I recognize this guy

What forms our consciousness? What gives us our sense of “self”? 

This question has always fascinated me, as it has thousands of people. Since fully realizing and wholly coming to live my non-binary trans identity, though, this question has acquired a deeper meaning, maybe more complicated and/or simply more personal. 

As I stepped out of the shower last night, I saw my reflection in the cabinet mirror: my head, my face, my neck and shoulders and the upper part of my chest, to just below my nipples & pecs. And I recognized myself. 

“Of course”, you’ll say, “of course you recognized that person in the mirror!”

But no, that’s not all I mean. 

I recognized myself more wholly than almost ever before. “I recognize this guy” was the thought that went through my head. And the feeling that went through my soul was, “This guy has always been there, has always been me”. 

Of course, I have always recognized myself in the mirror, as in superficially known who that reflection belonged to and who I am. Superficially. On the surface. Mirrors have always been reflecting my image back to me and I’ve always recognized “I as I”. 

But last night the recognition was deep, profound, as if the reflected image finally reconciled with my soul but also with the deep knowledge — a knowledge that went into the bones, a bodily knowledge, a knowledge that went beyond rationality and filled the soul — that this “guy me” has always been there, has always been “the true I”. 

I had a similar feeling almost a year & a half ago, when I went to my first post-op medical appointment after my gender-affirming top-surgery and saw my new (& still battered) boy-chest and blurted out, “Oh my god, that’s real me…! I’m really trans!” 

It’s hard to put such a complex and mid-boggling feeling into words… words fall short, inevitably. 

But it’s also intriguing… What is it that makes me, us, feel this way? 

What is it that makes me feel that only now, at last, the way I look on the outside (despite this temporary wave of dysmorphia) corresponds to how I feel on the inside? And, moreover, that this feeling on the inside has always been there, I’ve always known it, despite all the social conditioning and pressure to make it (& make me) otherwise? 

I don’t know, I don’t fully understand it. But I do know that this is probably the main reason that for me I am not transitioning. While I understand the choice and/or meaning of the words transition/transitioning (even etymologically) and respect whoever feels that way, that’s not my truth, not the truth of my gender-journey, or of my journey in general: for me, it’s about having “my inside align with my outside” and coming into my “self” wholly — but this self of mine has always been there. Which is why “I recognize this guy” when I look at myself in the mirror now, feeling that “this guy” has always been there, all along, no matter how I look(ed).

… Would my father ever have been able to recognize “this guy”, too?