I need to be a boy/1979

(9th grade picture.)

I wanted to be a boy to stop the pain from being a girl. I was afraid to become a woman. I used to hide in the bathroom and take a black marker until I had made a beard on my face. There were times I would sneak Boi’s blue suit into the bathroom and wear it, while I had marked my face. I would just stare at the young man looking back from the mirror. I liked that young man, he would never get hurt.

I used to believe there was strength in being a boy. When I started my therapy with Larry he asked me if I wanted a penis when I told him I wanted to be a man. But I didn’t want one. No I wanted the security that came with being a male. It wasn’t about sex it was about being safe inside my own skin. It was about not being punched in the face with the fist of a man who was supposed to love me. How could momma stand it, I knew it must have hurt, she was bruised afterwards, sometimes her eye was closed. I just didn’t want to be a girl, the bleeding, the vulnerability, carrying a baby with a placenta, although I didn’t know about a placenta then, I didn’t want to be hit while I was pregnant. My beard was about freedom, and I didn’t want to be a slave to a man.

I used to get a rash on my face from scrubbing the marker off with soap. It didn’t come off that easily. It required a good scrub. Sometimes remnants of the marker was left, this is what momma saw.

“Why is there marker on your face?” Momma would ask.

“It isn’t marker.” I would lie.

“Your face is red Matita.” Momma would say.

I don’t know how or why she suspected what I was doing. Did she say, “Matita I understand why you want to be a boy.” No, we didn’t talk about it. She told me, “Snap out of it. Don’t write on your face anymore.”

When momma found out what I was doing, she told me to stop there wasn’t those types of conversations back then. I really identified with not being a female, it hurt to have to be a female. I used to wear a windbreaker even in the summer to hide my blossoming breasts. I didn’t want breasts it was too hard to have breasts. But I couldn’t hide the fact that I was a female, with a period.

“So God created man in His own image; in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them.”

(Genesis 1:27)

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“For You have formed my inward parts;

You covered me in my mother’s womb,

I will praise You, for I am fearfully and

Wonderfully made;

Marvelous are Your works,

And that my soul knows very well.”

(Psalm 139:13-14)