I pass, therefore, I am not?

It’s funny, how the start of one’s transition can seem like an endless race to “passing”, your manners, looks, and outfits desperately trying to shout your transness out and justify your face. You are a man, but you’re also, a trans man. For a while. Because there is no other way for you to be; with your baby face and lack of razor scruff, your tiny arms and size 4 feet – your clothes from the kids section, your high pitched voice. The way people know you must change, in order to know you for real.

And then, within a year or so, all that changes.

People call you “sir” even on the phone, where they can’t see your patchy beard and broadened shoulders, your leg hair or your bushy eyebrows. No one stares at you in bathrooms, and you’re finally able to just be. A free man.

But are you really? Yes, you are a man, but you’re also a trans man, like you could be a tall man, or a black man. Now there is no reason for you to state your transness, now there is no reason for people to know, and your dysphoria is less and less prevalent as you swerve into the world – a public secret.

Your past is surrounded by fog, you exist only – from a point and after -.

Unless you don’t.

And then the race rewinds. And for people to know you, you must unpass.

And the race goes on.