Not something I had really thought about until today but I was responding to a question on Twitter about what the online trans community means to me and I had this realisation of how lonely it can be if you are trans.
I am not out except to one close friend and ally, and I have only had them for about three years. Prior to that I had no one to whom I could share my thoughts and feelings.
The life of a closeted trans person is lonely because of the secrecy.
When I first started to realise that I was looking at girls to imagine what it was like to be them, there was no way I could tell anyone that. At my school in the eighties that would be to invite more bullying. And who would understand anyway even if I could talk about it? When I first started experimenting with wearing my mother’s clothes in secret I had to hide, not risk being seen, cover my tracks. I was finding out about how I felt when dressing and what I liked, but I had to keep this to myself.
When I felt ashamed and worried about whether I was gay or perverted for wanting to wear women’s clothing I couldn’t talk to anyone about my fears.
I spent my teens wishing I was a girl and fantasising about how I would feel. I didn’t even know that trans was a thing. There was no internet, it wasn’t part of popular culture or even talked about. We knew about transvestites but they were seen as tragic or ridiculous. If I was one of those I had to hide it and again, couldn’t talk to anyone about how I felt.
As a young adult I could at least get some clothes and experiment in private. The looks people gave me in shops when I was looking at dresses or underwear were enough to convince me that I was doing something perceived as wrong and I was strange or weird. This stigma reinforced the need for secrecy and hiding who I was. I could clearly never go out in public as Nicola if I was shamed for just looking at dresses. And still I had no one that I could talk to because I had to be secretive about my shameful life.
Anything else I could talk to my friends, family or girlfriend (a rare occurrence) about but the fear was that if I did them they would reject me as a shameful embarrassment. Secrecy creates loneliness.
And it was not as though I could chat to other trans people and learn about their experiences and find friends who understood. I never knew any, they were presumably all hidden deep in their own closets thinking they were the only person in the world who felt like they did.
I eventually married but have kept that part of myself secret. So even in my closest relationship I am not completely me and am lonely and unable to share myself or receive support from her. How bad is that? And because I fear that if I do come out she will reject me, I have to remain secretive and choose loneliness.
For all of the problems that social media creates the one positive for me has been finding a community of people like me that I can talk to, listen to and learn from.
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