Changing My Transgender Oil

I joke frequently about my big butt — transgender hormone therapy has been very kind to me. Typical changes from estrogen therapy include breast development and body fat redistribution. In other words, precisely what a healthy, pubescent human girl would experience. And at 53, I am a healthy, pubescent girl…whose butt just happens to have grown more than she expected.

There are steps I could take to manage the size of my plump posterior, and I began taking literal steps again now that Spring arrived. The last walk I took, I saw a man running with the stereotypical ease of natural athletes: shirt off, tan skin glistening with a light sheen of sweat, the effort of a five-minute mile barely perceptible. He gave me a nod as the wind of his approach ruffled my hair and billowed my skirt.

I felt a twinge of envy.

To be clear, I was in no way envious of the man’s external appearance. I didn’t wait 53 years to become a pubescent girl just to throw it all away. No, I wanted to run, too.

When I ran, it felt right. It felt good. Running was one of the few times I could be alone with myself and not want to strangle somebody. The act of running was soothing and meditative.

In early 2019, unfortunately, I injured my Achilles tendon. I made a full recovery, but I was off running for 9 months. I started again in 2020, continued half-heartedly in 2021, and gave up in 2022. I had more pressing matters to attend to — I explored gender transition, began hormone therapy, and grew a big butt.

I have no reason to be envious. Like any other endeavor in life, if I want to do it, the first step is to go out and do it.

Killing the American Dream

When I was much younger, I bought into the American Dream. I believed with enough money, fame, girls — whatever — I would be happy. It would happen magically, like a dream.

The media sells happiness as consumption — buy more and more, indulge more and more. I certainly did my indulging: drugs, alcohol, sex, danger. I followed blindly what I learned was the meaning of life. It fueled me for years — if the meaning of life is money, I needed to keep living to get it.

But that dream is why I was sick, depressed, and confused. I struggled to maintain a grip on reality, to combat delusions and hallucinations. I didn’t see myself in the mirror because of my transgender. I made several attempts at suicide, yet I kept pressing forward on the power of the media.

What hurdles did I overcome in pursuit of a new car? How hard did I push myself, hurt myself, and punish myself because I believed a new house or pretty girlfriend was the definition of happiness?

The American Dream is some amazing Kool-Aid — to be capable of counteracting so many mental health difficulties. It truly is that fucking powerful.

But I didn’t find happiness in the American Dream, and I began to think and introspect.

Transition is never static

Gender transition helped me find real happiness for the first time in my life. I have a big butt, but I like it. I am happy as I am now.

But transition (in more than the semantic sense) cannot be static. Transition requires upkeep. If ever I believe I’m finished transitioning, I am. I will make no more progress — not as a woman, not as a human.

Living is a continual state of becoming. We never arrive — or at least, when we arrive at our destination, the knowledge of the next town down the road keeps us traveling.

I would have found this concept depressing not long ago. In context of the American Dream, the process is: drive as fast as possible to any stop, scramble out of the car, take a selfie with whatever you find, and get back in the car. There is always a bigger house, always a shinier car, always a better trophy spouse.

But I find asking “am I enough?” is the true purpose of our lives. As we become, we become enough — for that day, anyway. Being enough for the day fuels us to persist through to the next day.

Over the longer term, what is “enough” today becomes familiar. The process of becoming cannot stop. What we become becomes as well, as we must press onward. “Enough” means being able to slough off the arrows fired in our direction, see our own value, and ignore what does not serve our purpose.

What normal people really do

I used to think my transition brought great power with it — the power to introspect, to feel emotions, to analyze life. I used to think “normal” healthy humans possessed this power intrinsically, because it took gender transition before I felt myself capable of doing it.

But as there is no “normal” gender or sexuality, there is no “normal” mental health, either. I assumed most people feel their emotions and process them fully, but I know no such thing. The more I read and think, the more I understand almost nobody is capable of processing everything.

It is a myth to tell myself I am the only weird one.

I receive casual exhortations of “all you have to do is accept yourself.” Several transgender Sisters of mine report being asked “why can’t you just be an effeminate man?”

It borders on disingenuous to advise me to cut out my pontification and just accept myself. The point is accepting ourselves is difficult. It isn’t like choosing a paint color for my car.

Building identity is the purpose of our lives. To dismiss the importance — and the difficulty — is to dismiss the inner workings of the Universe.

Running back to myself

To return to running, I could feel badly about myself and my big butt. Before my transition, I probably would have felt badly.

But as I smoothed my skirt from the turbulence the runner streamed behind him, I realized my only problem is lack of practice and untrained muscles. I know when trained muscles are not trained regularly, they only become weak. The muscles do not disappear — I can make them strong again by picking myself up and going out to run again.

“Am I enough?” is critical to ask ourselves regularly. Like my running, I am slim on practice at accepting myself. But the mental muscles could strengthen along with my feet, calves, and quadriceps.

There is no “normal” in running, gender, sexuality, and processing emotion. There is only using our talents regularly, or allowing them to weaken.

I do not live for a bigger house, I live to make myself better. Because in doing that, I allow the Universe to flow through me, making a better environment for everybody.

And that’s being enough on a consistent basis.