If I Was Your Girl

I finished reading another wonderful book last week: If I Was Your Girl (hence the name of this post) by Meredith Russo.

Not only do I love the book but it's title also reminds me of the Pixies song "Here Comes Your Man." So I have to listen to it whenever I can lol.

If I Was Your Girl tells the story of a girl named Amanda moving to a new school and who happens to be transgender. Russo describes how Amanda has gone through her hormones as well as both top and bottom surgery. Amanda is her most authentic self and easily passes as a girl.

Russo herself admits that this was done mostly for cisgender readers to fully comprehend the story and isn't always true to life. She does state though that even if you don't pass as your authentic self, "There is no wrong way to express and embody your most authentic self! You are beautiful, and you deserve to have your body and identity and agency respected" (pg.277).

Amanda goes through the usual angst of high school: more than one boy finds her attractive (she has her eye on a boy named Grant), she makes several friends, she has issues with her father (as you can imagine with her background) and generally gets acclimated to her new school and life.

However, there are several flashback chapters that describe how she got to this point.

Several years before the start of the book, she attempted suicide due to not fully accepting her birth gender or her place in the world: "If I'd had the strength to be normal, I thought, or at least the strength to die, then everyone would have been happy" (pg. 3).

The emotional core of the book mostly occurs in these flashbacks (at least until the last third of the story).

She talks about first realizing as a child that she was different, "I had never been good at being a boy, and I didn't enjoy it very much..." (pg. 199).

She also wrote a story in class describing her dream about herself as a grown up, "...there was a very tall and pretty lady...The lady got up and hugged me and said that she was me, grown-up...She told me that the way I felt like a girl inside of me was a true thing, and was not bad or wrong" (pgs. 60-61). When she takes the story home to show her father, things do not go well at all, sadly.

All of this rings true for my background as well. I knew I was different than other boys, I didn't always get along well with them despite playing sports (I always associate more with women to this day), and I would daydream about going through some surgery or magical experience to change into a girl. Like Amanda, I'd keep this inside because I didn't think people would accept me if I told them. With how people act nowadays, I'm afraid that I was probably right to do so.

She talks about how, after her suicide attempt, her mother accepts her transition. Amanda talks about her first time, successfully trying on makeup, "... somehow the face staring out at me was one I'd never seen before. It was the one I always felt like I should have seen" (pg. 214).

This is exactly how I felt the first time Kitty helped me with my makeup as Trixie. I finally felt complete. Like how I was supposed to be. I couldn't stop looking at myself in the mirror because I just LOVED the way I looked. Part of me always wants to look like that but, being genderfluid and also because of where I live, I know that this isn't realistic.

Also, like me, despite her moments of acceptance, Amanda also feels like she might be outed at any time or just basic internal doubts about herself. "For the first time ever I was living my life, the life I was supposed to live - I was finally the truest version of myself. I just happened to be keeping an enormous secret at the same time" (pg. 151).

Eventually, Amanda does start up a relationship with hunky Grant. She doesn't tell him about her past as she's afraid of how he would react. Despite not knowing, Grant accepts her anyway and has (arguably) the best line of the book: "Everybody's got a past...That don't mean you can't have a future" (pg. 77).

This is something that I and all of us need to tell ourselves. It's way too easy to look backwards. At all of our flaws and secrets from where we came. But it's much more important that we move on and look forward to the future.

Without going into full detail, the drama definitely gets ramped up by the end with Amanda's relationships with everybody changing in some shape or form, including Grant.

She ends the story with this internal monologue: "For as long as I could remember, I had been apologizing for existing, for trying to be who I was, to live the life I was meant to lead...I realized, that I wasn't sorry I existed anymore. I deserved to live. I deserved to find love. I knew now...that I deserved to be loved" (pg. 273).

Like I said, I truly loved this book and its characters. Russo perfectly captured high school issues as well as her own spin on things with Amanda's background. I highly recommend it.

She also touched on her follow up book called Birthday. I'll have to check that out when I get the chance. 🙂











Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Half the Person I Used to Be

People can have lots of different vices to help when they're stressed. Some drink, some smoke, some even do drugs (I don't judge anyone enjoying a little bit of Mother Earth's great green herb. I mean the harder stuff). My vice was always food. Whenever I was stressed or sad or even just bored, I'd immediately go straight for the kitchen or pantry to find something to eat. Any good feelings from doing so would quickly evaporate whenever I would next step onto the scale. Stress eating became a big habit at one point in my life due to working in a hospital at the time and my continuing issues in my marriage. Even after I left that job and the divorce was finalized, I still used food as a coping mechanism. By the time 2023 rolled around and I was actually ready to do something about it (or so I thought), the scales read 336.5 pounds. I was up to wearing size 5XL shirts that had to be specially ordered because no local stores carried them. I talked to my doctor and they sug...
Read more

Voting Day

While it's not one of the "big ones," such as the midterms or the Presidential elections, today is still voting day. You could say that elections like this are even more important since they cover local offices that can affect you everyday. I was born and raised as a Republican because of my parents and their background. However, I became more and more liberal in my thinking once I got to college and beyond. In fact, it became clear to me that my thought process growing up had usually been socially liberal anyway. I officially changed parties to Democrat in 2016. I refused to be associated with Drumpf and the way in which he'd bastardized my idea of the Grand Old Party. I don't have to tell you how upset I was over the results from last year. That orange faced goon won lots of support by actively campaigning against LGBTQ causes, especially the trans community. Not only did his base just lap it up but it felt like Democratic leadership wasn't doing nearly enou...
Read more

Thanks Dad

 My dad was born to a hardworking father and stay-at-home mother in a tough neighborhood. Not only my father but all of his siblings served as living PSAs on what NOT to do in life. I had a family member for each issue raised: drinking, smoking, drugs, infidelity, raising children, racism. Everything they did seemed wrong to me. In fact, I could've made this blog entirely about them and would never run out of material. However, for brevity, I'll focus on my father.  He married his highschool sweetheart and had my sister. It wasn't long before that marriage ended on divorce and my father moved away. While my sister will never admit it, I've always believed that she secretly resented him for leaving her. My father eventually met my mother but it would be ten years before they married. One reason was because her family didn't really like him. They were all very straight laced while he was an alcoholic biker (I guess my mom was into bad boys). Another reason was, at one...
Read more