A Letter to My Younger Self

by Lowie

Image Credit: Kelly Sikkema via Unsplash

Dear younger self, shall we review what’s happened so far?

Since day one, Mum dressed you in neutral colours, baggy dungarees, your hair cut into a short bob. Your bedroom’s painted sunshine yellow. You were given your first guitar aged six because you want to be like your hero: John Lennon. You skipped idolising pop stars, even though you reluctantly received a Pop Princesses CD every year from well-meaning relatives.

As you grow up, you wear camouflage t-shirts and trousers every day, finishing the outfit with bright pink trainers. Your hair gets to shoulder length and you wear summer dresses, but your clothing for the weekend, when you can choose your outfits, is always cycling shorts and that bright yellow Brainiac t-shirt you wore until it faded to dusty mustard. You started ballet classes aged two and enjoyed the dancing skirts and dainty shoes, but gave up aged eight because it turned out you have two left feet.

You joined Rainbows and Brownies, but quit and went to Cub Scouts instead at nine; you wanted to be surrounded by people who enjoyed the things you did: scavenger hunts, being muddy, camping. You were the only girl in the pack, and you loved the uniform that got dusty on the floor of that grimy hall every week. The pride you felt when you won the ‘Cub of the Year’ award at ten is like nothing you’ve felt before and the small trophy you won will live on your shelf for nearly ten years afterwards.

The pride you felt when you won the ‘Cub of the Year’ award at ten is like nothing you’ve felt before and the small trophy you won will live on your shelf for nearly ten years afterwards.

Then, puberty started. And it was relentless, wasn’t it? You no longer had that boyish shape. Instead, you get your first bra and everyone laughs as you change for PE because no one else wears one yet. Suddenly, your body feels gross. It doesn’t fit. It feels too soon to be changing; you’ll have to learn about make-up and enjoy wearing short skirts and have a cute haircut but you aren’t ready to say goodbye to climbing trees and grass stains on your knees all summer long.

Secondary school is its own type of Hell. Your period is painful and heavy and you are so jealous of all those girls who didn’t start getting them at eleven. Why did they even want to get it? Periods are a symbol of becoming a woman.

Your body will change shape even more, those chocolate biscuits you devour daily will begin to show themselves on rounded hips, thicker thighs and a developing chest. You hated these unwelcome changes. It made you feel fat. You hated people describing your body shape as ‘womanly’. You wanted to explore in the woods! You wanted to wear shapeless jeans! But now you’re ‘pear shaped’ and buying Mizz every week and trying the sticky, jet-black mascara that comes free with it. It hurts your eyelashes, but you’re determined: you’ll have to make it work, you decide, even if you want to pretend this just isn’t happening.

Aged fifteen, making it work takes on a whole new meaning. You dress like Taylor Swift and grow your hair longer than ever. A week of eating nothing to deal with your ugly thoughts morphs into endless salads, calorie counting and fear of those once loved chocolate biscuits. It has a positive though, right? You’re no longer ‘pear shaped’, no longer ‘womanly’, your curves have become a boyish figure, the one you always wanted since your body began to morph.

I’m sorry younger me, because not much has changed five years later. Eating disorders are really hard to get rid of, but you do make steps forward. It will be absolutely, indescribably awful, but you will continue to live and grow through it.

Your body is finally ‘beautiful’, by society’s standards. You wear beautiful vintage dresses and shave your legs daily but your head is fucked.

You cry yourself to sleep, you wish you weren’t a burden to your family, you’re taken out of school in Year 11 and spend the next 6 months being force fed at home. You will endure two and a half years of confusion and threats at CAMHS. You will never tell them that the real reason you can’t eat is because you don’t want to be a woman, you want to blur the lines. You want to wear dresses but look like a boy.

It’s 2016 when you start to tie the pieces together. It doesn’t make sense to begin with because to be transgender means you felt like a boy/girl even though you weren’t born one. You can’t feel like neither a boy or a girl, the world says. You’ve heard of Jazz Jennings and you’ve been watching LGBT YouTubers for years, but you’d never heard the phrase non-binary until this year.

Suddenly, it makes sense that the pixie cut in December 2015 felt so right. Your hair gets shorter, you embrace androgyny, you let your armpit hair grow. You wear thick black eyeliner and long velvet dresses; fashion is still wildly important to you.

And now? Now you’re non-binary/agender/queer/whatever label you feel closest to today. Your name is Lowie. You are not just bisexual, you are transgender. There is no ‘being transgender enough’ or ‘proper’ way to be trans. It’s not all FTM/MTF and, ‘my son always wore Disney dresses and it turns out he was a girl!’ It’s a unique experience, and it will teach you so much. You will continue to struggle, but you will also continue to learn and start to love yourself again.

You are trans enough. You are enough.

I love you.

Lowie x