Yes, You Are Trans Enough: My Transition from Self-Loathing to Self-Love

by Mia Violet

Trans people are often impeccable actors. When we’re closeted, we learn how we’re supposed to move and talk, the difference between the expectation of us and the reality. We then force ourselves to adopt an expected persona like a snug costume. Being the funny person is an easy part to play when you hate yourself, because it feels like your whole life is a joke written by somebody else. Some of the best laughs I got came from deadpan deliveries of the truth. Absurd self-deprecating punchlines are sometimes just a way to hide the fact you don’t know how to ask for help.

One reason the trans community can be so strong is that we fill in the gaps of absent friends and family, the people who bail on us when they can’t handle the revelation of how secretly queer we’ve been all this time. I’ll never really understand how some people can abandon lifelong friends, or even their own children and siblings, once they learn that these loved ones are actually trans; but I’ve seen it happen so many times, I’ve stopped being surprised.

Now I didn’t see the women around me with envy, or as dreadful reminders of the years of hardship that lay between me and them. Likewise, the men no longer reminded me that everybody saw me as no different to them, because they no longer did. Now I was simply another woman enjoying the night air and lost in my thoughts.