The day and night cycle of coming out and finding self-acceptance as a transgender woman.
There is a joke between my parents and I, that any familial crisis must take place in the middle of the night. And so, at the start of the decade, I found myself gazing at the only light in the room. At a clock that refused to move past twelve. With a growing sense of terror snaking through my veins and locking my body up. Only to be released by a wave of panic that overcomes everything and purges my bloodstream of the poison gnawing away at my sense of self. This nightly ritual had become my normal. Each day would flit away to make room for the purging of a terror that festered and clawed at my mind. In those moments, it was as if nothing else was real. Locked in a dream state - the day forgotten. A line from the play ‘4.48 psychosis’ became my bedfellow: ‘the broken hermaphrodite who trusted hermself alone finds the room in reality teeming and begs never to wake from the nightmare’ (Kane 2001, 203), a state I knew well.
“ Each day would flit away to make room for the purging of a terror that festered and clawed at my mind.”
The only way to wake from this self-induced nightmare would be to confront it directly, to dig out the underlying rot. To understand why I was terrified to look at myself in the mirror, why my own name would make me uncomfortable, and why every mention of time passing would twist in my gut. To give you the cliff notes version, dear reader, I was horrified at the prospect of growing old in a body that was not mine.
“ I was horrified at the prospect of growing old in a body that was not mine.”
Over the years I have spoken to so many people about what part of being LGBTQ+ was hardest for them. Generally, the answer is coming out to parents or friends, or what sort of reception they may receive at work or school. For me, it was coming out to myself. Accepting that I am a trans girl. The part of the quote above (by the late playwright Sarah Kane) that really grabbed my attention and brought it back again and again was that the hermaphrodite begged for things to stay the same. It was very easy to stay in that dark room. But sooner or later something has to give and the night has to turn into day. My clock may have stopped at midnight every night, but eventually it would have to tick over. And with that tick of time comes change.
At the very least, I found a way out of the room. Away from that teeming terror snaking its way towards the heart. A break from this so called normal. It was something I had been doing since the age of fourteen. Focusing on getting through one day at a time, sometimes one hour at a time and during my worst moments, a minute or even a second at a time. Things aren’t completely solved, but at least for the first time since I can remember, I have the opportunity to not exist in the moment, and instead plan for what comes next.
Article written by Lyra Cooper
(She/Her)
Works Cited
Kane S. (2001). ‘4.48 Psychosis’. Sarah Kane: Complete Plays. (1st ed). London: Bloomsbury Methuen Drama. P 203.
Image Source: Vian (2014). 'The meeting of day and night in a mountain valley'. Commons Wikimedia. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:The_meeting_of_day_and_night_in_a_mountain_valley_-_photomontage.jpg [Accessed 18.09.2020]