Bliss. The Didactic Express, Day Twelve

Today, I was out shopping with Nominatissima when all of a sudden, a very strange and wonderful realization came over me:

There I was, out in broad daylight, in a crowd of people. I was wearing leather boots, leggings, a skirt, a bra, a camisole, a fitted t-shirt with a scoop neck, a choker with an amber bauble, a lovely coat, and make-up. I was carrying a purse and wearing my hair long. I was, in short, presenting fully as a woman.

And do you know what it felt like?

Nothing. It felt like nothing at all. I hadn’t even planned it; I just did so mindlessly, because it was just so natural for me to do so.

Instantly, I was overcome by a sort of light-headed giddiness; I felt I was walking on air.

If you are not transgendered, you may not understand the significance of this, so let me try to explain. Imagine that you have lived your entire life with an annoying sort of ringing playing-out in your inner ear. Oh, it varies in intensity; some days, it’s so loud that you cup your hands over your ears and weep into your pillow until you collapse from sheer exhaustion. Some days, you can drown it out somewhat; maybe by focusing on your work, or drinking, or taking drugs. Somedays, maybe you can barely even hear it–but it’s always there, gnawing at your insides.

And then imagine that one day, you get out of bed, throw on your clothes, go for a walk with your girlfriend, and suddenly, in a moment of epiphany you realize: it’s gone. And all that you have now is beautiful, beautiful silence.

Surely then, you can appreciate how someone who has spent her entire life in a state of extreme self-consciousness–first about the fact that her identity didn’t match the person she was inside, then about the verisimilitude of her new identity–must feel when she discovers that she can finally just perform her role without even so much as a second thought. It is, in fact, heaven.

So today’s moral is this:

Sometimes the best feeling in the world is no feeling at all.