Yesterday
was Thanksgiving. At the dinner table, our far ranging discussion gave me the
opportunity to ask a longtime family friend a simple, yet deeply profound,
question. I asked him, “Am I the same person I used to be?” We may all ask this
question and we may all hope for an honest answer. As we go through life we
change. Sometimes dramatically and sometimes subtly. We know that our bodies
physically renew, rebuild and repair at such a rate that we are “new” roughly
every seven years. Our thinking changes as our experiences shape our
consciousness. Traumatic events can mold us and teach us. The physical
connections in our brains change as we swim in our personal and shared
universes. Amazingly, minute particles of energy from space whiz through us and
the planet we stand on and nick away at us on an atomic level. So obviously we
change. But are we the same person we used to be?
For me this
was not just an existential question, it was a practical one. You see, I’m a
transgender woman. I was born a boy and lived bound by that seemingly
unchangeable destiny for many years. It was always wrong and I knew it. I was
always “other” and I knew it. The range of options opened to me just seemed to
exclude any sort of remedy. Finally after half a century of this limbo I acted.
I stopped being a guy. I started being a woman. I transitioned from one life to
another. I told the world that I needed to make changes and that I would take
the outside that had been visible and replace it with something from inside. I
would make the reflection I saw in the mirror match my self-image.
So when I
asked our unsuspecting dinner guest if I was the same person I used to be, it
meant a bit more to me personally. Had I morphed so dramatically that I was no
longer that “me” that I had carried along for so many years? I know that some
people in my life have mourned through the changes while also welcoming the
birth. I know that some people have been left behind, unwilling or unable to
comprehend what needed to happen. And I know that some people in my life now
never knew me any other way and would be deeply uncomfortable if the “old me”
were to come rushing in.
I know that
I remember a life that is becoming a distant wisp of memory and I embrace a
life that is vibrant and immediate.
But what
was our guest going to say? What was this young man who had known me for eight
years going to say? Would he say that, yes, I was the same person? And what
would that mean? That I had just changed my clothes and hair and name, the
outsides, but that I was still the same old dude as before? Would he say that I
was a totally new person and that I had killed the old one, that I had taken
that life so I could lead my life? Would I still be real?
I asked
him, “Am I the same person I used to be?” Without pause to consider he
answered, “No.”
This was no philosophy class
thought experiment for him. It was a practical question that was now asked and
answered. No, I was not the same person I used to be. I admit to letting a
little sigh of expectantly captured breath escape. Because I knew that this
meant that the many people from “before” who have shared my adventure did it
because they accepted the “old me” and they now accept the “new me.” They
aren’t waiting for the previous person to come back, because he can’t. They are
here with me in the present and going with me into the future.
For my part, I look at pictures of
“me” from the past and I can’t help but see a subtle tinge of pathos. The smile
is pinched, the eyes are tight and the lips are thin. Pictures of this new me,
the one that is not the same person I used to be, are different, the smile is
genuine, the eyes are bright, the lips are laughing. It is the real me that was
masked inside before. The old person was a shell that finally popped open. The
seed that released the plant. The chrysalis that let out the butterfly. The man
that mothered a woman. I thank that old me and let him go.
