Tranniversaries

The easy take on this time of year is to pull out that hoary old canard – the New Year’s Resolution. The tired cliche of all the tings we resolve to do starting January 1, paired of course with the wry acknowledgment that almost every one will lapse before the end of that month, is as much an icon of that holiday as Santa is of the one just past.

But rather than indulge in the lazy ploy of writing on that theme, let me riff sideways just a bit and use it as an occasion to discuss the tendency most of us have to mark important landmarks in our transition (if we have one) or lifestyle (or whatever word we choose to use for a crossdressing hobby). In my experience it’s very very common for a trans girl to say things like “Three years ago today I came out” or “this makes 2 years on HRT” or whatever. I confess I’m one of those who remembers those important dates. I call these Tranniversaries.

Now some people like to tie these in with already existing occasions, a holiday, a birthday, the occasion of some other memorable event. Other make the random day a memorable event by virtue of remembering some milestone. Most of us, I assume, have some mixture of the two. I mean, honestly, you have the long desired opportunity to start HRT, are you really going to wait another 3 months just so you can start on your birthday? Most won’t.. n the other hand, if the day has come to come out to some significant person, choosing to do so on New Years, or your birthday, or even “National Coming Out Day” might seem appropriate to you. Either way, you tend to remember.

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I know the exact day I first told my spouse about my “condition,” the day on which my coming out to the world was effected by a visit from some in-laws (A story I’ll have to tell you sometime), the day I started HRT, and so forth. I don’t tend to make a big production out of these, except when the intervening time seems like an “important” number (which is to say, one year, five years, whatever) – I never “got” the folks who say “it’s been 4 months” as if anyone ever notes the passage of four months’ time – but be sure I keep up with it.

Still with all that said, all of us seem to have that little instinct to say “the thing I was thinking of doing anyway, I think I’ll start on New Years” or on some other occasion of mote. I once thought to myself that when I change my name, I’d either do it on the anniversary of the day I began my transition, on my birthday, or – just for ironic spite – on my dad’s birthday. But I don’t think of these as “resolutions” so much as milestones. For most of us, changing your name or starting HRT is not the sort of thing you are going to falter in your resolve on as you would a resolution to lose weight.

So I won’t ask about your New Years resolutions, but about your milestones. Do you have in your past, or future, life events which you chose to tie to New Years Day, or any other already existing anniversary in your life? What are your tranniversaries?

Photo by: Alyson Hurt