Assuming that you were directing me to Running Up That Hill, there are two concepts that resonate in particular. “If I only could make a deal with God I’d get him to swap our places.” So many times I have indulged this fantasy. Especially when I encounter non-binary AFAB or transmasc people, I think of how much simpler it would be if we could just change places. So much trauma, expense and uncertainty would be avoided. We would each get what we want-to finally be the people externally we always were inside. It is a lovely dream. Sometimes I take it a step further, wondering if we would share a particular closeness because of what we have done for one another. Maybe someday when technology catches up, it can become a reality.

Then there are the lines that remind me of the reality of what we are both experiencing. “You don’t want to hurt me but see how deep the bullet lies, unaware that I’m tearing you asunder, there’s a thunder in our hearts, baby, so much hate for the ones we love, tell me, we both matter, don’t we?” As a transgender person, it speaks to me in a very different way than I think most people would interpret it. I see it as a description of the inner struggle between the person we have always presented to the world and the authentic self trying to emerge. Part of us despises the way we appear to the world at large, but we love ourselves enough to let our authentic self out. What remains is the ongoing struggle between what we have always been and what we are becoming. Both are worthy of existence, but one must die for the other to live.

I sometimes wonder if I would’ve been happier if I had been one of those so certain of my identity at a younger age that I hated my body and transitioned early. The problem is that to do so I would have needed to disavow the legitimacy of the person that provided the basis for what I’ve become. It seems unnecessarily self-destructive. One of the reasons I am not fond of the term transition is that it suggests I am changing from one thing to another. I am not changing into anything, merely evolving into a more perfect representation of who I have always been. I do not regret the years I spent trodding the stage of life as a male. It is an old cliché but apt, the caterpillar is becoming a butterfly. Without the formative stage the beauty could not emerge.