Are We Merely Players?
I was with a group of friends recently, and one of them said, “Performing our identities can be tiring.”
My first thought was that’s not me. I’m not performing an identity any longer. I’m not wearing a mask. I’m my true self. After more than 58 years of pretending to be someone I wasn’t, I’m finally living authentically.
But then I did some thinking, and a bit of reading, and I realized that the face we present to the world—our identity—is really an act of performance.
Perhaps there is a true self at the core of each of us—an unchanging set of life experiences, values and personality traits that don’t change with age, gender or anything else, but I’m coming more and more to believe in a way we are preforming.
Now the mask I’m wearing fits. It’s a much truer reflection of the person I am, inside and out, yet it’s still also a performance. This helped me to understand why I sometimes feel tired being me. Because a lot of people know me, and I’m considered a prominent face of the local trans community, I feel obligated to do the best presentation of self that I can muster.
It’s not just about not leaving the house without at least putting on lipstick. It’s making sure that I can convey the joy, the fulfillment, the sense of rebirth I feel every day of my journey. So many people are happy seeing me get to be me that I feel something between a desire and obligation to show them that I am happy.
And I am happy. I am proud to be me. And I’m feeling defiant. Defiant of a world that increasingly wants to deny us, discriminate against us and kill us.
In the neighborhood where I grew up, there was a man who survived one of the German concentration camps who was a regular at the corner coffee counter. I remember meeting him and seeing the tattoo on his arm. He said most of us in this country don’t appreciate the freedoms we have.
They aren’t rounding us up and putting us in camps—yet—but I am sure there are people who would like to do just that.
Which leads to the henna tattoo I got just a couple of days ago. It’s the transgender symbol. I’m giving serious thought to making it permanent.
I see it as my statement to the world that I am done with fear, shame and hiding. This is the essence of my identity, and I will never deny it again for as long as I live—no matter what the consequences.
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Category: Transgender Body & Soul, Transgender Opinion
About the Author (Author Profile)
Claire Hall was born and grew up in a large city on the left coast and has spent most of her adult years in a beautiful small coastal community where she's now an elected official in local government after spending many years as a newspaper and radio reporter. In her space time she loves reading, writing fiction (her first novel was published by a regional press a couple of years ago), watching classic Hollywood movies, and walking.Subscribe
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