Let Me Bloom
Every so often I’m invited to participate in speaking events in my very queer little university town in Kansas. (There are also plenty of events I’m not specifically invited to, but I help myself to the mic when it’s open.)
Last March, I participated in a long-running Queer Voices Storytelling series on the theme “Let Me Bloom,” and I dug deep into my recent past to uncover some hilarity, some melodrama, and some thoroughly outdated Star Wars references. Please enjoy this lightly edited version of my remarks, in hopes that they help you pull the trigger on something that needs doing:
Author Sylvie Althoff, pictured with a microphone and a truly exceptional ammonite-print dress (with pockets!).
There’s a truism, a saying in the trans community. If you’re here, you’ve probably heard it before, especially if you’re trans or you’re just a really good, involved ally who finds themselves reading trans stuff online all the time… in which case, good luck, girl, you’ll figure it out.
The saying goes like this: “The best time to transition is ten years ago. The second-best time to transition is right now.” In other words, let go of the past, let go of regrets and seize the moment that you have right now, which at the end of the day is the only moment you’re ever going to have.
“The second-best time to transition is right now.” That saying was pretty meaningful for me when my egg finally cracked. That’s the time when I started arguing with myself that, okay, maybe I am trans, but it doesn’t matter, because it’s not a good time to transition. I’m 36, I’m too old—that’s what that “second-best time” saying is usually focused on, being too old, like we’re arguing with the ghost of Obi-Wan Kenobi about whether Luke can become a Jedi.
Of course, the mental trick to defeating that point, the idea that you’re too old to be trans, is to realize that it’s too late, you’re already having the debate. If you’re debating the finer points about when would be an optimal time to transition, you’re already trans, you’re knee-deep in a swamp, having a debate with a wrinkly puppet and a dead guy, it doesn’t matter how old you are, just go learn the damn ways of the Force and try painting your nails already.
This saying is a really encouraging idea, the premise that even if you already missed the best time to start living as yourself, good news, you’re never going to get a better time than right now! The thing is: if we really have pinned down the best and second-best times to transition, there’s a whole world to explore in worst times to transition. I’ve done a lot of thinking and come up with some real winners for worst time to realize you’re trans and decide to start transitioning: walking down the aisle at your wedding; the last day of pledge week as you’re joining a fraternity; midway through delivering your valedictorian speech at seminary school; the first Trump administration; the second Trump administration; the day you’re shipped off to basic training in the army.
Ultimately, I’ve decided all of those (along with any similarly hilarious situations you can think of) are, at best, tied for second. Because I found the number-one worst time to transition. I lived it—or I almost did, anyway.
I was 36 years old. I had finally, finally figured out the obvious and started speedrunning my transition: tried out makeup, wearing a bra, new pronouns, a new name. Got on a waiting list for HRT, just in case I wanted to try that out someday (lol). Got the legal mechanics moving for a name and gender marker change. Wrote a Facebook post announcing myself to the world, but I didn’t post it yet; I waited to pull the trigger until I came out to my parents.
You see, my dad had a bit of a history of being an asshole, closed-minded and judgmental in some really hurtful ways. Really fancied himself an enlightened centrist, loved challenging me to rational debate about how gay marriage was going too far or why Millennials were for shit. Over the preceding years things had been tense between us, with long periods of speaking rarely or not at all. Neither of my parents had expressed anything outright transphobic in my earshot that I could remember, but I was convinced that when I came out to them, they’d try to talk me out of it, try to make me think I was wrong or selfish or confused.
I tried to work myself up for it. I let myself imagine the worst-case reaction, then I had to lie down and panic for a couple of days. After that I wrote out what I was going to say, rehearsed it with my wife, practiced in the mirror until I had it down. Then I had two shots of Jameson and I called them.
My dad picked up. “Deadname! Let me get your mother on the phone, too.”
“Dad, I have something I have to tell you,” I said, following my script.
“Oh, great! So do I.”
That wasn’t in my script.
Then he said, “You first.”
Everything inside my head screamed at me to tell him to go first instead. This was my chance to avoid this interaction I’d been dreading, to put it off until later, to try again when I was more ready. But somehow I pushed myself through that impulse and spilled my guts. I told them both everything I’d practiced, answered their questions and told them what questions I wouldn’t answer. And they listened politely and didn’t say much more than “Well, how about that?”
“What did you want to tell me, Dad?” I finally asked.
“Oh. My cancer is back.”
I am dead certain that if I had let my dad share his news first? There’s no way I would’ve come out to them then. I can’t throw this new, chaotic thing at Dad right now, I’d reason, not when he’s going through this awful medical thing. I’ll wait until later, after this health scare blows over.
And of course, it didn’t blow over. Dad’s cancer got bad pretty fast, much faster than last time. So if I had let him go first, there’s no doubt I’d have delayed even longer. I can’t burden him with this new name and pronouns and everything, not when he’s feeling so poorly. I’ll wait until he recovers.
And of course, he didn’t recover. And then it would be I can’t come out now, right when my father has died. Not when I have to be there for my mom and brother, when I have to fly out to see all my extended family for the first time in years for the celebration of life. I’ll wait until…later. Sometime. Eventually.
And that’s the worst time to transition, worse than on the stand in court or on a rocket halfway to the moon. The worst time to transition is later, is after you, because those all just add up to never.
If I’d even waited another week to call them and tell them, I’m sure he would’ve called me with his news first, and then I’d have been stuck in that sucking pit of later, never. I wouldn’t have ever let my dad know me as his daughter. I wouldn’t have had the chance for him to surprise me one last time by being more open-minded and supportive than I ever thought he could be. I wouldn’t have had the opportunity to visit him in his last few weeks as myself, as Sylvie, looking just busted with ill-fitting clothes and terrible makeup smeared all over my face, three-months-into-transition-bad makeup, and have him ask me with a straight face if I was wearing any makeup. I would’ve had to help conduct his celebration of life as his miserable, closeted son instead of his daughter—his busted, terrified, but happy daughter.
Would I have been happier if I’d figured myself out and transitioned ten years earlier? Who knows? I got to do some pretty awesome things when I passed for cis, things I wouldn’t have been able to do as a trans woman. But it doesn’t matter anyway; when I was confronted with the second-best or the worst time to transition, I picked the former. And that’s something I’ll always be able to say. When it really mattered, I said the hell with you, Master Yoda, I don’t care how old I am, I’m going to learn the fucking ways of the Force.
