Transness: Mixing Fire and Water

I was raised with the idea that man and woman, femininity and masculinity, were not to mingle. A man with feminine traits or a woman with masculine traits were broken. Like fire and water, I was and still am told they are meant to be separate.

You are either fire or water. This is how it has to be. Where I am from people get killed over this.

As I grew older and experienced puberty as a deeply closeted trans person I knew something was off. I was afraid. To mix fire and water is unnatural, they exist together but apart.

Right?

My body and spirit became a fighting ground where I desperately tried to put the fire out. I put myself through mental hell for a decade of my life as a child out of the fear of my transness. I had no vocabulary for how I was feeling, not in Arabic or in English. The only words I knew were Arabic slurs. They cut deep, deeper than I would have liked to admit at the time. I didn’t want to be burnt by the fire everyone was telling me I shouldn’t have had in the first place.

But it got hotter.

And hotter.

And bigger.

And bigger.

Until one day I could no longer ignore it.

Only when I accepted it did it feel like the fire calmed. The acceptance was begrudging, but it was enough. The smoke from that constant battle cleared and I was finally able to see. It was like the water had calmed the fire, the fire was calming the water. These two things, masculinity and femininity were working together in me. I began to realize something as time went on.

How can there be water without fire?

How can there be masculine without feminine?

I am more than this “one or another ” game. Something so simple as realizing this helped the fire grow. I looked at my mother, water, and saw fire. I looked at my grandfather, fire, and saw water. Everywhere I looked, at everyone I looked at, I could see it. The most masculine men are afraid of water, the most feminine women are afraid of fire. My mother was distraught when we had to cut her hair

“I look like a man!”

She most certainly did not. But it greatly affected her, she didn’t want to be associated with anything masculine. The more I saw these things, the more I saw how unhappy people out of their own omission by sticking themselves into these boxes. Fire or water. Not fire and water. But why not? The world never operates in true binaries, why do we try to force it to be so.

As I continued along this journey, I was finally embracing my masculinity that I had been so afraid of. This time was different from the last, this time the fire was growing calmly, the water keeping it in check. It was no longer manifesting in panic attacks, nightmares, erratic behaviour, dissociation, and a constant state of fear.

My fire is no longer my weakness, it is my strength.

I hope that whoever reads this, trans or not, learns to be at peace with being both fire and water. Whether you identify with one more than the other, you should love all of who you are. Have one less thing to be afraid of.