How Manifesting my Inner Self Helped Me Understand How to Live as a Transgender Woman
When I represent myself as a dragon, it’s not playing pretend. Dragons might be mythical creatures, they might seem monstrous and inhuman, but it’s how I feel as a woman. I feel it so deeply that I can’t quite bring myself to separate the two. I made a single decision, not just to let myself transition to my true gender, a woman, but to allow myself to express myself wholly. To show people how I feel on the inside.
In other posts I’ve spoken about exploring in VR and how it’s affected me, being able to actually see myself in different bodies and feel the comfort that comes to not have to conform to the expectations that were so deeply drilled into my head. It’s deeply rewarding even in simple ways, looking at my hands or taking a step. Simple actions that finally feel like they have meaning and purpose because I am myself.
Even though I was an exuberant and joyful child I never felt like I was myself when I was growing up. I felt completely separated from my body. It was puberty that destroyed something in me, something that I didn’t understand, something that I didn’t want or need. But it wasn’t the physical feelings as much as the social and emotional ones
I started having to manage who I was until I was just living based on expectations. Micromanaging my behaviour. Playing by the rules and acting like how I was expected. I never really fit expectations naturally but I was sensitive enough and afraid enough of rejection that I forgot how to live for myself.
I’d end up controlling just about every aspect of my behaviour based on how I was supposed to behave. Avoiding sitting down with my legs crossed, trying not to speak in a softer voice. Denying who I was became as effortless as living and breathing. It’s how I was raised be.
It’s normal for children to laugh and play and pretend. We expect them to. But it’s often expected that people stop doing it, or do it less as they get older. Reality is supposed to ground you. But I never really felt safe in reality. Whether it was writing or playing or pretending, my head was one of the few spaces that always felt safe.
Being human always felt like such an abstract concept. It was what I was on the outside, yes, but it never felt like who I was on the inside. I would always think of myself in different terms. Often as something abstract or monstrous, but in a way that brought comfort and relief. Imagining myself that way actually meant that I didn’t have to pretend.
If I could just be something, anything else but the body I have.
As I grew older and moved away from my family, a lot of the same habits and feelings still lingered. I was afraid of who I was for a lot of reasons. I had spent over a decade of my life actively denying myself and hiding those things that I felt were valuable. The more I cared about it, the more afraid I was of having it be externalized, of having people able to see it, to judge it.
I don’t mean to paint a dire picture of my mental well-being, but I wasn’t in a great place at the time even though I had just graduated from university. I was so preoccupied with my own feelings and trying to figure out why I was so unhappy that I didn’t have much room for anything else.
Videogames were one escape outlet, but I often felt alienated by those too. I couldn’t feel attached to male characters and I didn’t feel entitled to play as female ones. As much as my heart and soul sang out to express myself as a woman, I felt like I would just be pretending. And there was something about “pretending” the idea of being something that I’m not, that just made me feel so devastated that I would always want to hide.
It was actually in 2012 that I first experienced a total crisis of gender but it wouldn’t be until a full 6 years before I would start my transition as a woman more seriously. It was allowing me to express myself in a game that would trigger it. Specifically a self representational character that I made in a Massively Multiplayer Roleplaying Game called Guild Wars 2.
Initially an antagonistic species, the horned, catlike Charr became playable in the second game. And it was the creation this character that triggered a total crisis in me. I’d realized that something felt too genuine, too perfect. The fact that she was female, and I could express myself in feminine ways through her but without needing to fully conform to the idea of what a woman was.
No large breasts or even breasts at all, but still refined or elegant. Extremely butch, comfortably monstrous and somehow it just clicked. I felt okay with myself.
Amusingly, I didn’t end up taking to the game as much as I was hoping to. Guild Wars 2 is great but it just proved to be too much of a time investment. I dabbled and explored but didn’t invest a whole lot beyond loving the image it gave me and the way that I explored myself.
This monstrous woman felt more like me than me.
It was just so validating to bring those feelings to bear. To manifest them as they were. To be recognized. Even though I didn’t understand that I was trans at the time, I felt seen and heard. It was actually a bit scary how good I started feeling out of nowhere.
I didn’t feel like I deserved it. As good as it felt to be seen and heard, the fear of pretending crept back in again. I moved on, I drifted away. And as the years passed I started to feel more hollow again. Even as I met other trans women, that fear of pretending paralyzed me and delayed my own transition by years. I sank deeper into my own head, keeping my feelings secret. Hiding myself. I didn’t realize that I had gone back to actually pretending.
It’s funny to me that it would be years later, on the edge of an emotional collapse, that I would basically declare “I am a dragon” and in that moment everything untangled. It was something that I didn’t have to pretend to be, as a powerful woman who doesn’t conform to what other people define women as.
It’s a pure feeling of power and confidence that I could actually grasp, and for the first time feel worthy of.
That declaration brought with me a clarity of purpose, to take my transition seriously and allow myself to be who I really am, both in my own eyes and as part of my presence on the world. At last I’ve been able to feel true attachments. I feel like I’m not pretending.
I’ve been lucky to have friends who are willing to help me realize these visions of myself as I write, to help these visions come to life from my writing and self expression. I’ve been encouraged and validated at every step of the way by my friends and family, both as a woman and as a dragon. I didn’t know what to expect at first, I was actually more terrified of being upfront about it than I was of basically anything before that. I’ve had a deep rejection sensitivity at the best of times, and the thought of sharing my whole self and being turned away was more than I could bear.
Honestly, as time has gone on I have felt more and more blessed. Transitioning has been fraught with difficulty at times, but I have more support than I would ever dare ask for. All I know is that I’m done with being afraid of showing who I am.
Now, with that all said, thank you so much for reading. Claps and follows are dearly appreciated. Next post we’ll be exploring avatar creation and… Pooltoys?