trans-and-unwilling

[trans-and-unwilling]

Falling in love with you was so easy. It started with your dry sense of humor, your easy smile, playing minecract in US History while staring at the back of your head. Long unruly curls in the sloppiest ponytail because you didn't know how to braid yet, I'd teach you in time.

Then it was your kindness, openly laughing in the hallways with the weird kids, being the only "straight" member of gsa. Surrounded by misfits and oddball queer kids wearing cat ears, you were everyone's favorite. I bet you never knew it, but in having a conversation with you, you had an uncanny way of making someone feel seen.

Then it was falling in love with your opinions on everything. Thursdays were movie nights, watching whatever we decided on, alternating who got to pick and having a running heated commentary during every film. You had thoughts and opinions on everything except when it came to making a decision on what food to eat, then it was "I don't care, you pick."

I also, despite my best efforts, fell in love with how absolutely, uniquely, unbelievably dense you were. God it was excruciating how oblivious you were to my advances. I flirted for months. I taught you how to braid your hair. I used you as a footrest and personal heater whenever I had the chance, using the excuse that I was always cold to press up against you or bury my cold little toes under your thighs. I stole your hoodies. I sent you bikini pictures and nudes and you still didn't catch on. You saw my tits before we ever started dating.

I thought my friends were going to drive to Ohio to beat some sense into you themselves because of how often I was texting them "I don't know how to make it more obvious that I like him! This is getting ridiculous."

And then, on the 25th of September, 2020 in the lamest way possible, I decided to ask you out with a handmade kandi bracelet. When I gave it to you, after having held onto it waiting for the right time for a WEEK, you went "thanks, that's cool" and put it on top of your dresser. I, a vibrating ball of anxiety asked, half hysterical "Did you read it??!" You said "No, was I supposed to?" and I about screamed, "yes!!??" And after an agonising silence you agreed and I flopped on top of you and let out the most long-suffering sigh before hitting you with a pillow, "I'd been trying to do that all week and you didn't even read it until prompted! Hopeless."

After that it was easy, everything with you was easy. I think I can count on one hand the number of fights we had and still have fingers leftover. You made me feel safe, I was allowed to be annoying and insecure and unashamedly autistic and you took it all with grace and understanding.

College was hard, the two hour distance was hard and our schedules never matched up but we made time. Hours of replaying Borderlands 3 and hundreds of games of Overwatch it was always the highlight of my week. I sent you probably thousands of tiktoks. Once you were out of the dorms I even made an effort to drive to you for a weekend every now and then.

It started as a joke with my friends but like a lot of things in my life it stopped being a joke somewhere along the way. I told myself "I'm gonna marry that boy." Every time you did something that made me sigh in exasperation I thought to myself "I'm gonna marry that boy."

But that fateful day in late June I had an epiphany that as soon as it struck I knew my mantra wouldn't come to fruition. The universe holds some vendetta against me and my happiness. Because as soon as I realised that I was a boy, I knew it was over.

Because there was only one thing that could change about me that would take that future away, and all it was, all I couldn't be was a boy.

But, like I said, the universe finds joy in my ironic misery and made me one anyways.

So despite my protests and reservations, I won't marry that boy.

It's 6 days from what would've been our four year anniversary and all I can say is,

it was so easy to fall in love with you, trying to stop loving you is probably the hardest thing I've ever tried to do, it's like choosing to let go of a life raft in a raging sea.

[trans-and-unwilling]

Realising I was trans has been quite possibly the worst thing. In a lot of ways it feels like it's ruined my life.

I realised I was a transboy this summer, after getting a haircut inspired by a fictional character, two days before going on a three week long road trip across the US.

The haircut was so affirming for me, it was the first time I looked in the mirror and saw myself. 21 years of seeing a stranger every time I saw my reflection, finally seeing me in the mirror was groundbreaking. But seeing myself in the mirror and playing with my new haircut for hours also gave me a revelation of biblical proportions that I knew was going to cause countless problems for me.

See I was in a relationship with someone who's sexuality was "everyone except boys". He could never see himself saying he had a boyfriend or be able to view a partner as a man. I was (am) so unbelievably in love with him, I regularly joked with my friends that I was gonna marry that boy. I spent two years being best friends with him before wrangling him into a relationship. It wasn't perfect but was about as close to it as two teenagers could get. We rarely fought and if we did it was resolved before either of us could go to bed because I hated going to sleep mad at someone. We were long distance once we started college, he was two hours away from me but we made time to talk or play video games together and even if we got busy and hadn't talked in a week I knew as soon as one of us gave the other a ring it would be as if no time had passed. He was home wrapped up in 6'2" of scrawny sarcasm and 3ft long hair. Disregarding everything romantic about our relationship, being around him was comfort and ease personified. We could sit in a room and do our own thing for hours, barely exchanging two sentences. I could comfortably be annoying and ask stupid questions or make dumb jokes without fearing that I was being genuinely bothersome. We talked about life after college, moving in together and for the first time after years of being passively suicidal and believing a future wasn't guaranteed or even likely for me, I saw a future that was not only clear, but that I actually wanted to work for.

But I knew as soon as that realisation struck me down like lightning that my relationship was doomed. The future that I was finally in focus and not so far out of reach was gone in an instant. Because this was his one hard rule, he wasn't attracted to guys, full stop.

I sat on my revelation for nine days, waiting until we reached colorado springs before I had to spill. It started as a trickle, just telling him I had something important to tell him when I was coming down to see him next, after my trip. But after I started to drip drip drip the barest threads of what I had to share it was like a crack in a dam. I couldn't hold it in, I never was any good at keeping secrets from him. I spilled everything, spent two hours on the phone telling him everything, every fear, hesitation, anxiety, and gory detail. I spent a lot of that conversation crying and shaking because I was so worried he was gonna break up with me then and there. The fear of rejection was so severe I couldn't begin to look at my phone let alone the camera. He told me he wouldn't make a decision until I was back home, that he'd talk to his best friend and our mutual best friend, get some advice and talk it over before coming to any conclusion.

But I knew, I didn't want to believe it but I knew as soon as the words "I think I'm a boy" came out of my mouth in the barest of whispers that the final nail in the coffin holding my dreams for the future, my heart, and that hypothetical wedding band.

Three weeks later I drove myself to cincinnati feeling like I was driving to my own execution, I may as well have been.

I spent two days of that weekend spending time with him, going to a midnight showing of rocky horror but I knew this boy like the back of my hand. I knew when I was being held at arms length. I knew that as much as I didn't want it to be the case, that our relationship would be over before I drove myself home.

Come monday morning, when I rolled over and looked at him I knew the time had come. "You ready to have that conversation?" he asked. "Let me take a piss before we do," I mumbled before going in the bathroom to stare holes in the wall of the shower and glare at my reflection for 45 minutes. Before I dragged myself out of the bathroom I looked in the mirror, seeing myself staring back and all I could think was "I wish I'd never seen you."

After sitting in silence, 8 inches apart on a bed feeling like a vast black ocean, he said "I can't see any way we can go forward without breaking up." and as much as I told myself I wouldn't cry immediately out the gate, I did one of those choking, shuddering, sobs. Because my world was falling apart and I was the one that ruined it.

We talked, for hours, I cried endlessly. It was the worst kind of break up, the love wasn't lost, there was no betrayal, no epic screaming fallout, just a quiet breaking where neither of us did anything nefarious but something changed and we didn't fit together anymore. And it was agonising I knew and I know that if only I didn't have the misfortune of being a boy I would still have him.

We talked it out and then I ran, I regret it more than I have words to quantify. Maybe if I had stayed things wouldn't feel so daunting now. But I left and now I don't know how to talk to him. We were friends first, he was my best friend before anything else and now I don't even know how to talk to him.

I don't know where the line is, I don't know how to start the conversation because I know I'll ruin it.

I have gained nothing, in coming out. I have lost everything, my relationship, my future, my safe space, my happiness, my safety. Anything that felt sure or stable is gone and all I know now is that being a boy has brought me nothing joyful, nothing pleasant, just complex terrible anger and feeling as if I have been not only unmoored from the dock, but placed in the middle of a raging storm where the shores are nowhere to be seen.

[trans-and-unwilling]

I'm planning on using this blog to process my feelings about being trans.

It'll probably be mean and ugly for a while so bear with me. I just need somewhere to scream before these feelings eat me alive.

I'm gonna pin this as an intro/warning post I guess so here's the bare minimum of who I am.

My name is TJ, though that's still very new and literally one person in my life calls me that.

He/They, transboy because associating my identity with being a man makes my skin crawl.

I'm in the american midwest.

I'm 21, I've known I was queer in some capacity since I was 13, I identified as nonbinary from ages 15-20, so the being mostly binary trans thing is extremely new.

I have two cats, I'm in college majoring in art, and I thought my favourite color was yellow but that doesn't feel right anymore either.