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I Hardly Knew Me (Excerpt)

Following Love, Faith, and Skittles to a Transgender Awakening

Nia Chiaramonte

Look Inside

Table of Contents

 

Introduction

Hope

Thirty-Four

Love

Transition in the Dark

The F-Word

Worthlessness

Coming Out

The Visitation

Busting Boxes

The Knot

Ambiguous Loss

The Woods

New Hope

Privilege

Perceptions

The Voice

Finding Nia

Rude but Affirming

Certainty

The Name Game

Rumors

My Body

(Sex) Changes

The Virtue of Freetles

Fear of Failure

Seeing Red

The Restroom

A Hope Gone

Faith of a Child

Yet Love Grows

Contentment

Life as It Is (Epilogue)

Acknowledgments

About the Author

 

Introduction

This is the first time I’ve done this. No, not write a book. I “accidentally” wrote my first book, a children’s book, The Story of Nib, a few years back. I’m talking about what I’m doing right now. This is the first time I’ve written in the middle of the night. I’m tired. I should be asleep. I have five kids, seven right now because my nieces are staying over, who will most likely choose this morning to get up at 3:30 a.m. and be awake for the day. The first one just woke up due to my typing. Fortunately, it was the oldest, who I convinced to go back to bed, but I still can’t sleep. I need to get this out of me.

It’s 3:30 a.m., and like many of the other moments in this book, this one is just here, begging to get out. Quite frankly, I’m not sure why it couldn’t wait until morning, but it kept pounding away at my brain until, after an hour, I decided to get out of bed and let it out.

It’s perfect really, because that’s what this book is: a collection of moments. Just as I didn’t set out to write my first book, I didn’t set out to write this book either. What started as a single moment in time, weeping in my living room, needing to process my emotions, has come together to highlight an eight-year span of my life. This eight-year “moment” in my life has been a big one. I’ve undergone a transformation.

For those who have stuck with me, they’ll recognize the person who they used to know as someone who has grown so much that I’m almost unrecognizable. Except that I’m the same. That’s the thing about transition and growth. We take pieces of ourselves with us, both good and bad. Even if we try to burn away the bad things, the hard things, they leave scars on us. Many moments along the way make us who we are right now, in this present moment. And right now, in this present moment, I’m writing. You’re reading.

If you found yourself here, maybe because someone gave you this book, or maybe because you’re going through your own transformation, or maybe because we know each other, it doesn’t matter. You’re here now. And really, that’s all we have. This present moment.

If you’ve read other memoirs about transgender people (spoiler alert: I’m transgender), or other memoirs period, you’ll recognize most memoirs as a collection of moments in time. I hope though that this one is unique, in that it documents my transformation in real time. I have changed from someone who was so inside myself that I could barely look people in the eye, and definitely couldn’t order pizza over the phone for the first twenty-five years of my life for fear of sounding stupid, to someone who is moving toward being fully alive in this present moment, unfettered by what others think, writing about my life for all to judge. Even at 4:00 a.m.

For me, the past eight years of my transformation have been made up of present moments. They’ve been both exceedingly freeing and excruciatingly painful at almost the same time. Many of the moments I’ve captured here are happening in real time for me, just like this one. Okay, all moments happen in real time, I get it, but these stories were written as I experienced the emotion of the moment. My hope is that you feel them. All the joy, pain, loss, dysphoria, freedom, abandonment, hope, love, grief, and euphoria. I hope you can feel each moment as I did. And no, I don’t want you to get super depressed by reading this book, but I do hope you can experience what it’s like for a transgender person to come into their own in the world. I hope you can feel the finding of self and the waking up to new life that we all desire.

When I first came out to my family, one of my closest family members said to me, “The only thing people will think about you in the future is that you’re transgender.” And while I told him he was wrong and that I am more than this one piece of me, part of what he said was right. People judge. And people judge the first thing they can judge about you. For me, it’s typically that I’m transgender. They usually don’t get to know me well enough to judge me on other parts of my life, or maybe just well enough to drop their judgment of me altogether. For those that do drop their judgment, they may get to see all of me.

I used to be so hidden that even I couldn’t see who I was. I was so repressed in my body and I merged my external personality with anyone I met, because it was easier than exploring within and because I hated conflict (where are my Enneagram 9s?)1.

Now, those that see me will see a confident person, (mostly) at home in their body. Someone who loves life, to the point of getting up at 4:25 a.m. to write about it.

And for those who continue reading this book, I hope you too will be able to drop the judgment you have. About me. About transgender people. About yourself. And be here now.

Many of the moments here are heavy and thick with emotion, and you might think some of the moments included here are too minor, too uninfluential on the overarching narrative of life to be included in a memoir. But for me, those are the moments that are apropos of everything. They are the moments that made me who I am, right now, at 4:30 a.m. (still no kids are awake, thank God).

These are the moments that shape all of us if we let them. They shaped me. They are the moments where we can get to know ourselves. Before I started this journey, I hardly knew me. I was unexplored. So much so that, now, eight years later, many of the things I believed/thought/loved when I started writing have changed to the point that they are unrecognizable. There are some major themes that have gotten me through, and you’ll recognize a lot of self-encouragement. Some of what you read here was written by someone who, looking back, felt like a different person. You may find these inconsistencies in belief or the way I have written down these stories from moment to moment jarring, but I urge you to see them as growth. Live transformation happening right in front of you.

I would be remiss if I didn’t acknowledge the political context present during the publishing of this book. A time where trans people are under fire from a political faction influenced by conservative evangelical voters, creating legislation that is literally killing people. Much has been written about this, but I hope to give insight into what daily life is like for a trans person, so people can stop believing the myths and stories made up to perpetuate a narrative about us, and instead listen to what we are saying. Things will get better if we choose to listen.

Thank you for going on this journey with me. As we know, it’s not about the destination, it’s about the journey. But also, we’re here now. A momentary destination. For me, 4:45 a.m. on a Monday morning, hoping I can get another hour of sleep before work. For you, wherever you are, hoping to relax with a good, illuminating (and hopefully at times funny) book.

Together in the fullness of our humanity we can make the world a better place. Reflecting ourselves back to one another. Because ultimately that’s what love does. It shows us who we are. And while we may not know each other, in the end I want you to feel loved. I want you to know you deserve to be happy. I want you to feel what I have felt so that you can have more empathy for those around you and also more empathy for yourself. Because we are the hardest on ourselves. And until we can love ourselves for who we are, we can’t fully be here now.

Thanks again for joining me on this journey. At this destination. Thanks for being in the both/and of life with me. I hope to meet you someday and hear all about what you were doing when you read about the day I was up at 4:50 a.m. Still no kids awake. Thank goodness.

Peace and Love,

Nia

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