Cracks - How I Figured out I was a Trans Woman
Would you believe that no AI was used in the creation of this image??
CW: internalized transphobia, fatphobia, homophobia, dysphoria, bullying, emotional abuse, and grooming
Among the trans community, there is a term that refers to the moment when you realize you are transgender as “your egg cracking”. For some of us there are splinters that appear in our eggshells, slowly spreading across the surface as we incubate, but not quite cracking open. Most of us don’t even know that we’re in an eggshell at all, until we’re blinded by the light of the outside world.
My egg cracked open before I was ready and I duct taped that shit shut, REAL FAST.
For context, I grew up in rural New Zealand (the tiny country in the southern hemisphere that is often forgotten on maps or confused as part of Australia), where mental health is never spoken about, toxic masculinity is rife, where queerness is celebrated on a single road in one of 3 major towns and just tolerated everywhere else. I had been told I was gay my entire school life by bullies, despite never showing interest in men. But I wasn’t masculine, therefore I must have been ‘a poofter’.
I borrowed sex education books from the library to try to understand myself more, I didn’t really find the answers I was looking for. I tried dating a couple of guys to see whether or not I was gay, and had awful experiences every time. I threw myself into dating, telling myself that if I managed to sleep with enough women, then maybe I could be ‘man enough’. But I also wanted to be a gentleman so I never bragged about my sexual exploits. I was trying to prove myself to be a “nice guy, but not like that, actually nice because I’ve experienced how shit men can be so I’m putting all my energy into being a great boyfriend… wait where are you going??”.
I was trying to perform a gender role that was harshly policed but never explained. A game that you would get ridiculed for admitting you didn’t understand the rules.
I didn’t have a relationship with my parents where I could ask emotional questions, so I turned to my gay elders at the theatre and got groomed by two different older men, received no actual help, and only got more confused about everything.
The evidence kept telling me that I wasn’t gay - so why did I feel queer? I tried on pan-sexual as a label for a while but that didn’t feel quite right either because no matter what, I was still not attracted to men.
The path that this confusion wove throughout my life was chaotic and destructive. I became an alcoholic, got hooked on drugs, got married and divorced. I gained a LOT of weight from my alcoholism - it felt like I was trying to drown my sorrows but I was literally adding them to the weight I was carrying around.
I was an angry, depressed, fat, alcoholic, bearded man. I tried my best to emulate the male role models I supposedly had, and it only made me want to die.
So the reason I mention my weight is because my mother hated the fact I was fat. She had urged me to try diet pills multiple times but I never caved in because my drinking and weight gain was a slow, socially ‘acceptable’ suicide. I didn’t have a future, so I didn’t care about my health. That changed when I met Hannah, I actually wanted to live.
So the next time my mother mentioned diet pills that had been advertised to the nurses at her clinic, I decided that I would take her up on it. Maybe if I was smaller, she would love me more. Maybe I would love myself more.
I started taking the diet pills and let me tell you, it was BAD. I became erratic, intolerant, tense and snappy. My emotional state was completely upended and thrown around the room like a ragdoll. I was irritable with Hannah, but I was even worse with myself. Self hatred hit an all time high, I remember staring at myself in the mirror and thinking “no-one will ever truly love you, you fat fucking ugly blob of a man”.
“Even if these diet pills work, you’ll still just be an ugly man, why can’t I become a skinny woman instead?”
Crack.
Once that thought appeared, I became even more of an erratic mess. I badly explained what I was feeling to Hannah, I started looking into what being transgender meant, I started reading up on all the surgeries, the hair removal, the hormones, I learned about dysphoria and realized I was completely enveloped in it.
I was so overwhelmed with all of this information and manically obsessed with it, Hannah and I had a really good discussion about how it seemed like I was leaping to a big conclusion while essentially in a drug-addled state, and we both agreed I should stop taking the diet pills after the 2nd week or so.
Once I got off of the pills, my emotional state settled down again and I found myself building the convenient narrative of “wow, those diet pills caused dysphoria, I guess I’m not trans after all”.
Problem solved!
The compromise I made with myself was that I would experiment with my gender and allow myself to be more free in my gender expression, maybe I was non-binary? That would explain the “I’m not a man” feelings, right?
Essentially that boiled down to me adopting they/them pronouns and that was about all I allowed myself. I still had a lot of internalized shame about wanting to be more feminine, the times I had tried wearing women’s clothes before were the times when I was playing a character on stage, who were all drag queen style performances. They never made me think “Oh I could be a woman” because the whole joke was that I was clearly a man pretending to be a woman, how funny.
I didn’t allow myself to try more feminine clothes, I couldn’t admit to myself that I loved wearing Hannah’s bralette during the ‘diet pill dysphoria episode’. I couldn’t try makeup, I couldn’t even really allow myself to shave because my beard had been a mask to hide behind for so long. I remember trying to shave once and I had a dysphoric meltdown about how I had a ‘weak chin’ and I looked like a “soft, weak, fat dude” - like I was failing to perform any gender correctly.
Finding this relatable? Currently in the middle of your own egg cracking or gender questioning? Get in touch and let’s work it out together! You don’t have to do this alone.
I was so worried about losing the social status I had managed to eke out by pretending to be a man in a rural town, working in a trade, driving around heavy equipment. The role that had been made for me and I tried so hard to contort myself to fit. It had become comfortable and I didn’t want to lose that comfort. I didn’t want to become a pariah in my small town (with all of the 10 people I interacted with, I guess?).
So I did what anybody would do, I cut off my family and moved to the other side of the world. Y’know, the usual.
My younger sibling had come out as genderfluid before I figured anything out for myself, and our parents’ refusal to use they/them pronouns or to affirm their gender AT ALL, sent the message through the eggshell: “you are not safe to come out to these people”.
So I didn’t. I left.
That was before I knew I was trans, when I thought I was non-binary; I knew there was zero chance of getting them to see me. If they couldn’t adapt for my small, androgynous sibling, what hope did I have?
But I was also done with living my life for other people and their expectations. I was done living in the rut that was carved out for me and I was pushed down into. I didn’t want to be a kiwi male who suppressed his feelings with alcohol until he inevitably died alone after pushing everyone away.
Fuck. that.
Flash forward a couple of years, Hannah and I are established in Washington and we go to our friends’ wedding in Virginia. It was supremely gay, the bride was trans, the ‘groom’ was non-binary, they both looked like princesses. They had so many queer friends who were all so cool and confident in their identities. I barely felt brave enough to correct people on my pronouns. I struggled to try on makeup before we left for the wedding. I stood around feeling awkward wearing purple lipstick and a shirt covered in pride flags, because I didn’t really know which one was mine. Hannah captured this moment of dysphoria and longing that I didn’t even consciously have words for yet:
Oh honey, the answer is right there on your shoulder
The cracks from the wedding were irreparable and hard to hide. I was running low on eggshell AND duct tape.
When I went through my first bout of dysphoria, I’d joined a lot of trans support subreddits and mysteriously never unsubscribed from them. I convinced myself I just wanted to understand my friend’s experience better or to be a better ally. What I didn’t realize was I had been chipping away at my shell behind my own back. I was reading constantly about the trans experience and never admitting to myself that I was yearning to feel it myself. I convinced myself I just had a fetish for trans women, that’s all. That’s normal! That’s excusable! Everybody has that!
Denial is a powerful, reality-altering drug.
Until one day, I sat and read the Gender Dysphoria Bible, a resource that was often shared for questioning folks but I had avoided clicking on out of fear. Fear of confirmation of what I suspected but didn’t want to admit to myself. Fear of the repercussions and fallout.
I was reading about how gender dysphoria feels and it hit me like a tonne of bricks - I had not only felt dysphoria during the diet pill weeks, but actually my entire life leading up to that point and afterwards.
I was 32 when I realized I was a woman.
CR-CR-CRACK!!
It is not uncommon for trans people to only realize they are trans later in life. There’s no shame to that, it doesn’t make you any less valid, and it is never too late.
Want some help making sense of it all? That’s why I started Kiwifruit Coaching!
Contact me and let’s figure out who you are, together
I have another article in the works for y’all called “How not to come out to your wife as transgender” that will explain what happened next in my personal story. For this article, I thought it would be more helpful for anyone else whose egg is cracking to share what I now look back on and realize were signs I was trans all along:
Social dysphoria: no matter how well I emulated men’s behavior, I never really felt like I belonged among them. It always felt like I was an impostor that they would figure out and evict. I always had stronger friendships with women, I remember I had a meltdown when I was told I couldn’t be in the girls tent at school camp because I was terrified of what the boys would do at night. I was sent to an all boys high school, I remember wishing that SOMEHOW I could go to the girls school instead.
Self Hatred: I hated the fact I was me, I didn’t want to be a big hairy guy or become an old man. I didn’t want to exist as this person in the world. I didn’t want to have to excuse my existence to women who I desperately wanted sisterhood with. To have to prove to them and myself that I wasn’t a predator lying in wait. When asked why I hated myself, I couldn’t provide a concrete reason why, just that it was seemingly constant and endless. Thankfully I was wrong, there was an end to it.
Effeminate traits and behavior: well repressed over time, my self-policing became so bad I wouldn’t allow myself to smile, even if I was alone. When I was in my 20s I changed how I walked to be more manly, I hunched forward to hide my man boobs. I tried my hardest to be a Kiwi Bloke instead - hard working, hard playing, hard drinking, no feelings. I was terrified that people would figure “it” out or I’d give myself away - I never really knew what exactly “it” was, just that it would certainly end in my social banishment. My whole life I have wanted to give out compliments freely but felt trapped by my gender, feeling like even if I phrased the compliment perfectly, I would still be seen as a predatory creep. So I stayed silent, dimmed my light, didn’t spread the joy I wanted to.
Day-dreaming: this was a huge one. Apparently cis men don’t daydream about being a bad-ass woman with an incredible wardrobe like Ms. Frizzle, or what you would do in a body/gender swap comedy. I also daydreamed during intimate moments of what I wish my partner would do - not realizing I was actually fantasizing about what I wanted to do if I was in their position instead. Admiring outfits and imagining how I’d accessorize them differently. I found it impossible to daydream too far into the future because I couldn’t ever see myself as an old man, I figured I would die young before that happened. I’d sooner dream of how I would live if a witch magically ‘cursed’ me to be a woman.
Physical dysphoria: Never really loved my genitals, often daydreamed about if I had a vagina instead. I wanted to be soft and pretty, not hard and rugged. The softest part about me was my man boobs, which cause such confusing feelings. I didn’t hate them but I was ashamed of them. They never felt right. They wouldn’t give me cleavage. My beard was a mask and a prison, it was hiding my ‘weak’ chin and making me seem more manly so I would be seen as acceptable - yet I didn’t love it beyond that. My body felt wrong so I tried to hide it, wearing baggy clothes and way too many layers even in summer.
My name: My dead name never felt right in my mouth, it always felt like I was introducing someone else and I was mispronouncing their name. “I guess that’s me” was the internal response when it was called. I HATED being called “Mr.” or “sir”.
Strong ‘Ally-ship’: I had a confusing relationship with my sexuality, I thought I was bi and then later also non-binary; but trans people really intrigued me. I only met my first trans people (that I know of) when I visited the US in 2017 and their existence and bravery blew my mind. “Wow, I wish I could be that brave” as my friend walked around Columbus, Ohio in a skirt. I remember getting a haircut, the barber made a transphobic comment about a trans woman who walked past the store. I reported it to management because “what if I had been trans? I’d find that really offensive”, standing up for my ‘’’’’’’hypothetical’’’’’’’ trans self.
Choosing a femme character in a game: Surprisingly I didn’t allow myself this joy until Mass Effect, where the excuse was “well I need to see how it’s different from playing the male version”. Even after playing through the Mass Effect trilogy as FemShep, I would only rarely allow myself to create a femme character for fear that someone would burst into my room and accuse me of being a pervert or tell me they’ve figured out there’s something wrong with me. Now that I’m thinking about it, I’m shocked to admit that Fortnite was the game that ‘allowed’ me to play with femme skins. Penny was the first time I had seen a curvier woman actually playable in a video game, I loved playing as her - but only because her stats were really good! No other reason!! I played that game as I experimented with my gender and the plethora of different gendered skins offered a safe, ‘excusable’, playground. Aloy from Horizon: Zero Dawn was another character I adored playing as. My favorite Uncharted game is Lost Legacy, the one where you could play as 2 bad-ass female main characters. When Hannah and I played It Takes Two, I secretly wanted to play the wife, not the stupid husband.
This is a non-exhaustive list and there are MANY feelings I find impossible to put into words. I hope sharing all this has helped make sense for someone out there. I’m going to keep sharing my experiences about my journey in articles here as inspired by the blog that helped me, Stained Glass Woman (highly recommended for further reading). If you want a ‘test’ to figure it out, try Turn Me Into A Girl! (there’s Also Turn Me Into A Boy or Non-binary Person as well).
If your egg is cracking right now, please remember to breathe and try not to panic. Your world isn’t ending, it’s just drastically changing. If you allow yourself to emerge, I promise it is a journey well worth taking, despite the challenges.
Only you can know yourself, however if you were reading this article and hoping I would tell you that you are trans… I think I just did.
Welcome to the beginning of your beautiful, true self. I’m so glad you’re here 💜
