I re-ripped all my CDs. Or I thought I did. And then I was looking through the old ‘mp3’ folder on my media server which contains disks which got ripped at some point between about 1999 and 2015 when I decided to start from scratch and re-rip everything to FLAC.
And as I’ve gone through I’ve removed the duplicates, mostly, and so what should be in there is just stuff that I downloaded over the years; digital albums obtained from a variety of places over the decades. And as I scrolled I suddenly saw The Best of James which is an album that I bought in my second year of my first go at University. I already liked a few James tracks, and this had a bunch on that I liked. It was an outlier – mostly I bought women artists (“They just sound better.” Sure, Kate, that’s definitely the reason). Once I got it, I listened to it a shit ton. Now, apart from the horrifying realization that that disk is not in my FLAC folder, which implies with it the existence of a box of CDs that has not been ripped, or that I just missed some going through ripping them (a dispiriting thought since actually getting to the end of what I thought was my ripping project took a bloody decade), it also led to me going “Huh, I haven’t listened to that for ages.”
Now of course, I hopped straight to Laid, which I used to blast (and indeed, did blast both yesterday and today); screaming out the lyrics. My therapist said not to see you no more. Prescient, given the disaster my first major relationship was. But the lyrics in that that grabbed me at the time were:
Dressed me up in women’s clothes
Messed around with gender roles
God, basic bitch trans girl really failing to come to terms with things. But the whole album’s kinda like that. I had this flashback to me, sitting alone, despairing because I knew – in my heart – that I was trans. I knew that I felt like and wanted to exist in the world as a girl, as a woman. I remember singing Sit Down. I remember it with a sense memory of the shitty carpet tiles beneath my feet, the posters and postcards all over the wall. My door firmly closed…
Now I’ve swung back down again
And it’s worse than it was before
If I hadn’t seen such riches
I could live with being poor
And in my head I felt like it was about transness. About how maybe if I’d not experienced the little flashes of warmth, of comfort, of being seen as and being treated as a woman, maybe I could live with the experience of being a man. That’s obviously a lie. I knew what I was; I know what I am. But I was so fucking scared. The world kept telling me that being trans would be terrible. That it would be lonely. That it would be devastating. But the only kind of future I could possibly imagine for myself was being a woman.
It seemed so utterly unattainable. I knew that people did transition. I knew – I’d read some of how. But like; there seemed so few. It seemed so improbable.
I couldn’t possibly be that, and if I was, I couldn’t do that (I wasn’t strong enough), and if I did do it, I’d lose everything and end up alone. The world told me so.
God I wish I could go back and reach into her mind and tell her it will be okay. Whatever fucking trash is going on in the world right at this moment – being trans has opened doors I never expected. Yes, it’s closed a shit ton – the months after I transitioned where job interviews were “let’s stare at the trans girl and laugh at her as she leaves” – which fuck them, and fuck that. And it’s pretty clear that being out and trans is almost certainly what made my search for another job a while back impossibly difficult. People are assholes, yes. But it’s also what drove me to finally start a business – doing something I care about.
And also – trans people – as a cohort? We’re awesome and amazing. I have met the best people. People who’ve overcome adversity and societal expectations and families that have been ruinously terrible. People who are kind, and generous, and hilarious, and talented. I’ve got to be part of a community that will bully you to be your best self, and to celebrate and love your worst self, and laugh with you as you do both. A community that’s been resilient and dedicated to supporting each other (and also, a horrific circular firing squad, too. But y’know, queers be like that).
My life is a fucking gift. One I didn’t think I’d ever have. And in viscerally carrying me back to the moments of despair that I felt this album has absolutely reminded me of that. Of how low I felt before. Of how impossible having this seemed. Of the fact I’m really fucking lucky, and sometimes I’m so glad I’m trans; because without it I don’t have any notion of who I’d be, but I know I wouldn’t be this damn cool.
Gotta keep faith that your path will change
Gotta keep faith that your love will change
