Bilateral Dysphoria
Cissexism hits from all sides.
I had been avoiding mirrors for awhile. The man on the other side was a perfectly adequate human being, but he always looked dour, and so boring. I hated smiling as him. Tiredness always clouded his eyes. It made me kind of sad to see him, but I could get away with not thinking about it.
I didn’t obsess over his appearance the way I had as a girl. I could let a flyaway hair or a cyst on his back just be for days. But I never delighted in seeing him either. When I looked away, and had no confirmation of what he looked like, he became featureless in my mind, and unappealing.
In public, my arms and neck felt stiff all the time. I couldn’t walk down the street with ease, or lose myself in my music. I was so conscious of the space that he occupied, hypervigilant against intruding against anyone, and yet insulted when crowds treated me like I was invisible and bumbled into me. My shoulders kissed my ears and my hands and feet felt like solid concrete, too hard to move.
I stopped taking selfies. Even if a new outfit excited me, I didn’t really like how it looked on him. There was a disjoint between the person that he was and the one my mind recalled us being. It was always a let down, like revisiting an old neighborhood and finding a favorite gay bar, glittering and rough-edged, had become…
