Hey,
There is a gap— sometimes impossible to bridge— between wanting something and asking for something.
I really love reading Grace Lavery’s newsletter. Her insights on trans-ness, mixed with the kind of arcane silliness that only English Majors are capable of, have been at turns challenging and comforting.
Earlier this year she wrote about Pride Month and the discomfort that can emerge from it. There’s a line that stuck out at me when I re-read it last week:
… I can’t take pride in a gift I was given. I didn’t ask to stay alive; I didn’t ask to meet [then-boyfriend, now-husband] Danny [Ortberg-Lavery]; I didn’t ask to be trans. I asked to transition, I suppose, but I did so in such a fucking grump that it seems churlish to demand credit for it after the fact.
Not to get too Tumblr-esque here, but: #relatable.
I wrote a while back about how I got close to dying in 2015, and my surviving that led to the start of my transition. I knew I wanted to stay alive, and I did, but I’ve realized in recent days that I didn’t, strictly speaking, ask to live.
There’s a lot about the life I have now that I didn’t ask for. Like Grace, I didn’t ask to be trans; I made the decision to transition, but it was very much a response to something that was already there. I didn’t ask to meet Laura and fall in love. I didn’t ask to have so many friends stay with me through the dark years and through transition.
These were all gifts, freely given.
At the risk of sounding overly sentimental, every day that I’m alive and out in the sun as Bridget feels like a gift. I can’t help but think of that this week, seeing as tomorrow is Transgender Day Of Remembrance. I have a lot of privilege that shields me from the kind of violence and vulnerability that Black and Brown trans people grapple with every day; even so, every time I leave the house, I can’t help but wonder if this is the day when my name gets added to the list that’s read aloud on November 20th. There’s only so much I can do about that, and I still have a life to live.
Earlier today, I received two extremely generous material gifts.
Last night, Laura and I had to make a quick stop at Torrid to return something. While we were there I, in a move that was most definitely not planned, passed another big transition milestone: I wore a dress for the first time.
I looked good. I felt good. And then my heart broke when I saw the price tag. We put it back on the rack and then left to go get dinner.
This morning I sent those pics to a friend of mine; they gushed, then I gushed, then we both gushed. And then they sent me money to get the dress. I spent the next hour or so trying to reassure them that they didn’t need to do this, that I’d just wait until a big clearance sale after Christmas, but they weren’t having it. After a while I knew I wasn’t going to win the argument. I took the money and bought the dress.
Soon after, Laura bought tickets for the two of us to see Hamilton in a couple of weeks. Because, as she put it, I can’t have a dress like that and not show it off.
The thing about gifts is I never feel like I deserve them. I don’t deserve the dress. I don’t deserve to go see Hamilton. I go to therapy in part to try and heal from the long-standing perception that I don’t deserve to be loved. And there are days when I struggle to believe that I deserve to be alive— especially when so many of my Black and Brown siblings aren’t.
But also: I didn’t ask for either gift. I wanted these things, but I never would’ve asked for them, in similar-but-not-quite-the-same ways that I never would’ve asked to be alive or to be a girl or to have fallen in love. Wanting and asking aren’t the same.
These are all gifts, freely given. Nothing I do will ever make me worthy of any of this. But that’s not the point of a gift, is it?
Take care,
Bridget