Learning to Stay: The Hardest Part of My Transition

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The hardest part of my transition wasn’t the hormones, the surgeries, or even the external world’s reactions to me. Don’t get me wrong—those things were hard. Some days, they felt impossible. But the real challenge, the one that took me by surprise, was unlearning all the ways my brain had been trained to flee my body.

It’s a strange thing, the way we inhabit our bodies. For most people, it’s probably something they don’t even think about. They move through the world in their skin without question, without pause. Their mind and body are connected, in sync, working together to create a seamless experience of self. But for me—and for many other trans people—that connection never existed.

For as long as I can remember, my body was something I wanted to escape. It was like living in a house that never felt like home, like being a guest in a place that wasn’t built for me. My brain learned early on how to dissociate from my body, to float away when things felt wrong, uncomfortable, or unbearable. It was a survival mechanism, one that helped me get through the day-to-day reality of being trapped in a body that didn’t feel like mine.

So, when I began my transition, I thought the hardest part would be changing the things about my body that didn’t fit. I thought that once my body aligned with my identity, everything would fall into place. And in many ways, that was true. Hormones gave me a sense of peace I’d never known before. Surgeries brought a level of comfort I didn’t realize was possible. But none of that changed the way my brain had been wired for years—to escape, to dissociate, to flee.