Hiding In Plain Sight

October 10, 2016:

Morning wraps her cold fingers around me, yanking me free from the tethers of the sea of nightmares. I attempt to shake away the last droplets of discomfort and fear, but they seem to seep into my skin before they can be shed. They find their way into my heart and brain, taking seed.

How to eradicate such unwelcome feelings when they have already rooted themselves?

Sweet music, soft distraction. I send it through the airwaves. Surely, we can reset this morning.

Yet that nagging pain lingers, a shot of negativity remains. Not more than a drop, yet diluted into the bloodstream, it travels far.

Help me.

I wrote that months ago, yet this morning as I wake up, it still rings true. I can wake up with the negativity or it can come crashing through the windshield of my life in the form of a pebble-shaped wrong pronoun at work. I try hard not to let the little things ruin my day, to distract myself and get through it. It's easier said than done.

The longer I'm on hormones, and the more I do to dress and style myself how I feel more comfortable (or at least attempt to), the more the divide within myself grows. The character of "Samantha" that I have spent years on is starting to crumble apart. As I tick away at all the bad habits I built up because I felt I had to be a certain way, I can't help but feel like I'm losing my grip.

Far too much of my life has been forcing myself to be someone I'm not. It got it into my head somewhere along the way that I had to be like the "other girls." I'm not the more common trans story (at least out of what I've found hearing about or reading others' stories). My entire childhood wasn't "I'm a boy. I should be a boy." I know I knew it, and I can remember dreams and thoughts that are proof that I knew it young.  Somewhere along the way (I haven't found that point yet), I realized that because of my outward appearance, I was supposed to make myself be a girl. Because of this, a lot of dysphoria I experienced I classified as not being confident enough. Let me try to explain. It's story time.

April 2013. I was living with my grandparents in La Cañada at the time. My sister came to visit for Easter. As we were getting ready for brunch, I completely lost it. I had this lovely dress and had done my hair all fancy, but it all felt so wrong. I looked at my sister. She wasn't dressed any fancier than me but there was something different. She seemed more comfortable, at ease. If she wasn't confident in how she looked, you couldn't tell. (Actually I've compared myself to my sister a lot through my life and have always come up with these same feelings). I, on the other hand, felt terribly off. I came close to crying. (May have actually cried. I seem to cry at everything). I think I changed my outfit several times before forcing myself back into the original one. I tried to explain to her what was going on. That I didn't know what was happening just that I didn't feel right. She was kind but didn't understand. She just kept telling me I looked great and didn't need to worry. This same thing had been happening to me for years, even on the smaller scale of getting dressed every morning, only I didn't know how to explain it. I thought I was being ridiculous.

It wasn't long after that instance in April that I got into fitness and eating healthy. It was true that I was out of shape and eating a lot of shit. I had just started dating this girl I was really into and I wanted to look good for both her and myself. The mental shit regarding my body only got worse in the next coming months.

Living with my grandparents (and working for my grandma), I felt a constant unspoken pressure to look nice. My grandma is an interior designer. You can't work for an interior designer in Pasadena and get away with wearing jeans and t-shirts, especially when you get to go on adventures with that designer to her clients' houses or to her vendors. Add the fact that I was dating a girl more on the butch side so my brain said, "Well you already dress more feminine, so keep going." Not that I hadn't forced this shit onto myself before. I can remember being back in high school and specifically asking my little sister not to let me out of the house if I hadn't tried to do something more with my outfit than a t-shirt and jeans (in case you were wondering, this didn't work). I thought I wanted to have this hippie, goddess style. I admired it so much. (Yeah, because that was what I was attracted to, I just didn't realize that part). I thought my discomfort in those outfits was just because I felt self conscious dressing more loud than my usual style. I ignored the fact that I was far more comfortable in my normal style. But it wasn't just comfort, that's what I didn't get. I felt right. I felt more like Sam when I dressed that way. Even if it was "frumpy" for a girl. (Note: I realize girls can dress any way they want to. This stereotypical "girls gotta dress this way" shit is not the only reason I have come to knowing I'm trans. It's just what's been on my mind and what I've gotta vent about right now).

Fast forward to October 2013 when the relationship fell apart. This is where I lost it. My grandparents never liked the girl, so it wasn't like I had anyone to talk to about it. (I'm terrible at making friends and in the 2 years I lived with my grandparents I had an impossible time meeting people my age). I had taken my diet to good points by this time, but with the breakup I moved into unhealthy territory. By February 2014, I was down to 107lbs, still losing weight, and still incredibly dissatisfied with myself. It didn't matter how good I looked. I still wasn't happy. I decided to do something different with my hair. I thought about cutting it off, was too scared, and went with dying it auburn (which would eventually become bright red). I was deep in a land of self deception. I was constantly telling myself that I had to keep dressing nice, had to keep working on my style until I could feel comfortable in it (while I continued to ignore how I was comfortable). Everyone would always compliment me. I would put on a smile, but why did it feel so fake? Why didn't I like the compliments? Didn't I want them? That's why I dressed that way, right? That's why I dyed my hair that way… right?

By April 2014, I was moving back to Mammoth. That didn't mean my pain was going to get any better. In fact, for a couple more years, it was only going to get worse.

Each time I start a new job, I hit myself harder with the appearance shit. I don't know what I'm expected to dress like, so I default to the way I learned to dress working for my grandma. My first job back in Mammoth was answering the phones for Adventure in Camping, and that default only lasted for a day. I was around a whole bunch of guys and there were no expectations to dress extra nice. I ignored makeup, and wore lots of jeans, t-shirts, and flannel. I was in bliss in that aspect, but it was only a summer job. Hertz was kind in the fact that I had a uniform so I didn't have to obsess over that. The only thing I did was start to wear makeup again. I was around people in general more. I got one glimpse of how tired I looked without makeup on one day and thought, "Oh no. Now I have to go back to that makeup shit." I never had to. It was a lie. Just another one to pile on top of the ever-growing jenga pile of lies that has been my life.

I could handle the abuse at Hertz for just shy of a year before I switched again, this time to where I'm at now. Of course the fresh start meant I slipped right back into those nice but not satisfying style choices. I was so uncomfortable. Sometimes I would try to wear a low cut shirt (I had a couple) that wasn't even that low cut, but I would feel like my boobs were just hanging out. Skinny jeans would feel tight and make me feel exposed. Everything had to look right. Everything had to look nice. I still felt wrong.

I slowly started changing back to my comfortable style, especially when I had been working at MBE long enough to know it was ok to be more casual. By the end of the nightmare that was Merchant of Venice, I was done with that girly style for good. After I had realized how much pain that play was causing, I swore to myself that it would literally be Samantha's last hurrah, that she would live one last time for the play then the character could just die. No more forcing myself to wear makeup. No more bras. No more low cut shirts. No more long, red hair. No more skirts. I started feeling better right away.

Before I go on, I want to say that I hate that this sounds like it's all about appearance. It's not. This is deeper than than. Fuck, this morning I had a hard time feeling right in my clothes and I'm wearing jeans, a pullover, and I even have my binder on so my chest looks practically nonexistent. Also, my hair is finally super short. You'd think this would stop that awful feeling. I always hope it will. Alas, dysphoria is fickle and plays by its own rules. I can dress how I feel comfortable and still struggle. Its slowly getting better, but now I'm starting to backslide on my own progress. You see, part of the problem is, even if I can start on a good note and get to work feeling pretty good in my own skin, other people don't see what I see in myself, what I feel. They still see me as this other person that I'm trying to get rid of, and it's my fault this problem even exists. I feel like all that people see is this character I've created, and I'm not saying people never have seen my personality but what they've seen is an extremely guarded and carefully filtered version of myself, tailored to whoever I happen to be around.

It's frustrating and maddening. How could I have worked against myself so long? How can I continue to work against myself? Each time I answer the phone as "Samantha," each time I smile and nod at being referred to as a girl, each day I don't just open up about myself and explain my need to correct these things, I'm making life harder on myself. I mean, just yesterday I answered the phone at work and the guy on the other end goes, "I work with a Samantha, except she goes by Sam." Yeah I prefer Sam too, Dude. I just suck at saying what I prefer. I think they even asked me when I first started working here but after my last job where I had no choice, I guess I was too used to it? (Even though I hated it…?) Don't ask me where this crazy logic comes from.

I can't live in fear anymore. This great divide between the person I really am and the person I've made people to think I am is only going to grow wider. I'm only hurting myself more each new time I try to slip into Samantha's skin. I'm done with this. Part of writing this blog is to give me courage, courage to be completely myself. No filters. Raw Sam. So many decisions I have made in my life have been in fear - fear of what others will think primarily. I'm constantly upset with myself over this. Would I have figured this about myself sooner had I not been such a prisoner to fear?

Ever since I admitted to myself I'm trans, I've been constantly analyzing myself, trying to figure out how I could have missed it. I never missed it. I was hiding it from myself. (It's right fucking there in the notes for one of my later books in the series I'm working on. This isn't the only writing I've found clues in either). How screwed is that? I knew something was wrong, at one point I even knew exactly what it was, and I kept it from myself. I'm telling you, I have early memories of being maybe one or two and knowing I was a boy, then they stop. I remember thinking back on those memories like, "That must have been a dream. How could I have been a boy?" I literally convinced myself they were dreams and pushed them away.

It seems I was as good at hiding the truth from myself as I now seem to be at hiding it from others. I don't know why I'm such a glutton for torture. I'm the only one stopping me from moving forward. So this is me putting it out to the Universe, asking for whoever is reading this to help keep me accountable. I made the first big step back in October to come out in my personal life. It's been long enough. I have to come out at the place I spend most of my life. I need to talk to my bosses.

It's time to put an end to this hiding in plain sight, once and for all.