How Zumba, Wikihow, my teenager, bottomless mimosas, and a crosswalk helped me accept my gender

One year of realization, denial, bargaining, depression, and acceptance

My right hand is still in a cast, so I’m minimizing writing. I told this story live—and from memory, no notes—on Saturday for Story District’s Pride show in DC. I had the pleasure of meeting Spence of The Ariel Series there!

I love dancing, so one afternoon, I pulled on a large workout T over my new binder, slipped into 2004-era capri yoga pants, and showed up to Zumba class. But two horrors struck me at once.

One, I was the only student, so no hiding in the back.

Two, we were facing the mirror, and I had to look at myself. My narrow shoulders, wide hips, the hint of lumps on my chest. I almost gagged.

The instructor was a friend of mine and had been pushing me to come to her Zumba class for months. I hadn’t joined until now because it was women only. And I looked like a woman, sounded like a woman, but I knew I was not a woman.

I danced, but I was suppressing sobs the whole time. In class, I looked at anything to distract myself from my mirror self: the instructor’s back, her feet, her flowing athletic veil. About halfway through, I remembered a video I had seen of three men dancing to “All the Single Ladies” in size 12, 4-inch stilettos. They were fabulous.

I thought, Men do this too. I locked eyes with myself in the mirror, and pictured myself as a man, dancing a feminine-coded dance. And I could breathe. I felt better enough to finish the hour. But the minute the music stopped I was outta there.

_____

In those months, I inhaled anything I could find about trans people: e-books, YouTube videos, podcasts. But their stories all seemed to start with, “I always knew I was trans,” and then say what happened after coming out. But how did they know? What led up to knowing?

The day after that Zumba class, I pulled up a Wikihow page, “How to Know You’re Transgender.” I read it and wrote down my thoughts. For example:

• When I was 3, my mom said I can be anything I want when I grow up. I was ecstatic and said, “I’m gonna be a boy when I grow up!”

• When I picture myself as an old person, I see an old man.

• I always hated my chest. I never understood why the other 6th grade girls wanted…you know…to develop [gesture].

When I finished, I had five single-spaced, typed pages and boom. I Knew.

My actual first thought was: Oh shit, I’m a guy.

My second thought: What about my husband.

You see, at that time, I’d been a wife in a straight marriage for 19 years and was the mother of a 15-year-old boy. They both knew I’d been on a gender journey. I’d recently asked them to use they/them pronouns for me inside the house. But being a man? That was a whole other level.

My son happened to come up to me right about then and asked what’s going on.

“I’m not so sure about my gender?”

“You’re nonbinary.”

“Nnhn.”

“Oh!” He sat down across the table from me, put on his life coach hat, and said, “OK. Don’t think about it, just say what comes to your mind. Who are you? Go.”

“But, but—”

“No buts. Just say it. Who are you?”

“I’m a guy. But your da—”

“Nah-ah! No buts! Okay, you’re a guy. There you go.” (I have the best kid.)

He added, “But please don’t tell Dad until after my finals. He’s not gonna take it well.”

I told my best friend next. She didn’t get it and asked, “Why can’t you just be a masculine woman? We need strong, feminist women!” I told her, “It’s not that I don’t want to be a woman. There’s nothing wrong with being a woman. I’m just not one. Besides, we also need tender, feminist men.”

It took me three weeks to find the courage to tell my husband. He said, “I don’t care how you identify, I love you. But if you do anything medical, I’m getting off the bus.”

Off the bus? Anything medical?!? I hadn’t even thought about surgery yet. Gender isn’t about penis or vagina; it’s about how you feel inside, where you see yourself belonging.

When my schoolteachers said, “Boys line up to my right, girls to my left,” I had to remind myself to join the girls’ line. When I was little, I thought I’d join Boy Scouts like my brothers, not Girl Scouts with my sister, and grow up to have whiskers like Dad. I played dress up in his penny loafers and drowned in his suit coat, my eyes alight with happiness. But I never once got into my mom’s makeup.

I hung on in the closet for another 6 months, but I could barely get out of bed most days, and my future was a gray fog. My husband and I agreed that to save my mental health, I would come out as trans socially, nothing medical, and see if that’s enough. I reintroduced myself as Will, he/him, and plunged into the trans community.

But I still clung to the marriage. I’d been with him since I was an 18-year-old Mormon girl. He was my second kiss, and my first and only boyfriend. He was all I knew. We insisted “we’ll figure it out” but over the months, I grew more depressed and desperate. And he grew more distant and colder and refused to talk about my gender or our relationship.

_____

In that standoff, I met my old friend Alex for brunch here in DC. On the third bottomless mimosa my story spilled out and I was in tears.

“I’ve been waiting to see if he will come around. He doesn’t know what I’ll look like on testosterone! Why can’t he try? We’ve been together since college! We raised a kid together! We left the Mormon church together! How can he throw away 20 years of marriage? Isn’t love greater than body parts?”

By then, Alex and I were both blubbering, wiping our noses. She reached for my hand, “Will, you’re at a crossroads. I can tell you already know which way you need to go.”

She was right. I just needed someone to say it.

That night, I opened a new bottle of Tylenol and popped two pills for my hangover headache. Then I thought, I could take the rest of the bottle. That’d do it. Instead, I thought of my son and put the bottle away. He needed me alive.

Not long after that, I went on a walk to gather my thoughts about what to tell my husband. As I stood waiting at a crosswalk, I conjured up a future where I inject the first dose of testosterone into my belly. I hadn’t let myself picture it until then.

My heart ballooned with happiness. A weight lifted from my shoulders. I felt a joy I didn’t know I deserved.

The crosswalk signals beeped that it was safe to cross, and the tiny green man urged me to go. Go.

_____

It's been six years, and I have no doubt that I made the right decision. Once I started living as myself, I started healing and thriving. My son is 22 and calls me Dad, and I found a new husband who understands that love is greater than body parts.