Chapter 7: Imaging, Imagining

Before and After and After and After

- ---x-xXx-x--- -

It's her 3rd year of college. She's collecting buttons on a jacket. She's ghosting the Christian community. She's in her first relationship ever. She's a bundle of sense and nonsense, of strength and weakness. She's picking up the pieces.

Beneath the surface, she can feel a current. But it seems too convenient, she thinks, too presumptuous. Who could believe it? That a straight Christian man could just suddenly want to claim femininity. Who could see it as anything but crass attempt to appear beautifully tragic and downtrodden?

- --x-x-x-- -

She graduates college. She moves to Maine because she loves her giant enby baby, Alex. They have something very special, and also kind of terrible.

- --x-x-x-- -

She made a bunch of money off of a video game, so she's kind of on top of the world. But work is slow on the next game, and she doesn't know how depressed she is.

- --x-x-x-- -

In Maine, she breaks out in terrible eczema and psoriasis. Her torso and arms are riddled with rashes that leave cloudy brown scars. Her scalp is worse: it comes off in chunks and oozes pus. She doesn't leave the house much, doesn't really talk to anyone but her boo who's in grad school two hours away.

- --x-x-x-- -

Maybe it helps sometimes, to be in the middle of nowhere. On a trip to her partner's tiny coastal Maine hometown, she wears a real, dress-y dress for the first time. Heck, she'll never see any of these people again.

- --x-x-x-- -

She tries makeup for the first time, with her boo's help. She's worn some before, but only for theater. She thinks she looks a little strange. Not long after this, she comes out as nonbinary to her partner on a trip to their cousin's wedding.

- --x-x-x-- -

Soon after is Pride week 2014 in Portland, Maine. She really commits to some femme outfits.

Also she and boo get confused about where a picnic is so they have a picnic by themselves.

This week is the first time she's shaved her legs.

Makeup can be nice but sometimes it seems like it draws into stronger relief everything that is unfeminine about her face.

- --x-x-x-- -

She gets to meet a certain precious frontwoman. She doesn't love how she looks in this photo, but also she does. She's really happy, okay? Dysphoria can kiss her ass.

- --x-x-x-- -

Life goes on. Alex moves in with her. She may have been woefully underprepared for her sexual awakening and the formation of a stable adult identity, but this... this is what she knows. Crafting a simple life, working hard to make things better for her beloved. Cooking, cleaning, being a comfort and a companion. A plain, domestic darling.

- --x-x-x-- -

Another summer rolls around (2015), with everything that entails.

Pride week...

Visiting college friends (who, coincidentally, are all also in the process of becoming gayer than any of us had imagined)...

A wedding...

Also doesn't she look fucking good in this cap? She's always thought girl-cap was a good look.

- --x-x-x-- -

She's finished her 6th laser hair reduction session on her face. It hasn't worked quite as well as she'd like.

She's ready for a turning point y'all. She's gonna make it happen. She's simultaneously working on starting hormones and planning a Stevonnie costume for Halloween. She orders striking red glasses, which bring a newfound drama and intentionality to her face. She's not sure about them at first, but they grow on her extremely quickly.

She unleashes Stevonnie upon the world. She wishes she could look more feminine, but it's okay that she doesn't. That's the power of Stevonnie, after all.

She enjoys the fancy hair aftermath.

- --x-x-x-- -

She starts hormones. She takes photos of her face from a bunch of different angles, imagining that she will do this periodically to chart her progress, but she only lasts a few months. The project feels too dependent on the idea that there's some sort of true, scientific image of her face that she might see gradually changing from masculine to feminine.

October 2015

April 2018

She's not entirely wrong, and she'll be happy to have these photos down the line. But a photograph is just a photograph. It doesn't feel emotionally worthwhile to spend too much energy tracking some sort of "objective" physical change when transitioning goes so much deeper than that. Over time, she will internalize many small things about motion, presentation, speech, that will slowly shift the way she comes across to people. And at the same time, the way she herself interprets masculinity and femininity will fundamentally alter and expand, as she comes to know and love more and more of her trans siblings.

- --x-x-x-- -

She starts to actually feel cute in photos (she's felt cute before, but photos had historically disabused her of that notion).

At Pride 2016, she notes how differently makeup seems to sit on her face these days, how little she feels like an interloper in the realm of femininity.

- --x-x-x-- -

She feels on the verge of another turning point.

Her hair is getting so long, she got a trim in 2014, but otherwise hasn't cut it since 2012.

She needs a change.

The night after her haircut she posts this photo to secret twitter:

Her friend, silver, reaches out. Sitting in a bus shelter, twitter DMing with silver, she starts to piece together some difficult things about her relationship with Alex.

She begins the long and gradual process of breaking up with her best friend. The one person she's shared her life with for the past few years. The one who helped her learn the ropes of femininity. The one who shared all of her inside jokes and secret languages. The one into whom she had poured her care, and everything good about herself, with complete abandon, every day of her life.

- --x-x-x-- -

She finally releases the game she's been working on the whole time she's lived in Maine (and wears a themed outfit).

- --x-x-x-- -

She visits her grandpa with her mom. He doesn't remember much any more. "You're my grandpa!" she says each time he wakes up.

Her mom keeps misgendering and even deadnaming her on this trip. It's not always like this, but her mom tends to go back and forth about a lot of stuff and right now has it stuck in her head that God wants her to misgender her child, that it's somehow condescending not to.

She gets really mad at her mom, and rips into that nonsense rather eloquently, she feels.

Her mom comes back after some time in prayer and says that God's okay with her using the correct pronouns now. Thanks, God.

Throughout this trip, Grandpa has been an unexpected ally, reading her as a girl more consistently and sincerely than probably anyone else in her entire life. Her mom suggests that Grandpa draw her, and he responds, chuckling, "I can't draw pretty girls!"

- --x-x-x-- -

She needs to start supplementing her game income and gets a job at Burger in January of 2017. It's not a good work environment, but she gets along with everyone and is well-liked. She has something of an Aliph-Mayor Biggs relationship with her bosses (This is a reference, of course, to the well known video game Even the Ocean). She's often on the drive-thru headset and customers will compliment her voice, glasses, etc.

- --x-x-x-- -

After 6 months of Burger, she takes a vacation to visit Peru with her siblings. Her brother-in-law is from Peru. It is beautiful and special, and they eat lots of good food. She gets misgendered frequently by her siblings, which she honestly wasn't expecting.

This hot springs in Peru might actually be the first time she swam as an out trans person

The Cusco Flag makes her feel strangely welcome

For all its ups and downs, the trip gives her a new perspective on her life. Spending so much time casually surrounded by her siblings, having adventures, and enjoying life, she realizes how truly isolated and trapped she has felt in Maine. She hadn't wanted to think of herself as "too good" for hard, thankless work, but she realizes these concerns are beside the point.

Landing back in Portland, she allows herself to feel discontented with her job, to feel sad and afraid of going back to her empty, lonely life.

Portland Internation Jetport

- --x-x-x-- -

Days after she returns from Peru, a friend from college tweets about needing a housemate in Minneapolis. She's always thought fondly of this friend, and can hardly think of a better opportunity. But could she really pull off a cross-country move on such short notice?

"Probably won't happen... but I'm curious re: your apartment!! What is it like and what's the rent?" she DMs to her friend.

On her last night in her apartment (the first place she's lived after moving out of her parents' house), she just bathes in her feelings.

She's honestly loving this.

She's so sad, but she knows what she feels, she knows what she needs. She's charting a path through life by being inside of it, by touching and tasting it, not by peering over it from above. She feels, deep down, that she would rather have existed now, in this world, in this life, in this body, than to have not existed at all.

She knows there's so much more to come.