Red pill or Blue pill…

It was 8 months ago yesterday that I took that first pill that marked the first step of a medical transition. It was 7 months ago yesterday that I added the second pill to the mix. Both those moments were seminal moments of life. I can’t help but be reminded of Morpheus and Neo and the Red and Blue pill scene. A scene that can with hindsight be read back into given the Wachowskis own transitions. But thoughts of that are for another time I guess.

Prior to that day 8 months ago, and of course the many months of processing and questioning immediately before it. The conversations with others, the therapy sessions, the realisations and so forth, life was just, in a very real way just somehow wrong. It was a wrongness that is not easily described but it is a wrongness nevertheless.

After a month of T blocking tablets I was to take my first little blue pill that contained that almost magical substance Oestrogen. It marked the end of a journey marked in many ways by futility and failure and the beginning of a new journey, a new fork, a major deviation into a new time, a new way. A way that was not marked by that sense of futility and failure but with hope and possibility.

To say it’s been somewhat of a wild ride is somewhat of an understatment, and to pretend it has been 100% positive experience also would be nothing short of a lie, but more of that in a moment.

Vividly, I recall sitting on the couch the day after taking that first little blue pill, and just after taking the second, sitting, with a sense of calm, a sense of rightness, a sense of balance; a sense of something I can’t describe as anything but a discovery of the feeling of what it was to be the me I was meant to be. I still can’t describe it any better now, than then, but I have had so many conversations over the months with other trans people who describe very similar experiences. Indeed, in that moment of feeling I posted on social media, in a safe group I was in, that somehow everything felt right with the world in a way it never had, I couldn’t describe it but that’s how it was. I was overwhelmed with affirmations of others.

Of course, life is very good at throwing us curve balls, and very soon everything was to change. My marriage would be over, my relationship with my children forever changed, my place in the home essentially removed. As much as my then partner is a supportive and good person, when it has come to me being trans, it has been a huge struggle for her. I respect that she has found this difficult, I really do, however, her actions in some cases have been extremely difficult and painful for me to deal with.

There were moments over the last months that it has been like living two sides of a single coin. On the one side has been the joy, the wonder, the growth of transition, of being allowed to be the real me and discover so much more of who the real me was. On the other has been living in a state of poverty, of experiencing great emotional pain in the loss of my home, the loss of any sense of financial security, the loss of extended family.

Really, it’s been quite the experience of joy and pain co-existing together in what I think is quite a remarkable way.

In the midst of this though, brilliant, wonderful and amazing things have happened. I have discovered new friends, I have been able to experiment and discover things about myself that I had kept so hidden and pushed down so deep that they had been for so many years finding their way out of me in bouts of anger and rage, leaving me living life in a demeanour that was nothing short of ugly.

There’s no question, transition, well, it’s bloody hard. Every relationship comes under revaluation, you become an Olympic champion in the sport of looking over your shoulder to evaluate whether those whispers were about you or not. Going out in public is often an act of defiance. Those are just the realities. All of that happening in the midst of your body changing your emotional world becoming different than it ever has been as your hormonal system finds a balance it has never had.

As an autistic trans woman, I had pretty much given up on the idea of work and career. The statistics, the way society was, seemed to be telling me to forget about it. I had pretty much told myself, just be happy that you can be you, just be happy that you can write, be happy that you can be involved in some advocacy and support stuff. Be happy and satisfied with that.

I was in fact wrong. Three weeks ago I began a new career in a corporate organisation. It still seems somewhat surreal and that I need to pinch myself to assure myself it’s not just a dream. But, it isn’t a dream. And the thing is, it would never have happened, it could never have happened if it had not have been for that moment of decision to begin the process of medical transition.

Without the results of that, I would never have been able to be the positive force I was in being involved in some key projects run by a research organisation.

Without that I would never have been able to be in a place where I could calmly stand before a roomful of corporate executives and make a call to action about employment for autistic people.

Without any of that I would simply not have been able to be in the place of employment I am in today.

Transition is a journey of ups and downs and lefts and rights. It involves joys and sorrows, losses and gains. It is unpredictable in the extreme, you will never predict how many will stand with you as true friends and allies, and who will turn out to not stand with you.

I’m drawn back to that moment, two little pills, taking a month to come together and really begin to do the work they were meant to. I am drawn to that moment, a catalyst moment of change.

Choosing to take those pills, making the choice to begin medical transition, was to akin to being Neo in The Matrix and taking the pill that would enable the beginning of discovery of just how deep the rabbit hole goes.