This essay was written in the last days of 1995, about 4 and a half months after I underwent my gender reassignment surgery.
Although I have used the phrase in the title above, I've found in the last couple of years that I tend to cringe whenever I hear it.
It's not like anyone ever gave me a choice about which body I might like (at least not that I can recall...maybe, as a former lover once put it, I was a female soul that got impatient to reincarnate and in my haste ended up with a body of inappropriate sex). As it is, this body I was born into is the only one I have...there isn't a process for transplanting me into another.
To say that I am "trapped in the wrong body" leads me to wonder who is mistakenly walking around with the body I was *supposed* to get. This seems to be totally at odds with reality.
On an entirely more metaphysical front, to say that I am "trapped" in the body that I have seems to be so limiting. I am much more than the body that I need to sustain myself. My self-awareness seems to me to encompass much more volume than can possibly be contained in my (perhaps) mortal flesh (I prefer to think of myself as immortal until proven to be wrong).
So now I tend to think that stuff happens exactly as it was supposed to happen, since happen is indeed what it did. I was born connected to the body I was born to because it was what was
*supposed* to occur. I was *supposed* to be uncomfortable with this connection and *supposed* to do something about it as part of my growth process towards becoming who I am.
Yeah...I know what you're thinking about now...here goes Robyn talking about pride again. And you're right. :) To say that I was born with the wrong body is to imply that I am not happy with the lot I was given in life and allows others to infer that I somehow feel I am a victim of some unknown
malevolent force, be it biological or emotional or spiritual or random chance or whatever) that made me the way I am. I don't feel myself to be a victim at all. I am pleased with and proud to be who I am...ALL of me, including the part that was born male.