I’ve been a lot of people throughout my life. I think in some sense having an inconsistent identity is just a part of being a queer and trans person in a world that doesn’t allow us to grow up as ourselves. I was never given the chance to learn to love my body as I grew up. The stories I was told about so called “male” bodies never aligned with my desires for my future. I wanted to be nurturing, loving, creative, not domineering, triumphant, or possessive. Over time, I learned to find ways of loving my body, and I eventually decided that as I became a new person yet again, there were some parts of my physical self that I needed to leave behind. But before I did so, I wanted to at least learn to see my old body as something neutral. As a tool neither meant solely for nurturing or domineering, but simply for living.
I joined this project because I wanted to capture the way I had learned to inhabit a body that I knew I would eventually leave behind. A few weeks after shooting, I checked into St. Francis Memorial Hospital for vaginoplasty with Dr. Heidi Wittenberg. But in the wave of emotions that followed my surgery, I found myself unable to write anything. What words could I possibly add to memorialize the ineffable relationship between an unstable self and the body I finally loved but had to leave behind? I believe the photos we chose speak for themselves. When I look back on them, I can appreciate the body that nurtured me even as I outgrew it.