Hannah McKnight: Letting Go of Envy

 

Potential and possibility can be both inspiring and heartbreaking.

When you aspire to something and you know it CAN be achieved, motivation can really kick in. It’s not an impossibility. It can be done. Others have made the same dream come true so there is precedent and maybe even a little bit of a map.

But on the other side of the coin, knowing that it CAN be done can crush your soul into a million teeny tiny pieces that can make your aspirations seem like a burden instead of something that motivates you.

When I embraced who I was, dreams and wishes and aspirations filled my head in a way that was overwhelming. I wanted to LOOK a certain way, I wanted to wear certain clothes, I wanted Hannah to do things… whether it was something I did frequently in male mode or something brand new. There was a happy mixture of potential and naivety in those days.

It’s amazing what we think can be done when no one tells us it isn’t possible.

But dreams take work, wishing won’t just make something happen. No matter how many times I fell asleep dreaming of a beautiful gown, the dream would never come true unless I went to the mall and bought it myself.

When you accept what needs to be done in order for a dream to be reality, that’s when your heart will either encourage and motivate you or if your heart will whisper things we don’t want to hear.

When I look back on my life and my journey, I think about two different significant moments. The first is when I was very young and I would borrow my sisters’ clothes or I would stare longingly at the models in a Victoria’s Secret catalog. Oh my heart just ached wanting to have dresses of my very own and daydreaming about panties. I am sure my younger self would have never believed that one day he would have a wardrobe filled with the most beautiful (and sexy and a little slutty lol) clothes he could ever wish for.

The other moment is the aforementioned time when I accepted who I was and when I embraced who I am. Embracing oneself and accepting oneself are not the same thing. You can acknowledge who you are, you can acknowledge what you wish for, you can acknowledge that this side of you is not going away… but that doesn’t mean you like it. Some of us feel that our heart’s desires are a burden. Some of us wish that we could wave a magic wand and “be normal”.

But embracing yourself is not only acknowledging who you are, but also running with it. It’s knowing that this side of you, although in many ways can make your life more difficult, but also knowing that this side of you fills your soul with happiness. If wearing panties makes you happy, then why not wear panties?

When I embraced myself, I let my dreams that lay dormant for decades make themselves known. What did I want to do? Where did I want to go? What did I want to wear? All of these things became possibilities. I thought about them without paying much attention to how it could be done, or if it was even possible. Again, naivety can play a part in this.

When we want something, we can do two things. We can keep wishing for it or we can try to make it happen. Making anything happen requires you to, well, come up with a plan. If you want a cake, then you need to buy the ingredients, follow a recipe, and be patient while it bakes. No matter how much you WANT to have cake, it’s never going to magically appear. You are the vessel for the magic to work.

This applies to who we are, as gender non-conforming people. A frequent email I get from others is “how do I crossdress?” and my response is, depending on how one takes it, is either so simple that their crossdressing aspirations become easy, or, well, kind of bitchy.

How do you crossdress? It’s easy. You buy the clothes you want to wear. And then you wear the clothes you bought.

I mean, that’s the practical part of crossdressing. It’s blindingly obvious. Therefore, it’s easy to think I am being bitchy.

Annnnnd sometimes I am, lol.

But I know that there’s more to this than just buying the clothes you want to wear and then wearing the clothes you want to wear.

There’s the challenge of making the transition between ACCEPTING oneself and EMBRACING oneself. There’s the challenge of overcoming your fear of actually buying the panties you wish to wear. There’s the challenge of knowing what size you are.

When someone asks me how to crossdress, they know that they need to buy the clothes they want to wear, and then wear the clothes they buy. What most people are (probably) asking is how can they overcome their fears? How can they rise to the challenges they perceive? How do they have The Talk with their partner?

But those are questions that can take a long time to answer and are very complex and multi-faceted and usually interwoven into other things. My intention with telling someone that if they want to wear panties then they should buy panties is that I want to take something that is very likely overwhelming into two very simple steps.

If there’s anything else you want to have in life, regardless of your gender identity or your goals, then you need to do the work that it will take. The obstacle that many of us have, whether it’s a real one or one that is perceived or, in some cases, an obstacle we placed ourselves, is that the work we need to put in feels like, well, too much work.

Sometimes that work requires decisions that we are not sure if they are the right decisions for us.

What I mean is that Hannah’s goal is to look as beautiful or as sexy or as cute as possible, depending on my mood. My intention is to look and present as feminine as I can.

It’s inspirational but equally discouraging when I recall a quote from writer Bill Widener. He wrote “do what you can, with what you have, where you are”. It’s a very realistic perspective. I present as femme as I possibly can, but I am also limited by other attributes which trigger feelings of dysphoria.

As someone who was assigned male at birth, because of, you know, my penis, I was as raised as a boy. My biology went along with that and I developed physical attributes that are commonly identified as masculine. Without makeup my face is fairly masculine. Contouring and foundation and everything else does a lot of heavy lifting and essentially my face looks as femme as it can.

Buuuut if I see a photo of another t-girl who has a very feminine (in the traditional binary thinking) face (or hands or frame or other features) I feel a mix of envy and ambition and discouragement. I don’t feel these things when I see a gorgeous cisgender girl but for someone who was assigned the same gender as myself at birth? Oh girl. Envy with a capital E.  

Logically I know we all have different facial structures and all that, and I know that there are no standards one must have to be femme, but I suppose my thinking is that if they can be that beautiful, why can’t I?

I admit that these feelings can be petty and thankfully I don’t feel them for very long or as intensely as I used to, but they still creep their way into my heart.

If I am being honest, one thing that makes me feel a little better is learning if they have taken steps in their life, that I have not, that have contributed to their appearance. What I mean is that sometimes another t-girl is on estrogen or has had surgeries that have helped reshape their facial structure to a shape that is more aligned with their gender identity.

That’s not to say that they were not drop-dead gorgeous before they took those steps, but hormones and medical procedures can impact how someone physically looks.

And these are not steps I feel that are right for me. I COULD go on HRT and that could likely help me achieve an appearance that is arguably more feminine, but honestly that would be the only reason I would go on HRT. What I mean is that I do not feel that transitioning is the right path for me.

We all have different reasons and feelings for the decisions we make, but personally I feel that if I were to transition I would need to feel two different things:

1. I am happier presenting as feminine
2. I am unhappy presenting as masculine

I have never felt uncomfortable or unhappy in male mode. Sure, Hannah has more fun than my male persona, but Hannah does fun things. His life consists of working and household chores and other grown up stuff. Were I to transition, Hannah’s life would then include boring meetings and trying to figure out how to replace a kitchen faucet.

Perhaps it’s shallow to admit, but I am comforted that I feel I look as femme as I possibly can with what I have. I could look MORE femme, but that would require steps that I don’t feel are right for me.

I feel it’s important that I remember this. I feel it helps keep my jealousy contained and I feel it helps my self-esteem. It’s not unlike being envious of a co-worker who makes the same salary as you do but they have a really nice car or whatever. You might wonder why you don’t have the same things. After all, you make the same salaries. You might be envious of their luxuries but if you learn that their spouse has a trust fund and they have zillions of dollars then you might feel a little less discouraged.  

Love, Hannah