National Coming out day 2024

So, it’s national coming out day today, and conveniently, the this photo showed up in my Facebook memories.

Zoë cooking in her kitchen, 2016

It’s national coming out day. Might as well bask in what to me is the mild cringe of this pre-hormones person as I tell my story.

If you’ve been around me for the long haul, you’ll know that I’ve come out, redefined, and reexplained myself many times over the years.

The exact moment when it was clear that I was something other than a straight boy is probably lost to the sands of time, but I will submit that somehow, the tween in the polaroid thought that was a way to pose to a photo or something:

Zoë in front of her childhood house with her dog Alice, circa 1992

I honestly have a very fuzzy memory of a lot of my life before I got to college, and even a lot before 30 is echoes of memories.

I did come out as bi in my very early 20s, started going to gay bars. I had an intensely bad experience (read about it here: https://zoe-is-wish.com/2023/05/22/the-trans-rubicon/ , but I’m not writing a trigger warning post here), which kind of put me off of dating men for the most part. Still kind of wore that part of my identity on my sleeve for most of my 20s, to the annoyance of many people around me. For a lot of this time, it felt safer. It was a way to set myself apart, and it was also a way to safely explore who I was. It also let me kind of realize that I did not engage with relationships, dating, or life the way that cis-het men did (and loudly talking about mlm attraction certainly scared off the worse of those men). From the experience above, and just in general, I pretty quickly realized that I did not especially fit in with the gay male world, either, but I just kind of chalked that up to there being so few bi men in my world, and being in the middle just made me different than everyone.

But whose approval was I REALLY in need of? bi women, it turns out, and certainly that identity helped with that. Over this time period, I slipped into pretty bad alcoholism, nearly constantly danced with various self harm instincts, and desperately sought out any sort of approval tokens I could find. Over this time period, gender stuff kind of came to the fore, very very slowly. I didn’t know what a trans person was, and everything I did know came from intensely transphobic sources like TERF feminism (I read a lot of stuff while in recovery), and the super toxic media portrayals from the 90s like Jerry Springer, Ace Ventura, and the Crying Game. I certainly couldn’t see myself in any of those portrayals. So, I’d say I was “mildly trans”. By the time I was 29 or so, I was willing to call myself genderqueer, and later “nonbinary”. Here’s the oldest photo I can find of myself in “not-boy-mode”:

Zoë at her then-girlfriend’s house, 2009

As my thirties progressed, the exploration continued. I did out myself to my parents as bi and nonbinary in this period, to kind of disastrous effect, in a way that kind of forced me back into the egg harder. Relationships were fraught during this period, as I did not know how to set boundaries for myself, and there was a lot of chaos as I figured it out. I did start dating my wife during this period, and being nonbinary went from a sort of private thing to a very out there and aggressive part of my identity.

As the 20s became my 30s, the alcoholism did not subside, though, and it started to catch up to me, after numerous cutback attempts failed. There came a point where it became clear that I could either continue to drink or I could have a life. I chose the latter, and quit cold turkey in 2016. I was happier, I was more able to be aware of myself…. and I suddenly found myself much much more dysphoric. By this time I had several real actual trans people in my life for quite a while. I still kind of refused to see myself in them, but the clarity of sobriety, combined with just… time made all of it catch up to me.

By the time the pandemic isolation hit, three things happened. The first was external. My bestie made some knitted falsies for me, and playing around with corsets and falsies in my house gave me the most intense sense of dissociation I’ve ever felt. The idea of looking like that in the mirror and having dead not-me flesh there made my body revolt.

The second thing that happened was I just started self-reflecting. I started reading about hormones. I started looking at before and after transition photos. And I asked myself: do I want to die in a boy’s body? And I could feel the intense revulsion in me bubble up.

The third thing that happened was that the pandemic isolation sent me to discord, and to trans discords in particular. I saw how much the above story was… almost common. The inaccessibly different from me trans women I longed to be started to just look… like me. I went to folxhealth.com (for the record, I know now that there are MUCH cheaper, albiet less convenient ways to start HRT), I set up an appointment, and here I am on day 1 of HRT

Zoë’s first day on HRT, June 2021

I posted the above to our local texas burn community’s nonbinary page, and say “hey, I’m doing this.” And I let time pass. And the transition feelings hit, the dysphoria brainfog lifted, and I became myself. By the time I left texas, I had loudly told most of the world that I was a she/her woman, mostly a lesbian. I had my face with my real name under it published in the Austin-American Statesman, and I had been quoted in the Texas Tribune

I came out to my birth family, and THAT went catastrophically. I had to flee Texas.

But I’m here, I’m alive, and I’m happier than I’ve ever ben, because even with everything else that has happened,

Zoë as of time of writing, the 11th of October 2024

well, at least I don’t see that ghost in the mirror when I look at her anymore. Happy national coming out day.