00:24Thank you for listening.
00:33I've actually had long hair for the better part of a decade because that was one of the first things
00:38you can do with a degree of plausible deniability in all of this. You can just be that kid that
00:43wants to have long hair and not really like do anything else. So I grew it out starting at the
00:49end of high school.
00:50My name's Hannah. I'm 30 years old. I live in Harlem and I'm a medical student. I think my life
00:56is pretty ordinary. I think finding your identity is a universal thing and I think introducing yourself again and again
01:02to people is a universal thing.
01:04I used to put on like full faces of makeup. I was nuts but nah. This is the most makeup
01:11I almost ever do. I mean the laser hair removal helps a lot and the hormones obviously coming into yourself
01:18and looking more typical for a female.
01:20The way I explain this to people sometimes I'll give them a pen and I'll say would you write your
01:25name? But with the other hand than you usually do. And they'll look at me and they say that's kind
01:31of difficult.
01:32And I say well how long did it take you to realize that wasn't working for you? And they'll say
01:37not that long at all. And I say well how do you know it's the wrong thing? And they'll say
01:41I just know. And I'll say exactly. That's the best way I can explain this part of my identity is
01:48it's been as intrinsic to me as any other part of myself. It's not a fetish. It's not a phase.
01:56It's simply what is.
01:57So every two weeks I give myself a shot of injectable estrogen and this is because my body does not
02:06make the same hormones that other natal women's bodies do.
02:11There were definitely moments I was questioning this. Definitely moments that I had to overcome. One of the big ones
02:18was as my transition loomed. I had to mourn myself and this guy who I was never perfectly fond of.
02:27But a lot of people were. And to say that this part of me, for whatever it was, perfect or
02:35otherwise, I don't get to keep building from. And that was terrifying.
02:48You don't actually think about when you're starting it or even as you're going through it that there's so much
02:55more to be gained from doing it than there is to be lost.
03:02This is my first purse from when I started going out as a female. Just a little something I worked
03:08up the courage to buy at a thrift shop. And I've been using it ever since and I still do.
03:13This is probably about eight to ten years worth of going out as a woman.
03:17Even when I'm waking up in the morning. I don't have the dysphoria and I don't have the mental overhead
03:23that I did of here's another day that I feel like a girl yet I'm going out as a guy.
03:28Now it's I get up in the morning and I say I feel like a girl. How do I make
03:32myself look a little bit better as a girl? And that's what every other girl says.
03:36To be able to walk in and to buy women's shoes and not look weird for trying on women's shoes
03:43and not feel weird. Even if nobody else is paying attention, it feels like everyone else is paying attention.
03:50And to be able to get to that point where you can just walk in and not have to think
03:55about it is an amazing experience.
03:58This is in fact the first apartment that I signed under my legal name Hannah and with that came a
04:05certain degree of joy and excitedness.
04:09This bedspread is special to me actually because I saw it and I loved it but I wasn't quite female
04:17yet.
04:17And I didn't think I could pull it off until I was so I bought it and I hid it
04:22in my basement for about three years.
04:24Kind of a gift to myself for coming out when I finally did.
04:35In the places I lived before, I was very concerned whenever I would go out of the house.
04:40I'd have to look and see through the peephole if somebody was at the doorway.
04:44I didn't want anybody to see me as if what I was doing was in some way shameful.
04:48Yet here I can just walk out the door and it's just no longer a concern what people are looking
04:53at.
04:54And it's just a concern of me getting on with my day.
05:00One of the reasons it took me many years until I was out of the house to start my process
05:06of becoming who I am is because I wanted to do it when I was a bit more independent.
05:11And that it wouldn't impact my parents and my family.
05:14Because coming out for me is also coming out for them.
05:17So I had to be prepared not just for how they were going to take it from me, but how
05:22the world was going to take it from them.
05:26I think walking through the world as Hannah now has made me a more confident person.
05:31I think even my family has picked up on that in many ways.
05:35My mother, for example, one day I came downstairs, I was wearing my dress, I was wearing stockings, had my
05:42hair done, makeup done.
05:44And she looked at me and said, Hannah, you look nice.
05:48I'm starting to get it. I have three daughters now and one son.
05:53And it was one of the nicest things she'd ever said to me that it wasn't even an issue now
05:59of her having to get and consciously think of me as Hannah.
06:04It was, she saw me now as her daughter and was actually kind of proud of the woman I've become.
06:17I think this is something that people are going to see their friends and their family members do.
06:24Not because there are more trans people now than there were in the past because there's something in the water
06:29or the air.
06:30But because we have created a society where we want to actually measure people by their character and by their
06:38content of their soul.
06:40And that this is a way to find that and be who you are.
