Operation **Reclaim** Loveland

Before I Knew I Was Trans by Protyus A. Gendher

Before I Knew I Was Trans

Before I knew I was trans
I sucked at being a girl
I sucked at learning all of the prescribed rules I was force-fed in this world.
I sucked at keeping my knees together wearing the skirt that they chose
I sucked at finding an identity to fit, in piles of hand-me-down clothes
I sucked at keeping the house clean, and keeping my brother happy
I sucked at getting the dishes done while the boys were playing games or napping
I sucked at fitting the expectations my mother had for me
About everything

I couldn’t make the label she gave repair the tear in my identity like a bandage all because I bleed
I couldn’t make the name that she gave steer toward a place that wasn’t vacant
I couldn’t make the hatred she had for herself, melt enough shame to make space for my face
I couldn’t fill the hole between us, couldn’t find a way to complete us
Failure stumbling over itself, trying harder to become less
Annoying persistence trying too hard, never settling in to rest
Projected lies internalized
Agonized
Muffled cries

Before I knew I was trans
I knew that I didn’t fit
I knew that I was “Other” with some layers on top of it I knew that each piece of me distanced my identity from the norm
I knew that my form could only leave me torn
I knew that I was rejected for never being enough
Even though I mimicked the motions of the sexy, the smart, and the tough
Going through their rites of to gain passage, I stepped right up
Let me check off the box that says I belong
Let me try on all of your discordant songs
Let me find a little corner in your definition of being
Where maybe I could hide all of my wrongness from your seeing
It’s standing outside yourself, never feeling in,
Inside your own skin
Because the crushing weight of expectations demolishes you again
It’s knowing you can’t win
Before you begin
It’s trying every day
Like it matters any way
Because you know that there’s this beauty when you put all of that away
Because you know you’re valid though no one else will say it
Even when it feels like it’s betrayal to believe it
Deceiving some external source of “me”

Nonbinary skin
Labels don’t stick
Defying adhesive cohesion
For others a home, but for you a lesion
Treated like a disease
To all you’ve displeased
By being hard to read
Just a person underneath
Suffocating
Waiting
Relentless hesitating

Self-acceptance is hollow, when there’s no place for you in this world
Because I sucked at being a girl
Because I was never meant to don pearls
And this is the only conversation I heard
In the binary between misogynists and terfs

Patterns of erasure
Patterns of displacement
Patterns of pleasure
Patterns of hatred
Cycling through patterns, till we fall through the cracks
Spiraling down regardless of facts
A cyclone removal of family and friends
Until I was lost enough, to find myself again
Until this neovocabulary caught up with me
Until my eldest, now in their teens
Asked, “are you sure you’re not an enby?”
One world that finally brought peace

What does it mean to be a medical Zebra?
Learn why I Dazzle!!