Pageboy: A Memoir

by Elliot Page

My short-haired self would be setting up the ball for kickoff but then be interrupted with: “Boys can’t play on this team.” “I’m a girl,” I’d respond. Not precisely meaning it, but what else was there to say?

Turns out, I preferred that embarrassment, the sensation that indeed I should not be on the team, an innate feeling the instant boys and girls could no longer compete as one, I’d rather that than what came next. My chest began to grow, leading to awkward conversations about training bras, forcing me to try to find those perfectly oversize concealing T-shirts; my posture began to fold, shoulders caving in. My confidence dwindled in conjunction with my self-disgust rising. And then my period came.

I could not detect myself. I didn’t transform into me—the me I knew I was—like the other boys did. I was desperate to wake up from this bad dream, my reflection making me increasingly ill. Closing my eyes I’d find the memories, the moments of euphoria, of witnessing myself, praying I’d find that again.

I’d enter the door, hellos projected up and down the stairwell, and before I had finished removing my sneakers—back pain, anxiety, gas in the gut, brick on the chest. The feeling so visceral, the glares of judgment. It hijacks your resolve, pulverizing it like the pecans for her crumble. A doll with its string pulled, auto-response on replay, not even real.

In that moment one thing was clear: He didn’t see it at all. He didn’t see me at all.

The thought of confronting him, setting any boundary at all, made me feel like I was going to shit blood.

I suppose my aversion to “coolness” and “popularity” related to the degree to which I was already masking myself, fully aware of it or not, and popularity is the ultimate mask. A mold too tight. I felt compressed enough.

There I was, framed like a poster, a mannequin in the window. I had value now. I needed to pull up my bootstraps, grow up, stop being difficult and selfish. Be a young lady, and make my mom proud.

“Now you just have to change the music you listen to,” suggested a friend on my soccer team in the car on the way to a game, her hair tied back in a tight ponytail. I liked Radiohead and Björk, “weird music.” I’d throw away myself, but not my songs.

The reaction to the girl I met in the mirror in an Old Navy in an industrial park on the outskirts of Richmond, Virginia, was what I’d wished for, but my response to that attention was not. It only heightened the sting, stretching and contaminating the wound, more of its grotesqueness on display.

I resent that we were cheated out of our love, that beautiful surge in the heart stolen from us. I am furious at the seeds planted without our consent, the voices and the actions that made our roads to the truth unnecessarily brutal.

Her visibility meant the world to me. I think about this as I walk through the world now.

I’m sorry who I am is repulsive. I’m trying. Can’t you see? I try to rid myself of my “queer walk,” the way my arms dangle and bend, how my hands move, that way I sit, “not ladylike,” as my father used to say. Soften the voice, be quiet. The screen can’t be full of my repugnant features. Those “boyish” ones, those “lesbian” ones. I know that. I’ve known that.

I could block myself out, I was a person I didn’t know, I’d gaze into what felt like the universe, my eye a planet of its own. I must be somewhere in there, I’d think.

Too many times those who were supposed to protect me did nothing, or if anything, only furthered my silence.

I’d always been told I was gay, made fun of for being a dyke. I felt more comfortable in environments with queer women, but inherently something in me knew that I was transgender. Something I had always known but didn’t have the words for, wouldn’t permit myself to embrace.

Imagine the most uncomfortable, mortifying thing you could wear. You squirm in your skin. It’s tight, you want to peel it from your body, tear it off, but you can’t. Day in and day out. And if people are to learn what is underneath, who you are without that pain, the shame would come flooding out, too much to hold. The voice was right, you deserve the humiliation. You are an abomination. You are too emotional. You’re not real.

It is not trans people who suffer from a sickness, but the society that fosters such hate.

At that point in my life, it didn’t really feel like a choice, there was no other option. I had to choose to engage as my authentic self, or die not trying.

This is your life. You don’t need to believe their stories. Those are their narratives. This is your career. Why are you agreeing with them? Trusting them? They aren’t the right ones. They, in fact, are wrong. You don’t believe them. This isn’t a dress rehearsal. This is your life.

Coming out was not easy, which is shocking to think now, but I suppose we (or I) forget the degree of change (and lack thereof) that has happened over the past decade.

No longer amid the cozy buzz of the bar, her energy shifted, she was frenetic, zooming from one topic to the next, pacing about. Only later was I like … oooh cocaine! I always forget about cocaine.

I can see now how moments like these—between me, my mom, my dad—silently paved the way for my future relationship dynamics. I would throw the feelings aside, worried I’d get in trouble for having them, remaining in situations a lot longer than I should have, hide my truth. Inevitably, this would always lead to more damage and more harm. Like the many ways in which I have been difficult for people—my abrupt shifts, shutting down mixed with the instinct to run, being dishonest because I felt so irrationally frightened. It is fruitful to dig through the muck.

She quickly wrote me a long letter, an apology, which was less of an apology and more of an explanation, outlining all of the reasons that caused her hostility. I was a kid. Reasons that ultimately had nothing to do with me.

But by the time I was thirty, my father’s means of control faltered. Suddenly, I could see through it, aghast I hadn’t before, shedding the reflex to throw my feelings aside, to make myself disappear.

Regardless of everything before, it’s painful to think that someone who parented you could support those who deny your very existence.

In a world where queerness all too often alienates us from blood, I am grateful to Julia, and the family I have chosen. Without them, I wouldn’t be here.

I used to interrogate my shadow as I made my way about the city. It lived on the sidewalk, flat and underfoot, a quiet moment between me and the sun. I saw a boy, it was a boy, his body, his walk, the profile with the ball cap. The spot on the ground felt more real than me and dodged my attempts to squash it.

Boundaries are important, and learning to not feel guilty about setting them is crucial. It took me long enough to learn that.

How do people do it? How do they shut off the noise? And I don’t mean “happy,” they may not be happy, but they seem to be able to exist at least.

People existed with a fluidity that I wished to possess. Motion entwined with the present and an engagement with life that I had lost a long time ago. I needed my routine, I needed specific food. Change or disruption threw me off, which was unacceptable due to my need for control. All I could do was cling. Every day I hung on tight, bound up. A blockage of sorts. I would need to drain the wound.

This was not miracle water that sprang out of nowhere. This was a long-ass journey. However, this moment was indeed that simple, as it should be—deciding to love yourself. There had been multiple forks in the road, and more than once I had taken the wrong path, or not, depends on how you look at it I guess. It is painful the unraveling, but it leads you to you. There it finally was, a portal. It was time to step through.

Even though I am extremely lucky, this narrative where trans people have to feel lucky for these crumbs—that we fought hard for, and still fight for—is perverse and manipulative. Here is the thing—I almost did not make it, the now I finally have I did not see, and all I knew was permanent emptiness, a mystery I would never solve. Incessant, without language, a depth of despair. Shameful, with all that I had—what dreams are made of. I did nothing but sink, dread blanketing me. I couldn’t see what was in front of me. I should not have to grovel with gratitude.

I’m changing, I’m growing, it’s all just beginning. Let me just exist with you, happier than ever.