The Tip of the Tongue

I understand being the one who desires. Years of fruitless crushes and longing that tore gaps into me. But I have no context for feeling desired. All my life I longed to be beautiful, to be worthy of want. Now that I'm at least not quite as ugly I don't know what to do with this.

I've started to have these moments where people tell me they think I'm pretty. I don't see it, and I don't get it. This isn't me trying to brag. I completely fucking don't get it.

It first became apparent upon taking my first fledgling steps into the local trans community. Which is partially a social more thing - I think we're more likely to tell each other that we're pretty than our cis counterparts, because we know firsthand how much perceptions of trans women as unattractive have been weaponized against us. But also we have the ability to see beyond the jumbled secondary sexual characteristics, the will to see the person that is the person. And maybe we see that each other are sexy when no one else seems to except men of vile intent.

Reasons aside, on that night I got hit on more than I have in the rest of my life. I hesitate to even talk about this anywhere outside of you, my lovely blog, because how can you discuss this and have it not sound boastful? But it isn't, it's just this thing I need to discuss because I can't contextualize it. It's a feeling of sensory saturation, like when you stub your toe so bad you stop hearing anything for a moment. I hear a compliment and I shut off.

Probably it is better this way. When I was a teen, I lapped up those fleeting moments of attention from men, what I saw as a wonderful approval of my self even when I knew I was being hit on by a creep. It's so fucked up, but validation for a young trans girl is rare enough to turn many frogs into princes.

I want, have always wanted to be invisible. No voice, face a mask, interacting with the world briefly only to be forgotten again.  Transformation fantasies always seemed to hopeful to me, the sort of thing kids who believed in Santa might dream up. Cipher-hood could come true, at least. My vision of the future, depersonalized and nameless.