Passing

Bloganuary – Day 1 – What is something you want to achieve this year?

You know, the funny thing is I already achieved this year’s goal! In this year, I will walk deeper in to it, and achieve fuller self-actualization with my gender transition.

Last year, I examined the many ways in which I had continued to say Yes, in agreement with other people’s version of me, other people’s @$&%. It was all lovely while she lasted but she was also an agreement I kept signing myself on to because I didn’t want to make people uncomfortable.

I had always been so stupidly shy and retreating and the truth is I’m not a shy person. I’m an introvert, yes, but I’m not shy, and it’s because I just didn’t want anyone to see ‘her’, to have to dress ‘her’ and send ‘her’ out into the world as the professional, the teacher, the coach, the healer, the mentor, the friend. I believed the narrative that who I am is something I should hide..tuck away, and be ashamed of.

I’ve always been a level-headed person so this has been, by far, the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do. It challenges the societal laws of sanity, only because in the ‘civilized’ world, we have all agreed that gender is visible and fixed. There is not a single day in my life that this idea hasn’t reminded me to be quiet. Don’t tell them. “This is not who I am.”

This was compounded by the fact that many other things about me are also perceived as feminine – sensitive, a creative, a writer, a nurturer..

I am a trans man. 

I’ve been medically and surgically transitioning from female to male for the last 2 years, and mentally, for the last 7 years. This year, I step into it fully, in a societal sense.

It’s been gradual. I clung to ‘they’ or ‘non-binary’ for a bit because it was a safe place, and from there I told myself that when I ‘look’ like ‘he’ then I’ll say it..but don’t you see? This is the very binary agreement that I speak about. You want me to say it when I look like it. You (the collective ‘you’) want that so strongly that the energy in the air makes me want it too. 

I had a friend tell me once that the harder you push something down is the harder it fights to come back up. True.

In 2023, I step fully into my self, into ‘he’.

~ Jan the Man ~ He/Him/His