Things I’ve Learned From a T4T Friendship

Trying to get past my writer’s block has been a losing battle, so I’ve been spending the weekend looking for inspiration. I’m browsing a list of trans novels, but my attention span isn’t having it. Recently I’ve been looking specifically for adult, not YA, hoping for something a little more true to life and a little less ‘things my suburban friend might have related to in 2017’ but even though I know what I like and know there are things on these lists I’ll probably love, nothing is sticking. I want something real and angry, but not something that accepts that we should just be sad, something that intentionally and radically tries to compensate for the crap we get taught about ourselves. I want something that doesn’t flinch back from saying hey, we should be worshipped already!

Not because I need to be appreciated, but because I need my best friend to be.

I go through my pain whether I like it or not. It sits with me every day, always, from the years of teen depression to the new traumas I’m probably accruing now. It isn’t that I’m not fine with my life now, but I’ve already become this person, and he lives with me in a way I can’t turn back from. That’s pretty easy because it’s pretty familiar. The pain of people I love is different.

It’s just as much a fact of life as my own, but the closest it gets to being in the background is when I can feel it building like an oncoming storm, the humid air of future lightning. It isn’t something I look forward to but I will always immerse myself in it, and that forms its own kind of involuntary anticipation. I always want to do my best for people, especially other trans people, but I don’t always want to see their pain and inner doubt mirrored in external sources the way I do with my own. So that book about body horror and melancholy and feeling reviled for your trans existence? That’s fine when I’m thinking about myself. But not when I’m thinking about her. I never want her to feel that way, and I know that sometimes she does, and we don’t talk about it, just like we don’t talk about all the things that fucked me up before she was back in my life to see them.

When I’m feeling small or sad or angry, I pretend she has never felt fear. That’s my confession for today: I go into that pre-dream space, rocking to sleep alone in bed, and I lie to myself. She is so beautiful (this bit is the truth): her laugh-filled voice, her thighs, the hands I’ve dreamt about for years. The curl of her hair around her cheeks, the incredibly specific color of her eyes. I tell myself that she already knows I could watch her talk or work for hours-not because my feelings are obvious, but because the world is enamored with her, and she knows it. My adoration is a commonplace occurrence. I lie, hugging my pillow, and tell myself she will never again want to change for another person, only for herself and for her own reasons, and she will revel in the choices she makes for her happiness, the choices I can see her making now, and she will never feel alone or hurt or unhappy again and she will never feel insecure because she will be immune to that feeling no one is immune to of inadequacy and incompetence and failure. In the mornings when I wake up I know that this level of self confidence is probably unachievable, but even then I cling to the comfort of knowing that in this moment she does like herself, and knows how much I like her. I take my feelings and cast them into bullets inside my heart ready to protect her from anything, anyone that might ever try to take that away.

There’s probably something to be said here about my identity as a man, the way I see myself vs societal ideas about masculinity and obligation, etc etc, but also, I’ve always wanted to protect people. I came out as trans when I was young, before anyone I knew had, and it was hard. Some people think there’s a privileged environment associated with coming out early, and for some that’s true, but for me the only privilege I had was information. I didn’t come out because I was in a particularly accepting environment, but because I’m stubborn and impulsive and bad at keeping things inside and always have been. It was a battle I’ve learned to fight over and over and yes, it is comforting to see those struggles reflected back sometimes in various forms of trans media. I do need that catharsis. But because I was first, my experience isn’t the only one I’ve held inside my head and hands. It’s me and everyone else, everyone I knew who came afterwards. It isn’t that I love her more than all of them, it’s that she is the only one of those people who I’ve known would be safe as I was helping her. Her family is sometimes awkward, but they love her unconditionally and were familiar with trans stuff long before she started coming out. She’s the only one of us I know who has never had to explain anything or beg for respect, and it makes my heart ache worse to think of that being ripped away. I’m so used to loving people being synonymous with suffering alongside and for them, holding them up when nothing else is there, and sometimes having them do the same for me.

When she came into my life the second time, my father had already left it. The ex boyfriend who had abused me had left it. The friends who had made me feel worthless had left it. The pain of being intellectually disabled, suicidal, an isolated teenage trans kid with no resources and no autonomy had dissipated with time and healing work. By the time she came into my life again, my life looked like it was pretty good, and I wanted her to see that and believe she could have a good life also, because she can.

So, I used to look for trans music, novels, movies that reflected all the fucked up shit I feel inside, the bottom dysphoria I never got to process, the parts of myself I put out in the cold at night, and now half my brain is thinking about her instead when I look for these things, worried that the things I find to mirror my survival are introducing new concepts of pain into hers, telling her to feel bad about things she never would have thought of, telling her she’s destined to be hurt. Does that make sense?

I can still remember looking in the mirror pre-t, and then after a year on it with awkward scruff and a voice I couldn’t control and a body so many people seemed disgusted by and feeling disgusted with myself because I didn’t know any better, I didn’t know awkwardness was normal, I didn’t know there were people waiting to make me feel loved, I didn’t know I would love myself and that my transness would feel divine and beautiful no matter how awkward or sweaty it can be. I still know how it feels to wake up depressed every day and think ‘this is it for me. I am going to hurt and be hurt until I die, and that’s the way it is and that’s what I have been made for, to be looked away from.’ and have no one to tell me otherwise. If I could smooth all those sharp corners over for every trans person who runs into them, I would. I try to.

She loves math, and mechanics, and engineering facts. All this shit I could never wrap my head around when I was younger and still can’t now, and I want everything for her even though trying to do math in school made me cry until my whole body felt like a water balloon. I can listen to her talk about something I don’t understand and feel joy through her even though that lack of understanding is something I spent most of my developmental years hating myself for. That hatred doesn’t even come into my mind when she talks, I’m so preoccupied with her smile.

If something made her feel what I have felt, and she was alone with it, it would kill me. It would kill me if she was taught to hate herself more than she already has been. She has been one of the only loved ones in my life who has wanted my help without needing me to save her, and her success is bittersweet to me because I’m used to seeing the joy of people like us yanked viciously away.

In that pre-dream space inside my head I can tell her: I love you. I love you with all of my heart, with everything in me, with something greater than I can name. I love you because you are awkward, and we misunderstand each other, and you’ve always spoken to me directly from your feelings. I love you because you feel so safe to me, you are determined, you are fierce, you are easily annoyed, and you are loving and capable and interesting and fight when you are scared. I love you because you look at me like it’s a miracle when I give you food I’ve cooked, and I love you because you drink your tea black and kick off all the covers. You don’t need me but you make a point to tell me you want me around, and that means everything. I tell her: you are perfect, you are perfect, and I love you, and I would be happy to fold your clothes and listen to you talk about the things I used to hate forever, and I tell her her back is beautiful and in this twilight space it does not seem strange to her for me to say any of these things because she’s used to hearing them from so many people so many times that they are commonplace remarks to her so I tell her, you are the loveliest woman in the world, and she tells me she already knows that.

In real life, sitting next to her, I say “you are my best friend, and you are perfect”

I portion out my sentences so that she doesn’t see how much my affection resembles a mentos in a pepsi bottle.

And she says “Yeah yeah, you love me, good.”

and I repeat myself as much as I can without showing all my cards because I want her to see herself in the mirror when she’s alone and know that recognizing her beauty is a normal thing for people to do, that she is perfect and isn’t the only one who thinks so.

I’m writing this because I can’t read or write about anyone else without thinking about her, and I need to see everything she is loved on paper by someone, because I don’t trust people, and I don’t trust the world. I think we need to love each other out loud more, without making so many compromises. I think we need to make sure we can all take being loved for granted again.