Damsel in Dissociation

There are two wolves inside you - the Family You and the Real You

“It’s funny how you just, like, dissociate,” my sister says without a laugh. In my dad’s house, I’m staring out a window, eyes glazed toward an intangible middle distance.

The house sits on Lake Santa Barbara in Fort Lauderdale, offering a plush tropical vista of cobalts and emeralds. Despite it being Christmas, the weather calls for shorts and T-shirts. The concrete glows, and the palm trees’ velvet wings wave in the wind. Fish clamor under the neon blue dock light while an iguana sunbathes above. The Trump flags demarking neighboring houses evaporate, and I imagine I am in Lord of the Flies.

After months of New York’s ruthless finger-cracking chill and 4 PM sunsets, the scenery feels handpainted. Stepping into the landscape, I leave my family behind while my body melts into the chair. Untethered, my raft of consciousness drifts endlessly across the still water. The voices in my head quiet to a whisper.

These tranquil moments are only interrupted when I am pulled into conversation. My Abuela pinches my cheeks and says, “¡mi niñito!” with a beaming grin and a front tooth stained with her signature red lipstick. My dad’s post-divorce wife, who also likes electronic music and partying, asks me about my music taste in an earnest attempt to bond. My Abuelo feels my body and tells me I need to eat more. But even these superficial engagements feel like distant voices interrupting a dream. I stir half-awake and offer a stilted grin before nodding back into the reverie. However, this dissociative fugue is more than a daydream, it’s a part of me.

My dad and I fought endlessly in my childhood. As a pilot, he was away for days at a time. Every afternoon, when I got off the bus and walked down my cul-de-sac, I would stretch my neck in anticipation to see around the corner of our suburban brick home. Whether I saw his souped-up, lifted red truck in the driveway would determine my mood for the evening.

At around 10 or 12, I struggled with the cognitive dissonance of feeling belittled without having the language to fight back. I had no choice but to capitulate and hang my head in defeat, knowing nothing I said could save me. I didn’t do anything, I’d quiver. Don’t lie to me, he’d retort. I’m sorry, I’d plead. I’m tired of “I’m sorry,” he’d reply without missing a beat. In moments of true panic, I would wail until my head pounded, hoping to convey my pain through a guttural language of my own. But as I aged, my wit sharpened, and I grew more capable of defending myself. At school, this helped neutralize my bullies. At home, it further ruptured my relationship with my father, who only accepted tacit submission.

At the same time, I started my Tumblr blog and developed a political consciousness. I remember, years later, sitting in my college Sociology 101 class, thinking that I learned all of this on a Tumblr post. My confidence in my convictions and a desire to vindicate the years when my voice failed me made me temperamental and quick to fight. Our arguments matured and sharpened with political division. They moved from Why didn’t you take out the trash? to protracted debates about healthcare, income inequality, and the criminal justice system.

One day after school, I gave my dad a political compass quiz I had taken in my civics class. I only remember his response to one of the statements, “I believe in same-sex marriage.” Disagree. That was the one issue I didn’t dare to question, fearful he would see my political righteousness as just an elaborate ruse to dress up and intellectualize my homosexuality — To defend myself without defending myself.

Results from when I recently took this stupid quiz again for research purposes

Around the age of 15, my relationship with my dad had passed the point of resuscitation, plateauing like a flatlined heartbeat. Seeing no clear path forward, I made the conscious decision to mentally remove myself. We would never see eye-to-eye, and that was okay. I stopped retorting in disagreement and weaponizing my tears.

I developed a protective exoskeleton, locking myself in a room deep within me whenever I caught my dad’s eye glinting with rage. Hardened and stoic, I gave no ammunition and took no bait. Conversely, he softened with age, no longer armed with the short-fuse temper that defined my childhood. Through this performance, we find a strange demilitarized zone, a gray area where we can coexist and share something like love.

House #3 From the Abandoned House series, Francesca Woodman

At 26, I have lived in two cities thousands of miles away from the small town where I created that part of me. I sometimes convince myself that I have outgrown him. I speak with my chest and move through the world with autonomy and intuition. I tell my therapist that I am proud of myself, and I mean it. I started my gender transition last year and began morphing into the person I want to become. But every Christmas, I am reminded that I am still a scared little boy whose voice cracks in defiance.

This year, when my family asked me to fly down to North Carolina to spend Christmas Eve with my mom and then fly to Florida on Christmas day to be with my dad, I shrugged begrudgingly. Internally, I bemoaned taking four flights over two weeks, desperate for a holiday spent lounging on the couch. But it’s easier this way, I told myself—a familiar phrase for the conflict-avoidant. So I got on the plane.

Upon arriving in Florida, I instinctually retreat within. Splitting myself into two, my superficial outer self steers on autopilot. I find a strange comfort in relinquishing control to his familiar, steady, masculine grip. Uncontroversially homosexual, he embodies the type of queerness that goes down easy with water. He speaks when spoken to and rarely complains. He sits on his phone and scrolls until someone tells him to stop. He wears baggy sweaters to hide his A-cup breasts and lowers his voice an octave. He lets his five o’clock shadow go untouched. A lot of this happens organically – not a set of behaviors I perform, but a personhood I inhabit.

Deep within, hidden in that locked room, sits my inner self. She’s a girl raised by YouTube tutorials and lessons shared through 4 AM cigarettes outside the club. She has something to say but isn’t quite sure what yet. She projects a carefully crafted confidence armed with sheer Jean Paul Gaultier and too much blush. She is learning the meaning of life as a verb – to live, to revel, to dance, to dream, to demand. But more than anything, she’s afraid.

When we pull into my dad’s driveway, she grimaces and rolls her eyes at the MAGA yard signs decorating the front yard. He, the boy masquerading on top, ignores the signs and comments on the nice weather. My family sees a beautiful boy enjoying the warmth.