Halfway to Passing is both a Blessing and a Curse

Time spent wishing I was either, is time lost

Often I sit on the edge of my thoughts peering into the depth required to catalogue all such manners of meaning. We hold ourselves to aggrandizing methods of knowing each other to grasp onto the fact that there are billions of us skittering about on this planet, absent and already a stranger to lives unknown. I’d like to think the many people I pass on a random day carry history in their choices made to express, how that striped jumper speaks to a long attachment to nostalgic cosiness, how the painted nails call upon a moment discovering a type of creativity that would last a lifetime. We bejewel ourselves with tokens of years gone by to signal our footprints on this earth, and it is why self-expression is so important to hold and protect as a commonsense part of human existence.

It is also why I ache with joyous pain at the messiness of trans and queer selfhood. a claim to our own canvas without bordered lines to meet, a way to pass by others and signal our own experiences of not inhabiting the many tick boxes we are told to appreciate. There is an almost haunting modality to the way we suddenly claim our right to aesthetics, and fashion, and interests desperate to surface. We dig up lost lives and time unoccupied by passion to warp our sense of attachment to what is shaped by defining language. abstracted by our own lives balancing on the periphery of normal to queer, often presented with such binary choices where one is in favour of the other sinking us deeper into fluid obscurity too blended in a world of primary colours. There is a meaning in our difference that is often met with implicit social rules, but I would gladly hold onto the thorns of marginalisation if it means seeing myself bleed is proof to the transformational creativity of queer madness.

I remember the crudeness to corrective language throughout my childhood, those wielding words in the manner of disciplinarians telling me what my choices were going to mean when others perceive me. “dont wear skinny jeans, everyone will think you’re gay”, “cut your hair, you’re giving others the wrong impression”, up until the point where i was 16 and in a typical argument found in most suburban houses my dad could muster up nothing but “you look like a fucking girl” to deliver some parental judgement on my behavioural condition of simply being. i was aware of my indifference to things those around me spent what seemed like lifetime’s worth of energy trying to contain, and if it wasn’t their sullen adult tone that uttered these lines, it resorted to quiet discomfort or sly remarks on my apparent queerness to how things should be. to them, I brandished androgyny and an escape from dysphoria as a tool capable of dismantling culture, what was just a means to my own happiness now needing conflict to sustain its monstrous image in the eyes of cisnormativity. i learned, too early, that being queer was to live a life that held both the wailing terror of bigotry and peaceful quiet of slow self-actualisation to not scare them into hurting you.

with the unfortunate way implicit biases towards cisgender values evolves itself into the public light as outright transphobia and violence, having a backlog of voices from familial relationships signposting the many ways i ‘failed’ as my supposed biological sex meant a lot of gendered divides seemed completely farcical. passing as anything became more of an open menu to performing ‘myself’ than the neat polarisation of girls and boys. I allowed myself to occupy that space reserved for those labelled young and explorative, unknowingly leading me into the swampy waters of further questioning from ‘concerned’ parents and strangers stumbling at the first word. It didn’t matter how desperate I was to find the seeds of my own growth if it meant stifling the image of ordinary, removing the language of familial love, distancing myself to avoid confrontations to how wrong my choices were. to tell my history was to abandon a care that saw queer transformation as “the issues you have”. a refusal to witness my artistry, in the hope of my failed passing.

it is what existing becomes, people unsure of your choices. wanting to guess at a history someone else gave you than the one you created for yourself. not being treated as if i had control over my own expression was maddening, as if i remained a child and needed to be told what direction to travel in so that their worldview could remain unharmed. We are tethered to the happiness of others, my transness both transgressive and transformative to anyone I come into contact with.

To be queer is to endure scrutiny for the sake of our own supposed good, because we are not just strangers on the street you can glimpse into the life of. We are childhood warnings, immature adults, words tripping up between she, he, and they. Because if left unrevised, past the look of “concern”, we become happiness, and love found beyond the crushing walls of passing as cisgender.

We are hope. We are a future.