This is me….
Being transgender is not a choice. I was born this way. It’s not a lifestyle choice. Choosing to affirm who I am and to allow my body to transform into the form that matches my spirit has everything to do with my survival as a human being. I am not on this journey to get rid of parts of myself that I hate. On the contrary, I am on this affirmation journey to save all of me that I love. I choose to survive and star in my own life.
Life as an avatar
Ever since I can recall, my self-awareness was that of living next to myself. A bit like having a perpetual out-of-body experience or being in a video game. For years, I followed my avatar around - present, yet entirely disconnected from my body, and in touch with my Self. This, I thought as a young child and even an adult, was how everyone experienced life. It was my norm. Because life is a bit of a video game. And video games are based on people's life experiences and imaginations, right?
My video game was called The Game of Life. The only problem is that my avatar’s skin doesn’t match my spirit. It also doesn’t match how I experience myself within the context of the game. The mismatched skin was assigned at the beginning of the game and it was my understanding that it dictates the rules of the rest of it - for life. However I now know that this perception I had was wrong.
In the game, the skin defines who you are, what you can do, where you can go, who and what you can play with, what you wear, who you can love, and even how you must love them, etcetera. For those whose spirits match their skins, this is mostly not a problem. But for many whose skins do not match their spirits, this strange reality becomes a form of life-long imprisonment. A sham. A never-ending game of Charades. Because if, according to my up-to-recent understanding of the rules, this skin does not reflect who the spirit inside really is, it does not matter. One is not allowed to download the "skin creator app" and make changes. One has to just play the game in the original skin until the end.
As a child, gender was a non-existent concept for me. Growing up with my two brothers, I was simply myself. In sharing the same toys and games, I was aware of feeling different from them - out of place and without the means to express myself. Visiting girls was somehow liberating. I felt at home with them and the games they played. I perceived no difference between us. I enjoyed their company best and the feeling of sameness I experienced amongst them.
This made elementary school a tough playground. There were no real, close friendships and, although my mom did her best to arrange playdates with boys in my class, I never felt any connection with any of them. During one particular playdate, I recall ending up on a swing next to the library where the boy’s mother worked - at complete odds with the type of games he wanted to play.
Then we moved to the countryside. It was good for our family although these were very hard times and we had a lot to deal with. But it was the right thing at the right time. As time passed, however, the distinct sense of not fitting in grew. I blamed the family dynamic at the time. I was convinced that, somehow, the way I felt was a result of our journey. It wasn’t true, of course, but as a youngster, this was the only way I could make sense of my growing feeling of uneasiness with life.
Middle school yielded no close friends, either. In my child-mind, this was simply a matter of having moved province, and I shrugged off any other feelings that dared creep up on me. I tried and pretended to live up to the tight set of rules set by society for my avatar skin. Because, I thought, the harder I worked at denying and disowning this pervasive sense of differentness, the sooner it would disappear.
The show must go on
Along with high school came boarding school. It was a terrifying experience. But I put my fear aside and “stepped up” to be the “boy” I was perceived to be. I hated being there. Little to no privacy with shared rooms and communal showers, meant a constant sense of dread loomed over me like an unwelcome visitor. I took to early morning showers to avoid an audience. Acknowledging to myself why I was uncomfortable with the situation was impossible. How could I, when what I felt was completely impossible within my paradigm of understanding and my frame of reference.
These were the days before Google and easy access to information about the scientific proof that gender lives on a very wide spectrum. Therefore, what I thought I knew about gender, back then, was still very black and white. You were born either a boy or a girl. Biology ruled. The brain, consciousness, soul and spirit did not matter. Nothing else existed and anything that did not fit into one of these two boxes was wrong. During my senior years at high school, I invested my identity in religion and music. I still did not have many friends but I managed to set aside my feelings as I could connect to people who shared my religious beliefs. I found a level of acceptance without having to share too much about myself or who I felt I was. I lived for making other people happy and found a level of happiness for myself by doing things for others. By immersing myself in religion and “serving” others I found a new sense of purpose.
Meeting Her
I still preferred spending time with girls whenever I was "allowed" to. The norm in The Game of Life at a younger age is that the boys spend their time with other boys and the girls with girls. This posed a problem for me. To spend time with girls, you really needed to have a good reason - which was hard to find. Their presence offered me a sense of belonging and ease. They were like-minded company. Then, one day, I met a girl who mesmerised me. She was different. I didn’t know why, but I felt a connection and longed for a friendship with her. But there was also something else. It felt like she saw me. As if her soul could recognise who I was. I desperately wanted her to be my friend.
After some time, she trimmed her hair into a short pixie-style cut which awakened a new kind of feeling in me. This haircut revealed something to my spirit, a part of her Self that I was drawn to. She had the most enchanting blue eyes and an energy that made me want to be around her all the time. I wanted to be her friend but I also had romantic feelings for her. This was new territory, entirely. We were taught how we were supposed to feel when we fall for a girl in the video game. Naturally, my feelings did not match those dictated by the rule book. This was going to be a new and challenging experience to navigate.
I had an intense desire to be her closest friend and confidant. The person she wants to spend time with and share her deepest secrets with. I wanted to be her ‘girl’-friend. It was a scary thought. It felt like my secret was about to be discovered and quickly retreated into my safe space far in the back of my existence, settling on being ‘just a friend’. Any excuse became a great excuse to spend time with her. Painting posters for the prayer room, playing guitar together, arranging prayer meetings that we could attend together and whatever other opportunities I could find became ways of cultivating the platonic friendship I had convinced myself of.
Around her, I could be myself - effortlessly. We chatted for hours, played guitar together, and had fun with friends. She no doubt experienced this time very differently from what I did as her eyes saw the person my skin represented - the one that I pretended to be. Here she was, in her teens, with this weird ‘boy’ hanging out with her all the time, knowing that I liked her, but without me making any of the usual ‘moves’ other boys would. While this must have been a puzzling situation for her, I still think her spirit had recognised mine. A few years and several awesome stories later, we married.
Adulting
Life together started and She and I were set to start adulting as a couple. I was still a spirit at odds with its body, walking beside my avatar like a familiar, yet cumbersome friend. Controlling the avatar as an attempt at sticking to society’s rules remained a challenge most of the time. Connecting with people under an identity ill at ease with itself remained a strain. I needed to be myself despite not quite understanding what exactly that meant, yet. Whatever it was, I knew it was very different from the skin I had been assigned at birth. This would remain a single constant.
Navigating adulthood disguised as a man became taxing on my spirit. And keeping people at a distance became my go-to safety precaution. It felt like whatever was going on needed to be suppressed... Maybe a demon had to be expelled - or something. Trying to fix how I felt took over my life. This thing had to be muted. Any means would do. As long as it was allowed by the rules. I drowned myself in religion, music and sound, and later in business.
Keeping it all together - or rather, trying to
Being authentic to what the skin portrayed me to be became a full- time job. I tried my hardest to be the best son, brother, husband, father, and friend that I could be. If I could become the person that everyone else was validating, my sense of Self would magically morph into what was expected of me. If I could rock every single role assigned to my skin by being the best at everything I touched - and top it off with the right car to match this body - I would feel right. But, of course, tomorrow never came.
My hiding from myself turned into always running away, always feeling and being unseen... I was unable to be myself. This vicious cycle started taking its toll on our marriage. Especially as I felt that I couldn’t break the news to my wife. My intense love for her had not waned. It was simply that I felt so lost as I wanted to love and be loved for who I really am.
Fear became a black dog stealing away with happiness from our table at every meal. I became afraid. Afraid that she would think I am crazy. I woke up many nights with this nightmare that she is leaving me. When she asked what my dream was about I always had to leave out the part where I told her how I felt. Because that would be the end of us. How could she stay with me when who I am is not what she signed up for.
An adage, “Many fears are born of loneliness and fatigue” became a daily mirror and she, my daily reminder. I unconsciously started pushing her away. There were many precision tools for the job. Making excuses for my eternal lack of presence, projecting blame onto her for my growing disconnect and my subsequent loss of romantic love for her. It is hard, impossible even, in my opinion, to accept and enjoy love and acceptance from others when you feel that it's intended for someone who is not you because who you are is invisible to them. When who they perceive you to be is only the outline of your shadow. When who the world sees and loves is the perception of a person at odds with their skin. A skin your spirit has no connection with at all. And how can one accept love from another for the person you are not when you do not even love yourself. Because what you see in the mirror doesn’t match up with the spirit inside as the packaging is all wrong?
The situation became impossible. I simply lost my ability to connect with the closest people in my life. Even in the most important relationship of my life, my wife and I could not reach that point of deep connection that we were both craving. The final window closed on sharing with her what I felt before I completely boxed and bricked it in and hid my secret so far away that for moments of my grey existence I entirely forgot about it, simply confusing the murky skies I saw for the blue that it was meant to be. Light vacated the premises.
Hello darkness, my old friend
A numbness that I can only equate to slow death started creeping into my life. Quietly. And almost unnoticed. I had suppressed my emotions and feelings for so long that the depression I had been dragging behind me like a security blanket had followed suit. It had become as invisible as its unwitting owner. I had drowned myself so successfully in work and life in general that overwhelm had become my new happy place. It was comfortable.
In my line of work this inevitably also meant spending days, weeks, and sometimes months in the perpetual physical twilight and even pitch darkness of studio life. Eventually, I couldn’t even see through my personal walls anymore. The medical circuit started. I went to multiple doctors on more than one occasion, testing for heart failure. I even went to hospital feeling like I was about to die. Yet the prognosis remained the same. Nothing was wrong, they said. Yet nothing was right, either.
The story of Moses and the burning bush suddenly became a reality. Divine Life, as I experience God today, was not ready to give up on me. A soon-to-be client crossed my path as we randomly met in a customs cue at an airport in Bulgaria. A film director from South Africa, I could never have guessed that this man would ultimately provide the impetus that would eventually lead to me dismantling my own carefully constructed tower of self-imprisonment down to its very foundations.
Going to Bulgaria was never on my to-do list. It was merely part of an exercise in clutching at straws in an effort to secure business for our recording and post-production studio in Cape Town. The plan was to attend the Berlinale film festival in Germany so that I could, hopefully, shake the right hands. As I was struggling to be social and still feeling utterly invisible, I only managed to secure one meeting. Which became an invitation to visit Bulgaria to speak with the right guy. Being way out of my comfort zone, this was quite a moment, as I’m sure you can imagine.
This chance meeting with the film producer at the airport in Bulgaria spurred a slow, but life-changing process that would only come into focus much later. But before this happened, it became a fruitful partnership that saw our company complete two film projects for him. One of them was a passion project his wife was producing on a shoestring. We couldn’t really afford to do it, but I accepted nonetheless. Change is a short film. The script rattled something inside me. I acutely identified with what the lead character was experiencing. It was the first time in my life that I was exposed to the realisation that what I have been feeling my entire life was real and not just my imagination. I was indeed staring in the face a case of gender dysphoria, the term I later learned defines what I felt.
At this point, Rapunzel was still safely tucked away in the imposing tower I had constructed for her - far from the madding crowd. And her plat was still too short to facilitate any attempt at escape. The film scared the living daylights out of me as I realised that in sharing my truth with others I would risk losing everyone precious to me. As far as I was concerned, the case was closed. But this time, I hung the key around my neck.
Accepting my truth
I decided to accept my truth, while Rapunzel remained locked away in the tower. It felt like making small allowances would make the baggage lighter and the truth more bearable. She was now allowed to feel. I decided to try to let go of the shame I felt for feeling this way. I stopped blaming everyone else. Reconnecting with my wife became a matter of urgency, something I was yearning for. I wanted to feel the love for her I had felt long ago before construction started on the tower. I wanted her to feel my shameless love. The love I felt for her as the woman I had always known I was. I wanted her to know me. But it had to stay in the shadows. I had to remain a secret and Rapunzel would never be set free.
She often told me how she felt. That we had become roommates rather than lovers. This hurt me deeply because I knew it was true. Wanting to be loved for who I really am, as I really am, simply seemed an unreasonable and impractical expectation to lay on her shoulders. After all, she married my ‘man’ avatar from The Game of Life, not who I actually am. It was only fair that I upheld my end of the bargain. The rules were stated clearly in the Terms and Conditions.
Doing Love
The best I could do was to consciously decide to start acting in love. I became aware that love, which up until then had been nothing but a feeling for me, was in reality a verb. Something you must actively take part in rather than simply expect to pop into existence like a thought bubble in a 1980s cartoon.
Someone wise once said, “love thy neighbour.” It started to dawn on me that to feel love, I had to DO love. That taking action and performing daily acts of love were paramount to loving. I started doing this for myself. And I also did it for my wife. By stopping the shame bus and getting off it every time I caught it unobtrusively blundering through my thoughts to take me hostage.
The theory was simple. I could be the change I wanted to see in her. Then she would catch on that how she felt and what she did was the REAL problem in our marriage. I thought if she could love me, then I could love her... Somebody once said that the road to hell is paved with good intentions. Well, my fresh and convoluted take on love would soon bring me to the entrance of exactly this boulevard.
Boy, was I misguided! The more I actively performed small random acts of love towards her and myself, the more I started changing. To the point where I could see just how misguided my imaginary understanding of how love and attraction work, was. What surprised me was how my compassion started growing during this time. I was attracted to my wife again. In a way, it went completely beyond what I had ever felt in the past as I was now able to start loving her for who she is and not as a part of myself or someone that needed to change. I was the one who had to change. This realisation came while finally learning how to love myself. Of course, this didn’t grow overnight. Not much does, right?
Great as it was, the disconnect between my body and spirit sadly remained and so did the ominous feeling that I was dying. Doubt in whether or not I would see the sun rise over my 40th birthday settled into my traveling shoes. I started preparing for Death. I wanted my wife and children to be taken care of financially, so I took out a new life insurance policy, ensuring that our debts would be covered. I started preparing myself for what I felt was the inevitable early end to a life full of love and life. But it just seemed so bleak to me. I didn’t want to die but I also felt like I wouldn’t live much longer.
Making it out alive
Then, for the umpteenth time in our many years together, she stepped in and saved my life - without even meaning to. My wife of then nearly 17 years shared one of her innermost secrets with me. A secret that took more courage to share than I would ever have managed to gather on my own. The fear of sharing with her husband, a man, according to the avatar she married in The Game of Life must have been so terrifying. This revelation could have a devastating impact on her life. She told me she is gay. She is such a strong and amazing woman. Which explains why I fell head over heels for her. The news should have shocked me to my core and left me gutted. But instead, it brought me the greatest joy I had felt in years. And, for a moment, I saw a glimmer of hope of something yet unseen. I didn’t know why. But I did.
Lockdown came and with it, some extremely challenging times. It forced me to dig deeper. Remembering the movie, Change, that I worked on all that time ago, a great shift was on my mind. I slowly and deliberately started taking down the walls I had built around myself. I dismantled the tower where I hid the princess feelings that had once frightened me so. I needed to understand why her revelation had brought me so much peace and expectant joy rather than crush any hopes I may have had. It took days of crying, lots of internet searches, more hours of crying, and many internal conversations to finally put into words what I have felt my entire life.
Finding Me-Mo
I am a woman of trans experience. I have chosen Christi as my real name and the pronouns I use is She/Her.
The name is derived from my second given name, Christiaan. I have always been a woman but nature went a little crazy on the hormones and "accidentally" landed me in a body that reflected what general society deems to be a man.
We are made in the image of our Creator, but this image has nothing to do with the avatar that society expects us to play in The Game of Life. Because most people get dealt a straight hand of cards - no pun intended. Their avatar matches who the Creator made their spirits to be. But some of us are born different.
Gender exists on a spectrum. It does not necessarily match your assigned gender that is based only on what the doctor physically saw - complete and sitting right there between your legs - on the day of your birth and even before.
It is truly sad that society decided to define who people are and who they can love and how they can live based on a part of their bodies that are mostly hidden, anyway. Life and time have brought me to my current understanding that Divine Life is a part of us all. Our ending is already written but we do get to choose how we play The Game of Life. The rules are just guidelines written in the sand before the tide comes in and washes it all away...
We do get to choose how we play the game
We have now reached the part where I choose to take the red pill and exit the Matrix. I have been on hormone replacement therapy for a while already and I have never felt this in touch with myself, or this alive, ever in my life. For the first time I am able to feel what most of you feel being human.
I can now feel my core. I can feel the part that makes you who you are, and me who I am. I can now feel my soul and spirit like you can feel your soul and spirit. And I know now that it is actually in control of the earthy vessel we get to drive on earth. I am truly happy that my wife had the courage to face her giants, saving my life in the process. Our relationship is still complicated as many years of a life half lived leaves its scars. But we love our kids and I have faith that we will find the strength to find true happiness in whatever Divine Life has planned for us.
This is only the beginning. We don't have all the answers and we will grow as we go along. The most important thing is that we live life as our true authentic selves so we can share the love that we have received in honesty. If you want to know more, please google “what does it mean to be transgender.” There is a ton of resources available online.
Being transgender is not a choice. I was born this way. It’s not a lifestyle choice. Choosing to affirm who I am and to allow my body to transform into the form that matches my spirit has everything to do with my survival as a human being. I am not on this journey to get rid of parts of myself that I hate. On the contrary, I am on this affirmation journey to save all of me that I love. I choose to survive and star in my own life.