Shopping and Sadness

Shopping has become peculiar for me since I’ve admitted that I’m a transsexual.

On one hand, it’s absolutely delightful for me to be able to shop for the things that I’d like to look at. I don’t have to stay in the men’s section looking at clothes I have absolutely no enthusiasm anymore. Going with my friends—Krista and Lindsey, especially—is a really liberating experience. They’re my best friends—with the obvious exception of my girlfriend, Kate—and they have been nothing but supportive of me since I came out to them. If I have something I want to try on, I’ll have them tell me if it’s too over the top, or just simply doesn’t work.

Conversely, shopping for feminine clothing kind of sucks, to be honest. There are so many things that I’d love to wear that are off-limits for safety purposes—dresses, skirts, shoes, purses, anything with lace, most items in pink or with floral patterns, et cetera. Even in a perfect world, where I wouldn’t have to worry about being the victim of discrimination due to how I dress, shopping would still be bittersweet.

Men and women are built differently. I couldn’t fill out a lot of the really great clothes that I see—I don’t have the chest, or the hips, or I have too much shoulder, things like that. That’s the underlying problem with transsexuality—for most people, the problem it presents cannot be fixed by normal means. I mean, there are surgeries, but obviously those are far too expensive and serious for a teenager. I could stuff (I have experimented with this in private, with moderate success), but then you’re back to the discrimination issue. Getting beaten up is not high on my list of things to do, and I know there are people who would do that.

There are a lot of problems in this world. Most of them can be overcome with hard work. Having the wrong body is not one of them. I’m in fairly good shape, it’s just the wrong shape; no amount of exercise is going to make my chest grow. Whenever I’m feeling depressed—and that does happen several times a week, I’m sorry to say—these kinds of issues are usually to blame.

Statistically, about 50% of transsexuals will have a suicide attempt by the time they are 18, if I recall the studies correctly. I’ve spoken out against suicide to my friends for as long as I can remember, and I still don’t believe that it solves problems. Still, there are times when I can understand why that statistic is so high. Sex-change operations are not cheap, and they are far from perfect. To a lot of people, they seem out of reach. Being stuck in the wrong body for the rest of one’s life is an extremely depressing thought. I try not to dwell on it, but some nights are just bad.

One day at a time.