I was Turning into a Boy.
A fact my brother and I would discuss often, and we were sure that it was happening sooner rather than later. My confidant was actually one of the reasons my transness was misunderstood for so long. My parents thought my gender tendencies were just a bit of sibling ideology.
They were not.
My clearest memories from childhood are moments of gender euphoria much before I had the vocabulary to know what it was. I remember one year around six years old my brother received a fake shaving kit for Christmas. He was excited by it, but I was ecstatic! We rushed into the bathroom that night to practice our inaugural shaves. My brother went first, lathering his face with the foamy goodness, then carefully taking the bladeless razor to his cheeks and removing the foam stripe by stripe like a squeegee on a car window. I watched in awe…trying to be patient for my turn. I finally found the razor in my hand, my brother grinning from ear to ear. Lathering the foam onto my face, I had tunnel vision like determination, this was important. I was focused, I was finally a boy… I was an adult…. heading off to work and I could not mess this up. I began to erase the foam from my soft skin with care and precision. After each swipe, I would place the razor under the tap to wash off the shaving cream, the ritual filling up some hole deep inside of me.
The years moved on and I began to covet my brother’s closet. It was my only access to boy’s clothes, I was not allowed to buy my clothes from the boy’s section of stores, no matter how often I was found gently and lovingly running my hands through the selection. Instead, I would find myself sneaking into my brother’s room while he was playing outside, or down in the basement. I would ease open the heavy, scratchy wooden drawers of his dresser as slowly and quietly as I could. Lifting each item of clothing with extreme care, I made sure to not leave any evidence that I was there. I would sneak out soccer t-shirts, long jean shorts, football hats, boxers. I would hide them in different areas of my room and wear them only when he could not see, longing for the day when I could have clothes like these all for myself and wear them wherever and whenever I wanted.
Every Halloween became an excuse to dress as I always dreamed. I would choose some male celebrity or character with the express purpose of dressing up in all-male clothes for one glorious day of the year. I felt unstoppable. I would continue this tradition up until the end of my undergraduate schooling when I felt too old to participate. Each year without fail, I would find myself buzzing with excitement, joy, and relief. The only damper on the night was knowing that it would come to an abrupt, painful end the next day and I would have to start playing dress-up again.
The thing about gender euphoria is it takes over the whole being. It becomes easier to breathe, easier to socialize, easier to be in one’s own body, something that I was usually trying to escape. Things that always feel heavy are replaced with a lightness that doesn’t seem possible. Everything becomes easier in those seconds, minutes, and hours. Embarrassment falls away, shoulder tension dissipates, life is worth living.
