Wake up. Eat breakfast. Avoid mirrors. Put on binder. No more deep breaths for the day. Get to school. Don’t drink water, don’t want to use the bathroom. Which one would I go in? My binder isn’t hiding my chest enough, better slouch more. It’s second period, and my binder is getting tighter, take shallow breaths. I raise my hand, answer a question. My voice is too high. Try not to think about it. Think about it a lot. Keep my hand down. It’s sixth period and my friends want to get coffee after school, but I don’t go with them. My back has started to spasm and my ribs won’t expand. Take shallow breaths. Go home. Take binder off. Breathe. Drink water. Avoid mirrors. Hide under a hoodie two sizes too big. Do homework. Take a shower in the dark. Go to sleep.
This was my life as a trans guy before medically transitioning. For two years, I wore a chest binder to compress my chest to appear flat and it was extremely painful and damaged my ribs and back. It also made it increasingly difficult to breathe the longer I wore it. I didn’t do school sports or clubs, and I never hung out with friends outside of school because of it. Now that I am on testosterone* and I’ve had top surgery,* my life has drastically changed for the better.
I stopped swimming for three years because of my dysphoria*, and it crushed me. Swimming is one of my absolute favorite things to do in the world. This year, I was able to swim on the Roosevelt men’s swim team, and it was one of the best experiences of my life so far. The guys on the team, especially the captains, were very accepting of me. I have a two-foot long scar across my chest but despite that, almost no one asked questions. It was so rewarding to wake up and look forward swimming every day before school. I lost twenty pounds that season, and for the first time since I was nine years old, I could describe myself as confident. Being trans became less like an all-consuming curse, and more like just another fact about myself.
Comparatively, I ran cross country in the fall, but I quit halfway through the season. It was a very different experience. The fact that I started only eight weeks after my surgery, combined with not having done any cardio for two years and having rib damage from binding made me the worst runner on the team. A lot my teammates didn’t like me because of how slow I was. Even though we were supposed to run in groups, I always got left behind. I got pushed harder than my body could handle, and it resulted in being injured more than half the time I was there. I was made to feel ashamed for taking care of myself and I felt guilty about quitting. On the cross country team, almost no one knew I was trans, because I didn’t feel supported or encouraged to be myself on that team. I knew that if I told my teammates, they probably wouldn’t have given me such a hard time about being slow, but I didn’t want to further alienate myself, nor did I owe them an explanation.
Because of the colossal experience that was my cross country season, I was nervous for how swim team would go. But within my first week, I felt accepted and relaxed around the guys. I didn’t feel like they were judging or avoiding me, they simply didn’t care about the way I look. By the end of the season, I truly felt like a part of the team. Now I can’t wait for the summer swim season to start.
Definitions:
*Dysphoria: a distressed state arising from conflict between a person’s gender identity and the sex the person has or was identified as having at birth
*top surgery: a type of gender confirmation surgery in which a person’s breasts are removed or augmented to match their gender identity
*testosterone: a hormone that is a hydroxy steroid ketone C19H28O2 produced especially by the testes or made synthetically and that is responsible for inducing and maintaining male secondary sex characters
