Dancing With Myself

When I got to college, it was a transformative experience, in many ways. I was able to leave behind the loser-nerd image I had of myself, and kind of re-invent who I was. I had already been growing my hair out, and in a just world, this would have been the time where I sat back and said, "Wait a minute, am I actually a girl?"

But that's not what happened, in any way that matters.

What did happen, however, was that I started to have a personal style that I was happier with. I was still a huge nerd, but I managed to reframe it in a way that was more positive (still a challenge in that era, when nerds were not cool). One of the things I found myself drawn to was goth fashion.

I didn't goth out all day every day, but when it was time to do something big and social, that was kind of the costume I gravitated towards. I learned how to do eyeliner (and the magic of liquid eyeliner), got myself some dark plum lipstick, and put on a face to go dancing.

I didn't really know how to dance, at this point. I was a nerd in jr. high and high school, so I was both incredibly awkward, and didn't get invited to any dances except once, which mostly served to prove how awkward I was. So I needed to learn what one does on the dance floor.

In order to do this, I observed my fellow dancers, and kind of cribbed their styles, mashing them up into somthing I liked for myself. It ended up being fairly active, with a lot of flowing movements from the people I admired most: women. There was a lot of hip-swaying (there were no signs, as is usually the case), flowing arm movements, with a mixture of vaguely martial-arts-y movements, as the music seemed to warrant. There was a certain component of pleading-to-the-heavens on occasion when a song called for it.

It was big and expressive, and substantially more movement than most other dancers, as I got around to more dance clubs and saw how others danced. At some point, one of my friends commented that I danced "like a gay guy," which was intended and taken as a big compliment. I was oddly (narrator: it wasn't odd at all) pleased by this, and kind of leaned into it without understanding why.

Once established, this dance style kind of locked in, and the few times I've been on a dance floor since then, it has come out again. It was just a way to move that felt good. I knew it was bigger and more expressive than how others danced (this kind of step-step, shift, step-step, shift dance that didn't appeal to me for myself), but didn't really think of it beyond that.

Travel forward through the years with me to the present day. After a nice Pride event, I ended up in a tiny dance party with some friends. We cranked it up, and I was finally able to express this dancing energy I'd had since about 6 months into the pandemic lockdown. I'd been hit with this powerful desire to go to a goth club, but of course I couldn't because pandemic.

So we turned up the music, and I actually put on some of the goth/industrial music i'd danced to in college. It was very cool. And of course, my big, expressive, moving-everywhere dance came back out. It's the only way I've known how to do it.

This time, however, there was a difference. I'd worn a neat skater dress to the Pride thing, and was still wearing it as we set up our tiny dance party. It fit tightly down to the waist, then flared nicely, giving me the illusion of having hips (a personal favorite). It was a reasonably spinny dress, which was a lot of fun.

So I was gyrating, and spinning, and my hair was falling in my face, and before too long I was sweating in the warm room. We had a few little flashing lights set up (that's how you do a dance party, right?) and I caught something out of the corner of my eye: my shadow as I danced. Then I stared, internally open-mouthed with shock.

It was a woman's shadow

Everything about that shadow looked female to me: shape, movement, hair, proportions, everything. That was the shadow of a woman dancing. Enjoying herself. Enjoying being in her body, in the moment, the music thudding and crashing around us. It was perfect.

It took a while to catch up with me. Sure, of course it was a woman's shadow. We were all trans at that dance party. Of course it was a woman's shadow.

But, somehow, that woman was... me?

I was. A. Woman?

The profundity of the moment I realized that is effectively beyond my ability to express in words. It screwed up my head for a solid day. I felt like I was floating, not quite as strong as when I first cracked, but honestly fairly similar.

Seeing myself as being a woman is something that's been quite elusive for me. I have too many years in this body assuming I had to be male. I've never had a moment where I looked at myself and 100% believed that I looked on the outside like the woman I felt like on the inside.

Only, now, I had.

I'm still working through what that means to me. Writing this out is part of that, though so far I haven't had any deep realizations through this process.

But I now have this thing I can point back to, where I can say, "I 100% felt like a woman in this situation. I could probably recreate it if I needed to, but now that I've seen it, I don't need to." Even better, I can see it tying back to much earlier in my life, when I established something about myself, unthinking though it was, that was yet another There Were No Signs™ moment. Not only have I seen the woman in me, I can trace her clearly back to my early 20s.

I definitely want to go dancing in a more public setting now, though. Because, goddamn.