Pageboy: A Memoir

by Elliot Page

My imagination was a lifeline. It was where I felt the most unrestrained, unselfconscious, real. Not a visualization, far more natural. Not a wishing, but an understanding. When I was present with myself, I knew, without exception. I saw with startling clarity then. I miss that.

My reliance on my imagination has carried me through life.

I often dreamed of being Aladdin. But it wasn’t for the rug, or the wishes, or the teeny monkey, but to know what it feels like to delicately touch a girl. A sparkle of romance.

I can still see it, her yelling at them, it was rare to feel protected.

I was under two when my parents divorced. They had been together for ten years, married for about eight of those, when my father first moved out into an apartment in downtown Halifax, where he lived until we moved to Spinnaker Drive when I was six. Mostly with my mother after the separation, I visited my father every other weekend or so. A thrilling vacation, the apartment building, directly across the street from the Halifax Harbour, had a pool … A POOL!

My dad, Dennis, was spending time with a woman named Linda, who would eventually become my stepmother. Linda and Dennis met when they worked in the same office. I think of my mother now, her husband leaving her for someone else. She was alone, taking care of the child and working full-time as a teacher. Then, I’d return all giddy and insensitive with stories about swimming, blabbering away about the new lady and her waterbed, no grasp of the hurt, the resentment. How that must have pierced her heart. “It takes two,” my mother says. “I had a role, too.” I’ve always found it strange that my mother and father had a baby. Me. Their relationship was already in trouble by the time I came along. I suppose gratitude is the course of action, but if I was not born, I’d have no perception of what I’d be missing, nor would anyone else miss me. This would suit me just fine. We are all micro specks, almost nothing in the grand scheme.

Though I’m not sure that my father would have done much had he been there. He was different when it was just the two of us versus when it was the whole family. “If Linda and you were drowning, I would save you,” he would say in private. “Linda is not the love of my life, you are the love of my life.” This was a secret. I knew it was one without him directly saying so, because around Linda the energy was not the same. We had a song, Ruth Brown’s “Ain’t Nobody’s Business.” Dennis would blare it, singing along, while driving me to school. Around Linda that “love” evaporated. A transformation in the tone, the body, the face. A coldness, as if they’d conspired and teamed up, a frigid demeanor that made my eyes fall to the floor. She could be mean to me around the others but was worse to me when we were alone. I’ve kept these stories close; it’s hard even to share fragments of them here. My father did nothing, no protection. I yearned for time with my father, away from Linda. “You’re manipulating your father,” she spat once. The words, searing and sharp, they singed, a flash fry leaving a mark. Linda did not like us spending time alone together, every time, without fail, it created friction. They married when I was ten in our living room in front of the fireplace. I wore a little dress and I sobbed. Linda hugged me as if I was crying tears of joy. As if she loved me. As if we loved each other. I wept more and more. I put on an act, just like I did in all those cards I wrote expr...

I could breathe, it seemed like that episode of Degrassi had ended.

I’ve watched adults slowly chip away at their children, their overprotection a form of neglect.

When we arrived at the hotel, all I could do was cradle myself in the hotel bed. No television, no looking at my phone, I just wrapped my arms around my body, time like sludge, barely budging. As I waited backstage I squeezed my hands together, eyes down, desperate to not have a panic attack. What if I just collapse onstage? I didn’t collapse. I managed to make it through the speech without being overcome by emotion, by the catharsis. I floated after, a lightness, a shock to the system. I did it. It wasn’t until I got in the car to head to the airport that I completely broke down. Sobs of relief. Letting it out. A weight lifted from my shoulders that I once believed would live there forever. One of the most important and healing moments in my life, not all the way there yet, but getting closer.

People danced to the Spring Breakers soundtrack, breaking it down to “Scary Monsters and Nice Sprites.”

It’s as if there is a need to trivialize such endeavors, unwilling to acknowledge experiences that are not their own, unwilling to listen. Throwing around power but refusing to admit they have any. I wasn’t able to stand up for myself then. I’d fold in, taking it, letting it rest inside.

Coming out in 2014 was more a necessity than a decision, but yes, it was one of the most crucial things I have ever done for myself. No matter what came after, a different kind of exposure, vulnerability, it was all worth it. All a step. I’d rather feel pain while living than hiding. My shoulders opened, my heart was bare, I could be in the world in ways that felt impossible before—holding hands. But deep down an emptiness lurked. That undertone. Its whisper still ripe and in my ear.

Loneliness had always been a staple for me, an inherent disconnect from my surroundings, a foundational dissociation. Lured away from my existence, I thought those around me wanted me to disappear—that I was preferred as an illusion.

Eleven was when I last felt present in my flesh, not suspended above, transient and frantic to return. It was a departure of sorts, a path to a false identity in a shell of a disguise, entering witness protection. He’d seen too much.

Sixteen was my soccer number. My favorite number. Only in adulthood have I realized its connection to the date I returned to my mother’s for the second half of every month.

No sorry. Never a sorry. No stop. Never an “Are you okay?” “I know,” I said, masking my sniffles, making the words sound like a smile. As I got older, I did not want to go to Dennis and Linda when I was in pain or afraid, any negative or disruptive emotion that veered from my usual “happy” self, a performance in its own. I would shove it back down. As I held my breath, it would leak into my stomach, finding a place to rest.

I cringed at the way people lit up when seeing me in feminine clothing, as if I had accomplished a miraculous feat.

I’m not precisely sure why my feelings emerged in that moment. I do know I trusted them, felt cared for and protected, I knew they’d never judge me. Kristen and Alia were people I could be myself around, or at least work toward it with. They supported my truth, helping me shovel out the bullshit that covered it, wanting me to feel free. But despite people’s desire to help, it would all take me so long. False ends and false starts, me fooling myself, justifying suppression and self-harm. Rewarded for lying and punished for sharing the secret.

We do not realize the extent of the energy we are losing until we find where it is seeping from. Invisible until it is not. A thought just out of reach. Only now do I understand just how much I was consumed, the degree to which my brain was taken by a desperate, insatiable need to control. A watchtower enforcing my own personal isolation.

I felt the quiet pain that comes with being in love, the risk of it all.

“I’m a girl,” I’d respond. Not precisely meaning it, but what else was there to say?

Okay, THIS time you will say something. THIS time you will stand up for yourself. “Please don’t say that.” “Why do you have to talk to me like that?” Practicing. Performing? But, of course, as soon as I got there I could never give my all. 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. Looking back, I had been exhausting all efforts to earn her love and to keep my father content. If my dad was not defending me, clearly I must be the problem, and maybe, if at long last, I managed to find a solution, well, perhaps then I would feel safe. I started barely going home.

I never would have had this life with her. I repeated his words to myself. This wonderful life. In that moment one thing was clear: He didn’t see it at all. He didn’t see me at all.

Now panic swept through me, but I couldn’t explain why, not even to myself. Looking back, I now know that even the thought of having to contradict his version of the truth sent me on a tailspin. Anxiety in the bones.

You blur the boundaries enough, you get lost in between. It was that moment I felt I would never hear what I yearned for, an understanding, or at least an explanation. Something. It would take me years to finally speak.

These words triggered a deep shame I’d held since I could remember. I was puzzled, too—invalidating my own experience. How was I in so much pain? Why did even slightly feminine clothing make me want to die? I’m an actor, there shouldn’t be a problem. How could I be such an ungrateful prick?

As actress and writer Jen Richards once put it: It’s exceedingly surreal to have transitioned ten years ago, find myself happier & healthier than ever, have better relationships with friends & family, be a better and more engaged citizen, and yes, even more productive … and to then see strangers pathologize that choice. My being trans almost never comes up. It’s a fact about my past that has relatively little bearing on my present, except that it made me more empathetic, more engaged in social justice. How does it hurt anyone else? What about my peace demands vitriol, violence, protections?

I’ve made a habit of requiring a hefty push to the edge, almost over, in order to finally address “feelings,” and not just that, but also to simply acknowledge there are any. But even in my lowest moments, a piece of me, ever so small, becomes clearer and clearer. An opening, fragile and elusive. Instantly, it comes flooding in. It’s fleeting. Seize it. A whisper that sits waiting. Close your eyes and step through.

Educational foreplay! Lifesaving foreplay!

This dynamic was familiar. Alone you thrive, secret and safe, but separate you feel invisible. It’s there and then it is gone, not even a second thought, but an afterthought. I was projecting this onto her, a pattern and a narrative that would take me time to shake—please love me.

“You remind me of my friends who only date married men.” I understand this more now. It is true, desperate for the serotonin bump and then wallowing in the pain of rejection. Ultimately abandoning myself in the process, evanesce, which perhaps is what we are looking for, safer to have love unfulfilled, to yearn for those unavailable.

My tendency was to fantasize, not look or respond to what was actually happening. I did not listen. And, to put it bluntly, I was codependent. Only now am I finally moving away from that. Better boundaries, less fearful, more openhearted. Stronger, with a burgeoning confidence I did not possess before. Reminders and lessons emerge from our most painful moments, ones I’m sure I will forget and have to remember again. But I would rather remember, I’d rather the hurt than not—at least I got to love you, at least I felt your love for me. Maggie Nelson: That this blue exists makes my life a remarkable one, just to have seen it. To have seen such beautiful things. To find oneself placed in their midst. Choiceless.

Nervous, I stumbled on my words. Looking down, I scrounged for a reason, wishing I didn’t need one as guilt clawed at me. “I just want to be in one place. I am tired of going back and forth. I’m always forgetting stuff.” Telling her the whole truth about how I felt in that house seemed impossible. An inexplicable fear pulsated within me, holding me back. I was too afraid to cause an upheaval that would never be restored.

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.

Not living with Emma did let some of my anxiety dissipate. A fixation and focus only for their feelings had been wearing me thin. I felt that Emma’s emotions always took precedence over mine. This, I am certain, was purposeful on my part. The avoidance, the running, the numbing, the disassociating—all of my nifty tactics at their best. Harmful for me and harmful for them. And ultimately, it had nothing to do with Emma.

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.

After Nikki left, I was alone in the woods again, which I love. I wasn’t sure if I could be someone who lived in a cabin by themselves in the middle of the forest for months, but turns out, I very much am and it may be necessary in order for me to get to the bottom of my own brain. I had to be isolated, I had to not be something to someone or someone to something. I’d exhausted myself, trying with all of me to figure out what was wrong, running from one place to the next, fooling myself into thinking I could find it. But the answer was in the silence, the answer would only come when I chose to listen.

And then something happened. You don’t have to feel this way. That voice. I don’t have to feel this way? That fucking voice. You don’t have to feel this way. I don’t have to feel this way. 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.

Sprawled out, bare, I crave gentleness.