Femme transitiontions and rebirthings

picture-6

When I came out as femme I committed suicide. That coming out experience was messy in so many more profound ways than the piles of skirts and fishnets that began to form small mountains on the floor of my apartment. When I came out as femme I killed off the boi I’d been trying to be since elementary school, and I assassinated the man I’d struggled to become with hormones. I killed off what wasn’t working and started to play with gender in completely new directions. Coming out as femme was a rebirth in the truest form.

This week my maternal grandmother who I have a complicated (at best) relationship with sent me an album of photographs from my childhood. It was an intense package to open, as is at staring at page after page of old photos of a little girl I scarcely remember being. The night they arrived Kestryl (my partner) and I sat on the couch after dinner and looked through all of them, about half way through the book we got to a page of different photographs taken in my Grandmother’s bathroom, and ze calmly pointed to a picture and said “That’s you and Sassy.” In that moment I looked down at a picture I had hardly noticed and realized that ze was right, it was a picture of my lost twin- the one whose life I adopted when I came out.

Let me explain. When I was a child I had an entire world of invisible family members, siblings mostly. It was in many ways one of my earliest attempts at building queer family, different family, family that I could call my own.  The invisible sibling that featured most prominently in my games through late elementary school was my twin sister, Sassy. I have no idea where I first heard the name in my semi-rural community but it stuck with me and she was everything I wished I could be.  When I was trapped by controlling and abusive parents she was an artist, an eccentric dresser, outgoing, confident, creative, flamboyant, and beautiful. She was everything I didn’t believe I could ever become, she was the alter ego that I desperately longed to become, and as I grew older I mostly forgot about her allowing her life and memory to be swallowed by time.

At 20 I started to come out as femme and I knew that Click (what I’d changed my name to when I came out as trans) wasn’t a name that was working for me anymore. I wasn’t de-transitioning and had no intention of going back to Natalie (my birth name) so I did all the normal things folks do when they go through a transition— like scour baby books for names. Nothing seemed to fit. That spring Kestryl bought me some potted flowers for the kitchen window of the house we had just moved into. In my attempt at not forgetting to water them I decided they needed names, the little yellow daisy that was my favorite I decided to call Sassy.  When I introduced Kestryl to the plants ze asked where the name had come from, and I lives tumbled out of me. I explained about the twin sister I’d all but forgotten. Standing in the yellow and blue checkered kitchen I realized that coming out as femme had been becoming Sassy, it had been about embracing my flamboyance, and eccentricities, it was about making art a priority and occupation, it was about feeling safe enough to be pretty.

For me, coming out as femme was about coming home to an identity I hadn’t realized I was missing. It was a messy and complicated rebirthing, it was about my childhood dreams coming full circle and it was as an adult recapturing the dreams, goals, and aspirations of a childhood that I lost to abuse and neglect. In effect, as an adult I killed off the person I’d been, and became all the things that I’d only dreamed of, but never believed I could ever actually be. I’m feeling so blessed this weekend for the life I have now, chosen family, friends, art, and for this album of pictures and especially this eerie one. For me, femme is about becoming the impossible, it defies definition, logic, and reason.

Other posts by Sassafras

Sassafras

Sassafras

April 11, 2009

No Comments

Leave a reply

Name *

Mail *

Website