I just wish I was seen
Jun. 12th, 2017 12:47 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
threeplusfireSometimes, I don't know what to do about how I will never pass. It hurts. I still haven't figured out what to say when the grocery store cashier or a waiter calls me m'am. I want to say "Uh, no." But I also don't want to make some minimum wage employee feel shitty, or have some weird conversation. It feels awful and overwhelming to just assert my basic sense of self.
At my last job, I asserted my male identity from the start. Even being introduced as a guy, I still had coworkers who would routinely fuck up and call me she. It's one thing for people who have known me a long time struggling to switch pronouns. It's another when people who are explicitly introduced to me as a man still refer to me as a woman.
I'm envious and sad. It reminds me of years ago, watching an episode of Queer Eye with my roommate. The guy was a young trans guy, and they took him out to buy clothes and all the usual nice stuff they did on that show. I remember going back to my bedroom and sobbing as quietly as possible, because that would never be me. I was still in the closet. Even now, out and effectively transitioned with the legal change, the hormones, the chest surgery - I still don't feel like I belong. I can not shave for weeks, and still get called m'am. No one is going to whisk me away to give me some magical makeover that will change things. I will just always be this person I am. I've been out for seven years, and so very little seems to have changed despite the thousands of dollars I've spent on it.
Nothing helps. I feel weirdly disconnected. The narrative of knowing, deep and intrinsically, that I was a boy is an old fashioned one. It doesn't sell well in this era. I'm happy for people who have more complex identities to get their voice. I don't want to begrudge anyone that. Like pretty much everything else, I am forever late to the party. It might be easier if I could be the sort of person who felt inbetween genders, and not be bothered so much by what people say to me. I'm not, though.
At my last job, I asserted my male identity from the start. Even being introduced as a guy, I still had coworkers who would routinely fuck up and call me she. It's one thing for people who have known me a long time struggling to switch pronouns. It's another when people who are explicitly introduced to me as a man still refer to me as a woman.
I'm envious and sad. It reminds me of years ago, watching an episode of Queer Eye with my roommate. The guy was a young trans guy, and they took him out to buy clothes and all the usual nice stuff they did on that show. I remember going back to my bedroom and sobbing as quietly as possible, because that would never be me. I was still in the closet. Even now, out and effectively transitioned with the legal change, the hormones, the chest surgery - I still don't feel like I belong. I can not shave for weeks, and still get called m'am. No one is going to whisk me away to give me some magical makeover that will change things. I will just always be this person I am. I've been out for seven years, and so very little seems to have changed despite the thousands of dollars I've spent on it.
Nothing helps. I feel weirdly disconnected. The narrative of knowing, deep and intrinsically, that I was a boy is an old fashioned one. It doesn't sell well in this era. I'm happy for people who have more complex identities to get their voice. I don't want to begrudge anyone that. Like pretty much everything else, I am forever late to the party. It might be easier if I could be the sort of person who felt inbetween genders, and not be bothered so much by what people say to me. I'm not, though.