walked to the subway. It had female hormone patches and bottle of spironolactone pills that would suppress my male testosterone level. Testosterone had been poisoning me for a lifetime. I opened the bottle there on the street and popped my first dose of spironolactone into my mouth. The passing people had no idea why I walked with such a huge smile on my face.

After a lifetime of transgender pain, I had finally started my medical cure.

October, 2018 was a joyous month for my bruised and suffering gender. Emma got to got to be seen, she got her first real hug and she began to medically heal a lifetime of pain.

Everything has been baby steps of gender joy since. Sadly most of that joy has been in secret. My binary world holds me back from sharing that joy with so many others in my life. They just don’t see my joy that way.

My transgender community is here online. It is here where we can share our most hidden fears but it is also here where we can share our triumphs over monstrous adversity and the exquisite joys of our own gender discovery.

I wish you all a wonderfully joyful day!

Emma Holiday

This story is a response to the Prism & Pen writing prompt, Being Queer Filled My Life With Joy! Do You Have LGBTQ Change Stories?

Prompt Stories So Far —

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Writers note: If you have read any of my writings on Medium you will have noticed a definite theme: the incredible pain of gender dysphoria and all the difficult aspects of just being transgender.

My writing has three specific goals:

1. Writing is my therapy. I have a very limited outlet for my thoughts so I write to find a way to process the most profound experience in my life. I need to understand and I need to accept myself to move forward.

2. Being transgender, for me, is a very lonely existence and if I can share some of the things that I feel and think as I go through the process of transitioning with others who are transgender and, in some way, lessen their pain and sense of loneliness, then all of this public exposure of my personal thoughts is not a waste.

3. I write to help cisgender people understand that all trans people want is to be simply understood, accepted and treated as a normal person. We are.