Lexie Bean on Nostr: Sometimes I feel nervous about my online publishing work disappearing from the ...
Sometimes I feel nervous about my online publishing work disappearing from the original platforms with so much turnover in digital journalism and various waves of censorship. I’ll be re-publishing pieces here as backup over the coming weeks. Here is an essay I wrote for Teen Vogue back in 2017. “Valentine's Day Letter to My Body Parts,” a topic that has been on my mind with a recent injury. It tells the story of how I started collecting letters people wrote to their body parts, and the tangle of navigating trans identity and sexual abuse. This essay was an important part of the domino effect that led to the publishing of my third anthology, WRITTEN ON THE BODY, full of letters that trans and non-binary survivors of DV and SA sent to their body parts.
***
I sent myself the only Valentine that made me cry. Days alone in a hospital bed tucked between dim lights and a thick language barrier, I could no longer deny how far I tried to run from my own body. I originally admitted myself seeking a diagnosis to understand the hurt I had collected over the years. I was a seeking a cure to overcome feeling, as I made the assumption that healing meant every day got better. It just wasn't working out for me.
For years I went in and out of the hospital without a diagnosis. I was simply afraid of my body — heavy with the question, “Will anyone believe me?” I closed the notebook onto my lap, IV dripping into my tired veins, it is from there I started writing letters to my body parts. I had to make it better by carving out a place for myself instead of carving into my own skin.
I am trans. From a young age I was sexually and emotionally abused. I rarely place these sentences next to each other because I don't want anyone to confuse my trauma with my liberation. Forced into someone else's destination, nothing about rape taught me to be honest with myself. I grew from a place where telling my body’s truth would uproot everything. Language was used to manipulate my boundaries. Silence was better. The hurt said it was best to become a see-through version of myself so I don’t have to keep falling into the trauma of fallen toys.
Yet I am often asked when coming out as LGBTQ* is “Do you feel that way because someone did that to you? Because you still have healing to do?” Who I am has no root. Feeling seen is nothing to recover from.
I thought for too long that if identities and dreams were compartmentalized, I would be safer. I would be more valuable if I were easier to understand. Stumbling over my pronouns, sending me back home, people didn't always know what to do with me. I could be a sweet girl, I could have a safe suburban family, ignoring everything that didn't fit into their fantasy. I tried to beat them to the punch by pre-maturely erasing myself through dissociation, self-diagnosing with anything that fit into one word, and attempting suicide. There is that subtle yet persistent feeling of being out of place that cuts and cuts and cuts. I didn’t understand until I moved out of my Michigan hometown why almost all of my Gay-Straight Alliance friends covered their arms with wristbands from Claire’s.
The last year I went to the hospital I wrote three letters to my body parts: one to my leg hair, one to the space between my hips, and another to the baby teeth that now live in my mother's night stand. I only wrote to the pieces of myself that I have tried to detach from while seeking safety. I was learning to stay one piece at a time. I was learning how to find a safe space to meet myself with honesty. I had not yet come out as trans.
I had sent to my leg hair, “I sometimes pretend you are fields of restless wheat that outline my home.” I held my knees as I recalled the space between my hips, “I feel responsible — you lost a body that you can never grow back. You are now unsealed, and bore with holes for nightmares to sink into your folds... There is only evidence of that someone else was here pushing, pushing, pushing. I catch my breath.” I told my estranged baby teeth, “Looking into her nightstand, there's evidence of bodies that were never whole. Children who had never known what it meant to have these baby teeth. Each and all teeth shed served as evidence of he who abused his duties as the tooth fairy.”
None of my early letters ended with the word “love.” Sometimes they still don't, and that's OK. Like healing, relationships are never linear. I wanted every part of me to survive whether or not they were perfect. As in any connection, there are days it seemed as if the tenderness will last forever, some days are more like playing hard to get, or it's a fight. Sometimes I can't look at the other without seeing the men who hurt me and kicked me out of my own house.
Sometimes peace looks more like conflict. Sometimes positivity looks more like moving and feeling in every direction. Sometimes love looks more like letting the seemingly unlovable parts of me survive. Love is trusting I will never be just one thing. This Valentine's Day, I'm going to return to all the parts of myself I tried to cut off for the convenience of others. I'm going to write to my body parts difficult to hold as I seek wholeness, in a shape that no one has ever seen before.
For the record, I haven't been in the hospital since 2012, the same year I sent my first letters.
***
I sent myself the only Valentine that made me cry. Days alone in a hospital bed tucked between dim lights and a thick language barrier, I could no longer deny how far I tried to run from my own body. I originally admitted myself seeking a diagnosis to understand the hurt I had collected over the years. I was a seeking a cure to overcome feeling, as I made the assumption that healing meant every day got better. It just wasn't working out for me.
For years I went in and out of the hospital without a diagnosis. I was simply afraid of my body — heavy with the question, “Will anyone believe me?” I closed the notebook onto my lap, IV dripping into my tired veins, it is from there I started writing letters to my body parts. I had to make it better by carving out a place for myself instead of carving into my own skin.
I am trans. From a young age I was sexually and emotionally abused. I rarely place these sentences next to each other because I don't want anyone to confuse my trauma with my liberation. Forced into someone else's destination, nothing about rape taught me to be honest with myself. I grew from a place where telling my body’s truth would uproot everything. Language was used to manipulate my boundaries. Silence was better. The hurt said it was best to become a see-through version of myself so I don’t have to keep falling into the trauma of fallen toys.
Yet I am often asked when coming out as LGBTQ* is “Do you feel that way because someone did that to you? Because you still have healing to do?” Who I am has no root. Feeling seen is nothing to recover from.
I thought for too long that if identities and dreams were compartmentalized, I would be safer. I would be more valuable if I were easier to understand. Stumbling over my pronouns, sending me back home, people didn't always know what to do with me. I could be a sweet girl, I could have a safe suburban family, ignoring everything that didn't fit into their fantasy. I tried to beat them to the punch by pre-maturely erasing myself through dissociation, self-diagnosing with anything that fit into one word, and attempting suicide. There is that subtle yet persistent feeling of being out of place that cuts and cuts and cuts. I didn’t understand until I moved out of my Michigan hometown why almost all of my Gay-Straight Alliance friends covered their arms with wristbands from Claire’s.
The last year I went to the hospital I wrote three letters to my body parts: one to my leg hair, one to the space between my hips, and another to the baby teeth that now live in my mother's night stand. I only wrote to the pieces of myself that I have tried to detach from while seeking safety. I was learning to stay one piece at a time. I was learning how to find a safe space to meet myself with honesty. I had not yet come out as trans.
I had sent to my leg hair, “I sometimes pretend you are fields of restless wheat that outline my home.” I held my knees as I recalled the space between my hips, “I feel responsible — you lost a body that you can never grow back. You are now unsealed, and bore with holes for nightmares to sink into your folds... There is only evidence of that someone else was here pushing, pushing, pushing. I catch my breath.” I told my estranged baby teeth, “Looking into her nightstand, there's evidence of bodies that were never whole. Children who had never known what it meant to have these baby teeth. Each and all teeth shed served as evidence of he who abused his duties as the tooth fairy.”
None of my early letters ended with the word “love.” Sometimes they still don't, and that's OK. Like healing, relationships are never linear. I wanted every part of me to survive whether or not they were perfect. As in any connection, there are days it seemed as if the tenderness will last forever, some days are more like playing hard to get, or it's a fight. Sometimes I can't look at the other without seeing the men who hurt me and kicked me out of my own house.
Sometimes peace looks more like conflict. Sometimes positivity looks more like moving and feeling in every direction. Sometimes love looks more like letting the seemingly unlovable parts of me survive. Love is trusting I will never be just one thing. This Valentine's Day, I'm going to return to all the parts of myself I tried to cut off for the convenience of others. I'm going to write to my body parts difficult to hold as I seek wholeness, in a shape that no one has ever seen before.
For the record, I haven't been in the hospital since 2012, the same year I sent my first letters.