The Weight That Cannot Be Set Down

On Dissonance, Duty, and the Sacred Burden of Existence

I do not know how I am supposed to feel. That, more than anything, is the prevailing sensation of the past ten days — ten days in which executive orders have tightened around transsexuals like a noose, their justification echoing familiar refrains. They are what I always expected, yet they are not weightless. I have always understood the concerns that undergird these actions, at least on some level. But understanding does not spare me from the weight of being caught in the indiscriminate reach of these decisions. I do not rage, yet I am not numb. I do not despair, yet I feel the full weight of my existence pressing down on me.

And so, as I watch it all unfold from my forced, fragile exile across the Atlantic, I realise that what I feel most acutely is not injustice. It is dissonance. Not the fact that I would be barred from military service, but the phrasing, the quiet condemnation buried in bureaucratic language. ‘A conflict with an honourable, truthful, and disciplined lifestyle.’ As though my existence itself is inherently lacking in those things. As though the integrity with which I have lived, the meticulous construction of my life, the sacrifice, the endurance, the unwavering conviction — it all amounts to nothing. That even in my most disciplined, most structured self, I am still unacceptable. Not for what I have done, but for what I am.

And then there is the medical care. The quiet, necessary interventions that turned me from a shell into someone who could inhabit their own life, now deemed ‘mutilation’ by the highest power in the land. Banned for those under nineteen. It is not the ban itself that stays with me — I have always known that my existence was an anomaly of timing, a brief convergence of medical advancement and fleeting tolerance. That I was permitted to inhabit this body not by inevitability, but by historical accident. That I was allowed to heal only because I reached the threshold before the door sealed shut behind me. No, what lingers is the cognitive dissonance of it all. The widening gap between what they say and what I know to be true. It is like being caught between someone who acts as though open-heart surgery is a trivial cosmetic procedure and someone who believes it is a horror beyond reckoning. Neither framework fits me. Neither explains my life. And yet, this dissonance is the acceptable cost of policy, the inevitable consequence of ideological convenience.

But perhaps the most painful part is not the dissonance itself, nor even the weight of the world’s judgment, but the knowledge that I must let myself feel all of it. I cannot suppress it, cannot go numb. There is no escape, no absolution from it. I have spent my entire life enduring the unendurable by locking the weight away, by pressing forward without pausing long enough to drown in it. But in the moments when no one is looking, when I can let my breath hitch and the tears fall without anyone seeing them and trying to make them stop, I force myself to acknowledge the totality of it.

This weight was given to me; it is mine to bear.

To bear this weight is to inhabit the dissonance between the narratives others project onto me and the truth of my life. Executive orders may describe my existence as incompatible with honour, discipline, or truth, but I know what it took to build this self. I know the discipline it required to face the abyss of sex dysphoria and not be seduced by the pull of oblivion. I know the courage it took to remake my body, the relentless truth I had to confront about who I am. And yet, I also know the pain of being deemed a pariah — not because I faltered in that, but because I lived it too fully for others to accept.

I do not react with anger; I react with the knowing of someone who has already faced this verdict in a thousand different ways, long before it was written into policy. Perhaps this is why I cannot simply go numb. Because to go numb would be to refuse the life I have lived. Because while I do not believe in the sanctity of detachment, I do believe that to carry the weight is an act of faith.

I am not permitted the illusion of irrelevance. I cannot say, this does not concern me, because it does. I cannot say, this is not meant for me, because it is. I cannot say, this is only about others, because I am bound to them. It is the inheritance of every version of me that came before — the child who didn’t yet have the words to explain her pain, the adolescent who begged for invisibility, the young adult who walked into a world that would not make space for her unless she carved it herself. It is also the weight of those who will come after me, younger transsexuals who will feel the impact of these policies before they can even articulate the harm. To suppress this weight would be to abandon them, just as I was abandoned. It would be to deny the sanctity of my struggle, to sever myself from the covenant that binds me to my past, present, and future selves.

This is where I find resonance with Adam II, the lonely man of faith who does not transcend the weight of his humanity but embraces it as a sacred obligation. Adam II knows that the fractures in his life, the moments where the world presses most heavily upon him, are not flaws to be erased but holy tensions to be sanctified. He lives within the dissonance because to evade it would be to deny the meaning found in its midst. So too do I live within this weight, not because it is easy or even bearable, but because it is mine. To carry it is to affirm that I exist, that I matter, that the struggle to live as I am is not futile, but a testament to the sanctity of my being.

And yet, beneath this weight, beneath the exhaustion and dissonance, I find a light made more radiant by the shadows that loom — gratitude. Not for the present moment, but for the naivety of the person I once was. The younger version of me could not have conceived of all of this, and in that ignorance, there was mercy.

Back then, all the weight was internal, and I did not understand how much heavier it would become. I thought that if I could just survive the war within myself, if I could just reach the other side of dysphoria’s despair, I would be free. But I was never prepared for what it would mean to be at peace with my existence and despised for it.

I did not understand that I would trade the weight of being invisible in my suffering for the weight of being unseen in my wholeness.

I knew what it was to fight an invisible battle, to be unseen and in conflict with myself. But now, I know what it is to be at peace in my body while the world wages war on my existence. To be invisible, demonised, and yet still standing. I grieve the loss of that ignorance, but I am also grateful for it — it allowed me to take the first steps without being paralysed by the daunting terrain ahead.

This is the paradox of my existence: to carry a weight that is both unbearable and sacred. To live within dissonance and find meaning there. I was born into a world that demanded my erasure, and my survival is its own burden, because to exist in defiance is not a triumph, but an unending responsibility.

To carry this weight is my duty, not because I am strong, but because it is mine.

And perhaps, it is also my sanctity.

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Tired Transsexual is a woman born transsexual who lives in the UK. She was previously on Twitter/X with the handle @tiredtransmed.