MYSTORY with …
anastasia
49 years, berlin
“my visible expression as gender non-conforming does not take away my womanhood.”
Published: November 2023
I don’t really know when my conscious and arduous journey to myself began. I’m not even sure if that’s the crucial point for this story. When I look back on my life today, I realize that I need and want to make a distinction between the journey towards me as a transgender woman and my life as a trans* woman. This distinction is important to me personally, because life after coming out in 2015 has shaped me as a trans* and queer person much more than anything before.
At the age of 17, I found myself in my mother’s closet and felt something inexplicable.
I became more and more certain that I was not the man the world saw in me and treated me as such. However I couldn’t and didn’t want to deal with these feelings. I pushed back my true identity and forced myself into the classic heteronormative patterns. I married my first wife in my mid-twenties. At that time, I was already a soldier in the German army. I was drafted in 1994 and then decided to become an officer. My life was shaped by two institutions that both saw me as a man and always expected me to be. I was good at suppressing my needs. The lack of trans* role models in society reinforced my need to actively work against my inner self. Shame and disgust towards myself were my constant companions.
I finally broke this pattern in 2015. I couldn’t go on and I didn’t want to. It wasn’t courage, it was desperation. I finally wanted to live. I wanted to be me. This step marked the beginning of the second phase. During the transition, I realized that I could be me, but that this path was also marked by obstacles and a society that was not always accepting. I wanted to be visible to other trans* people. I wanted to be a point of reference for others and I wanted to tell my story. This thought awakened an incredible amount of strength in me. I got more and more involved and slowly became an activist for trans* and queer rights – both in my workplace and outside of society.
I continued to fight against externally determined attributions and role expectations of my outwardly lived, female gender. I have had enough of being constantly judged by how feminine I appear to others.
Which attributes on me, on my body, confirm me as a woman in the perception of others and which give an indication of my non-cis nature. I am happy to have finally reached the point where I no longer need confirmation from others. For years, the feeling of not being able to exist outwardly as a woman has held me back in my identity. And my non-conformity, my visible expression as gender non-conforming, does not take away my womanhood.
I’m Anastasia, 49, colorful, loud and queer. I’m a unicorn in camouflage and I fight to the utmost for the cause I believe in. Revolution instead of evolution.