On painful memories I didn't call painful

I think I tend to make my memories more positive than they ought to be, and so, in a selective manner, a part of me glosses over the traumatic parts before I ever had the words to understand what had happened. Comprehension ripped before I could achieve it, and so casually I feel disconnected from all those experiences of violence because I’ve never lived those – or so I say. It’s not me downplaying it, it’s me not adding up 2 and 2, and then forgetting those mere anecdotes that did not matter. Though I don’t really forget them, I just fold them neatly somewhere and don’t touch them again, for I’ve never classified them as violent and hearing the word violence never brings those to the forefront of my mind.

However, when I’m faced with those memories again for a reason or another, that I am now more equipped to understand, there is this incredible feeling of discrepancy between what I thought my life had been and what had actually happened. Most importantly, I now remember that although I smiled or shrugged, without being able to put words on it, even back then, a displeasing sentiment of being uncomfortable had showed up.

I thought I had never come out to anyone and that I was simply unapologetically living as myself. I now remember I did come out, simply coming out had always been described to me as this very prepared, almost ceremonial moment. But as soon as Sixième at least, I had been telling my classmates that I was not quite a girl. Something echoes at the back of my mind – ah, when I said that in Sixième, that’s right, the very first reaction I had was a surprised question: “ah genre un travelot ?”*. Blink, blink. What? And although I had only told one person specifically, within seconds, she turned around and started telling the girls sitting next to her. Blink, blink. Confusion arises on their faces, and I think one of them is disgusted. I timidly say “no, that’s not quite it”. Blush. Turn back to the French assignment. Move on like nothing happened.

Cinquième. I word it differently, this time around I say I’m a boy. He laughs to my face and immediately tries resorting to blackmail – “I’m gonna tell everyone”. I shrug, “go ahead,” I say, not quite understanding the transphobia that would ensue if he did. “Really? You don’t care?” I shrug. He gives up on the idea. I shrug. Am I not interesting if I can’t be gossip? Somehow this made me think I couldn’t be bullied if I didn’t show fear of rumours.

Was it the same year or was it the next? It must have been my equivalent to wearing flag pins since I couldn’t get them – I started religiously listening to overly simplified and static definitions of genders and sexualities and copied down everything I could find on little record cards and would let them hanging by the side of my school desk, where everyone would ask about them. I’d carry them in my hands during recess. Prescriptivism would be the death of me but I was the king of microlabels. It was definitely the same year, come to think of it; I remember some of those cards were about vampirism, sadism and masochism for whatever reason I had deemed appropriate, and I specifically remember that those classmates failing to read the word “sadism” properly had led to the gossip about me being a satanist.

Same year. Someone walks up to me and casually asks me – “ah mais t’es gouine toi ?”**. Blink, blink. I didn’t know that word. But somehow, even though there was no single context around this conversation, I instinctively knew. By the end of the year, it had been painfully obvious that being open about it brought bad things to me, even though I couldn’t quite explain what. Just some unpleasantness all around, but it’s not like, not even fully getting it, I could’ve hid it – all I could do was deny it. And so, when asked gain about whether I was a homosexual, I denied it to see what it’d be like to say no, but I think I accidentally told that to a girl who was actually interested in me.

Feeling discomfort either way, for the next two years I’d on and off come out and deny it. I wonder if I was trying to figure out what would bring me peace, although I never clearly identified what was happening until years later. Similarly, I think I was on and off supportive of the few other trans people I knew and against them. As I said – prescriptivism would be the death of me but I was the king of microlabels. Though ironically, because I knew so many little known labels, I, myself, was constantly denied whatever I’d identify with. And years later, when I stopped going by definitions, I’d be met with the same denial.

It comes back to me as I write. Quatrième. I dated someone. A few classmates come to me and ask if we can kiss in front of them, since “they had never seen two girls kiss before”. I do it. It’s so talked about all my teachers knew the hottest gossip of my relationships.

Troisième. I state I’m a lesbian again. A teacher asks to talk to me. He says he’s overheard my conversation. He tells me to be careful about who I talk to and that he’s here if I need help. I don’t understand – no, I think I didn’t want to understand.

Troisième. A classmate runs up to me during lunchtime and tells me in a low voice that a certain girl from our class didn’t want to be near me anymore, because of lesbianism, and to be careful around her. I thank him, without understanding – without wanting to understand.

Cinquième. A girl walks up to me and blushes. In a somewhat scandalised, somewhat ashamed voice, she asks if I have a penis. Blink, blink. What? She clarifies – “well, it happens sometimes”. Nervous uncontrollable laughter. What.

Quatrième. I say I want to be a boy to some boys of my class who offer their “help”. Their help is but a mockery as I note down under their guidance pieces of advice that are all meant to ridicule me, and mostly sexual harassment.

I turn to online communities, but the ones I found were even worse than my classmates. However, because we share interests, I must think it’s better. They’re adults, and there’s this additional dimension of not wanting to be seen as a fool. When they make fun of me, I start backpedalling about my own identity. Not just making fun this time, however, as some insult me and threaten me. Oh, to be violently made into a cis girl for the sweet approval of a friendship finally.

[Next paragraph contains explicit mention of CSA.]

One of them specifically groomed me and assaulted me several times, with sequestrating while I was 14-17. There’s a lot to say about this relationship, there’s a lot to say about the grooming and the rape in itself, but that is not what I want to get at today. Something about the way I had been sexualised and touched was traumatising, not just for the act in itself, but for the violence of it being through the lenses that would force me into being a cis girl. And once I had been made into that, I was immediately rejected from it for being a failure of a girl; the next words coming from his mouth were that I wasn’t arousing him enough. Somehow both reinforcing the coercion of the identity I didn’t want and asserting I wasn’t good even good at it. He tells me with what seemed like some sort of disgusting pity that he “can’t” even though he had already done.

I forgot what I was getting at. I think I knew how bad everything was, and used wishful thinking as if it could erase the oppressive nature of what I was going through. At the same time, I couldn’t help but not shut up about it, even in my denial stages, for I think I had this terrible need of showing something and being seen, but there was no kind pair of eyes to witness me.

November 11th - 12th

11:31 PM - 12:35 AM

*"ah, like a transvestite?"

** "ah, aren't you a lesbo?"