Managing the Ups, Downs and Plateaus of Transition

There is something about transition that we don’t talk about nearly enough: the ‘nothing’ parts, or the plateaus.

We talk about the difficult parts, of course. Coming out, dysphoria, waiting lists, medical appointments, hormones, surgery, changing your name and documents, finding clothes that feel right, and learning how to navigate the world as yourself. We also talk about the joy: that first moment when you look in the mirror and recognise yourself, the first time somebody uses your correct name, or the excitement of seeing changes from HRT. There is something quite special about seeing your name on an official document for the first time, or opening that new birth certificate and realising that this really is your life now.

Those milestones can be incredibly important. For many of us, they are things we’ve spent years dreaming about.

But eventually, something rather strange can happen. You reach one milestone, look ahead, and realise the next one isn’t anywhere close. Or perhaps there isn’t an obvious next one at all.

For many trans people, transition can become a remarkably intense period of life. There always seems to be something happening. Something to arrange, something to change, something to wait for, something to fight for. Even when the process is difficult, there can be a strange comfort in having something ahead of you.

You can spend years thinking, “Once I start hormones, things will feel better.” Then it’s “Once I’ve had surgery,” or “Once I’ve changed my name,” or “Once my documents are sorted.” There is always another milestone in the distance that you can imagine will bring you a little closer to where you want to be.

But those milestones don’t necessarily come one after another.

Sometimes you reach one, celebrate it, and then discover that the next one is a long way off. Perhaps you’re waiting for an appointment, saving for something you can’t afford yet, stuck on a waiting list, or simply not in a position to make the next change. You have reached one point, but the next point isn’t close enough to keep moving towards.

And that’s where I think the ‘plateau downs’ can happen.

You haven’t stopped because you’ve failed. You’ve stopped because, for the moment, there isn’t anywhere obvious to go.

That can feel surprisingly unsettling when you’ve spent so long moving forwards.

A plateau isn’t necessarily a sign that anything has gone wrong. Sometimes it is simply what happens when you’ve spent years climbing towards somewhere and suddenly find yourself standing still for a while.

And when you’ve spent so long moving forwards, standing still can feel like going backwards.

The plateau isn’t necessarily the end of transition. It can happen anywhere along the way. It might be after a relatively small milestone, when the next thing you want is months away, or it might happen after one of the really big milestones when you suddenly realise there isn’t another obvious one waiting for you.

The further you travel, the more significant that feeling can sometimes become. Eventually, you may reach a point where many of the things you once dreamed about have happened, and there simply isn’t another major milestone that you need to reach.

But the feeling itself isn’t reserved for that point.

A bad dysphoria day can suddenly feel significant. Perhaps a photograph catches you at an unflattering angle, or someone misgenders you — something that can happen to cis people too, although we sometimes forget that. Perhaps you notice something about your body that you haven’t thought about for months.

And suddenly that old fear creeps back in.

Have I gone backwards?

Usually, the answer is no. You’ve just had a difficult day.

There is a difference between feeling that something has changed and something actually changing.

I think there is another reason these feelings can be so difficult. We are constantly surrounded by questions which, although usually well intentioned, reinforce the idea that transition is a project with an endpoint.

“Have you fully transitioned?”

“What else do you need to do?”

“Will you have more surgery?”

“Are you going to have any more procedures?”

“Will you have to be on hormones for the rest of your life?”

Most of the time, people asking these questions are simply curious, or trying to understand something they haven’t experienced themselves. But they are also remarkably cis-centred questions. They assume there is a standard transition pathway: a checklist, a beginning, a middle and an end.

And perhaps most importantly, they can leave us feeling as though we’re supposed to have an answer to the question, “What’s next?”

But what if there isn’t anything next?

What if I don’t want anything else?

What if I’m happy?

For me, that is where the distinction between “transitioning” and “having transitioned” becomes really important.

I have transitioned

I have transitioned.

I deliberately use the past tense when I talk about my own transition.

For me, I transitioned the moment I finally figured out who I am. Everything I have done since then has been about being me and making my life better.

That might sound like a small distinction, but I think it is an important one. I don’t consider myself to be permanently “transitioning”. I’m living my life. I’m working, loving, learning and making mistakes. I’m changing my mind, growing older and discovering new things about myself — just like everybody else.

That doesn’t mean I’ve become a finished person. None of us are finished.

Our identities can evolve. Our priorities change, our relationships change, our appearance changes, we get older, our interests change, and sometimes our understanding of ourselves changes too.

But change doesn’t automatically mean transition.

There is another part of this that I think deserves a name. I’ve sometimes called it the Cinderella effect.

It is the fear that the clock will strike midnight and everything will disappear.

After working so hard to build a life that finally feels like yours, there can be a strange fear that somehow it is temporary. What if the hormones stop? What if your body changes? What if people stop seeing you as yourself? What if somebody discovers who you used to be? What if you lose something you’ve worked so hard to gain?

What if tomorrow you wake up and somehow you’re back where you started?

It can feel like you’re waiting for midnight.

But transition isn’t a spell.

There isn’t a version of you underneath it all who is waiting to return. The things you’ve achieved aren’t suddenly erased because you’ve had a bad day, or because something about your life changes.

Nobody can take away the experiences you’ve had, the relationships you’ve built, or the memories of those moments when you finally recognised yourself. And nobody else gets to decide that you are not who you know yourself to be.

And perhaps that’s why the plateau downs and the Cinderella effect are connected. Both can come from the same fear: that somehow we haven’t done enough, or that what we’ve achieved could somehow be taken away.

Perhaps one of the hardest things to learn after transition is that you don’t have to keep proving that you’ve transitioned.

You don’t have to keep ticking boxes or looking for the next procedure, the next change or the next milestone. You don’t have to justify your existence by demonstrating how far you’ve come, and you don’t have to feel euphoric about it every day.

You are allowed to have an ordinary Tuesday. You can forget about being trans for a while. You can have a bad day, change your mind about what you want, or decide that something you once thought was essential isn’t important to you anymore. None of that makes your transition any less real.

That, I think, is the part of transition that doesn’t get talked about enough: the quiet bit afterwards.

The bit where you stop asking, “When will I finally get to be myself?” and start realising:

“I am myself.”

The journey didn’t fail because it reached a plateau.

The plateau was the point.

And if the occasional fear of midnight comes along, remember this:

There was never a spell. There was never a temporary version of you.

There was just you.

And after everything you’ve been through to find yourself, you are allowed to simply be.