Who I am Not!

“I was in the middle of trying to learn to love myself—including my body, and yet I was suicidal every single day. It was much easier and more intuitive for me to know who I decidedly wasn’t than for me to know who I actually may be. Everything I do affected by the demons of my unknowable mind. I was always lost. Never knowing who I am, never knowing what would make life feel even a tiny bit less awful. If I was asked to point to the things I wanted changed, I couldn’t have. On paper, I had a fairly good Ilife. A good life I could never learn to love. A beautiful body, a gorgeous body that felt alien.”

My journey of self-discovery started with the process of elimination. It was much easier and more intuitive for me to know who I decidedly wasn’t than for me to know who I actually may be. I was in the middle of trying to learn to love myself—including my body, and yet I was suicidal every single day. I hadn’t acted on those impulses in a couple of years but they were there, always looming behind me; everything I do affected by the demons of my unknowable mind. I was always lost. Never knowing who I am, never knowing what would make life feel even a tiny bit less awful. Everything seemed fine. If I was asked to point to the things I wanted changed, I couldn’t have. On paper, I had a fairly good Ilife. A good life I could never learn to love. A beautiful body, a gorgeous body that felt alien. A lot of things felt just…wrong. I didn’t know what I meant when I said things were wrong. Nothing felt right and I had no clue why or how to amend that. I had nebulous ideas of who I was supposed to be but not a single clue as to who I would be without those expectations.

At the time I had a friend who was a trans woman. One day she was complaining about how masculinity is awful, how nothing good ever came of manhood, how men were everything that is wrong with the world. I was arguing. I was fiery, I was passionate; at some level, I was personally offended. Mid sentence, I suddenly sat down. I said “I need some time to myself”. I ended the call.

What was that? WHO was that? I don’t argue with people about experiences that are deeply traumatizing and emotionally driven. Clearly this woman who had been forced for decades into manhood and masculinity had a lot of trauma around it. So why was I fighting her on it? I may not know who I am but I know who I am not. I am not combative. I am not argumentative. I am not prone to anger. So why was this making me so bent out of shape? Why was I so angry at her insistence that masculinity is bad?

The only times I argue with people about experiences that are deeply emotional to them is if the issue is also deeply emotional to me. I had no experience being a man or even being a masculine woman. I had no basis off of which to understand manhood and masculinity on the same level as she understood those things. By all accounts, my ideas about manhood and masculinity were uninformed and could simply be discarded when faced with the ideas and opinions of someone who has been through these things. So, why then, was I arguing like my life depended on it?

I sat down with myself, one piece of my identity finally revealing itself to me. I had no experience with manhood and masculinity, but I had plenty with womanhood and femininity. And I knew for a fact these were things about myself that I was trying so hard, yet unsuccessfully, to learn to love. Perhaps my problem with the conversation was not the demonization of manhood and masculinity. Maybe what I really couldn’t stand hearing was all the stuff about how amazing womanhood and femininity were. Maybe what I couldn’t handle was the glorification of experiences I deeply hated in my heart of hearts.

As I looked out my window, afternoon turned into evening, and dusk turned into darkness and I was still sat there thinking. “What if I’m not a woman?” I sat and looked back at my entire life through this newfound lens. So many experiences that had never made sense were suddenly falling into place. The time when I was 17 and went to the ER because “if I try to walk home I’ll try to walk in front of a vehicle and I don’t want to be the reason someone goes to jail”. That day I had refused to speak with my voice. I had been communicating by typing on my phone. The nurses had asked if I need a sign language interpreter. I had said “no, I can speak. My voice just makes me want to die even more.” As I had said it, I had known it was true, but for the entire three years since I had been trying to find an answer as to why my voice made me want to die that day. A 17-year-old boy being suicidal about a voice that hasn’t changed is hardly unheard of. This was something a boy would rightly be upset about, but a girl would not have cared.

All the times as a small child when I would try to climb and run and play with my cousins, even though I have always been very clumsy; and then I would be so bitterly sad when I couldn’t be better at those things than my brothers. Maybe I wanted to prove I can be as good at being a boy as the other boys were. Maybe I wanted to say “look, world. I am a boy, too! And I am good at being a boy! Can I please be a boy now?” That competitiveness was out of character for me. I was a cooperative child. I did not like competing. I liked collaborating. Yet when it came to things that I perceived as “things boys do”, I always got so competitive. Things like that that I used to do that were so out of character for me were easily explained, if I just had been a boy the whole time.

More and more memories came back. More and more things made sense that never had before. But…one problem. I did not feel even remotely like a man. Through those several hours I spent in thought I only came to one conclusion: no matter who I may be, womanhood is not a part of that person. I sat there immersed in thought for about five hours and came out the other side still with no clue who I am, but fully convinced of one more thing I am not. I am not a woman.

I am not combative. I am not easily angered. I am not competitive. I am not a woman.