My biggest issue, my burning question, my one true “what if” in my life is getting closer to being answered. .
So when you have this question hanging over your head that is impossible to answer, what do you do? I haven’t been able to stop asking the question in my head for as long as I can remember. What if? But if there is no possible way to find out then what? Do you trust blind faith? Gut feel? Research and more research?
No, it’s not as big as the eternal question “why do I exist?” because I know that answer. If you want the truth behind existence I’d be happy to share it with you.
My question is a bit simpler…
Would I have grown up identifying as Queer if I had not gone through the one sexual assault a a young child? Is my identifty as trans in some part caused by what occurred?
The one rape in the men’s room may not have been quite as traumatic, if it hadn’t been for other issues that compounded that event. Being ill, peeing blood and gaining weight. The feeling that I did something wrong with my body. My fault for what happened. Classic PTSD symptom.
Other issues, like being left alone by my parents, who thought it was perfectly fine to leave their young child in a hospital. Abandoned in my mind, like a 7 year old would think. The hospital, and a ward for soldiers to heal, not a child. Those all added to the trauma, complicated what was already horrible.
But could that have caused my queerness? Can an event twist your mind to believe you’re actually the opposite sex? Is there a cause for being “trans”, something in the human psyche we have yet to understand?
I feel that being Queer, like gay or lesbian, isn’t a choice. Then it follows that if it’s not a choice, then it must be a naturally occurring phenomena. Unless you choose to believe it’s a mental illness, a defect in the way our minds work.
Many of us who identify openly as Queer try and try to be “normal”. To be what was expected in this world by the majority, social norms. We try marriage and family and children and jobs that don’t fit the way we feel in our hearts. Denial only makes the problems worse, compounded.
“Normal” is easy. Queer is definitely not. But only due to the current social norms of acceptance do we find it hard to live. That fear of rejection. Do you wonder why the suicide rate so high for the trans community?
The question of my own true self is irrelevant I suppose. Who might I have been. The question can never be answered. But I am Queer, with a capital “Q”. No matter the cause I can no longer be in denial.
I haven’t found any valid research into the effect of sexual assault of abuse or PTSD on gender. Another small percentage of the population yet to be studied and understood.
I have come to believe that a 7 year old doesn’t have the cognitive skills to use gender as a coping skill. I was raped by a male, therefor I must be female. That thought process is too complex and complicated for a child that age.
I have just about packed that up, the sexual assault, the guilt and shame. Just about.
I have come to believe that my being Queer is a bit nature and a bit nurture but not the result of the assault.
The two pathways are so intertwined that it is impossible to look at one and not the other. But that’s the only way I could reach this point, understanding each as a separate question and separate part of living.
Drop the “what if” forever.