When The Dam Breaks

Eight thousand feet above sea level, nestled high in the Sierra Nevada Mountains, Lake Thomas A. Edison sparkles in the mid-afternoon sun.

The beaches and campsites are perpetually quiet. The drive from Fresno to Lake Edison is harrowing on a good day, and the one-lane road over the highest part of the Sierras is often closed from October through May. With massive glacial boulders on one side of the road and a thousand-foot drop on the other, you have to make a large portion of the drive with windows open and the radio off. Once you hear the low rumble of a lifted truck or battered SUV, it’s on you to pull over or risk a head-on collision.

My father loved this journey. So did I. The two of us went camping up there half-a-dozen times during my childhood, and each of those trips still shimmers in my heart. Even though my knuckles my legs would feel like they were made of gelatin by the time Lake Edison came into view, getting there always felt like an honest-to-God adventure. By the time our car crested Kaiser Pass and began descending into the Vermilion Valley, I knew that we had crossed the threshold from civilization into wilderness. This was a sacred place; a wild place. I can still recall the lake’s precise shade of indigo and the sharp, earthy smell of loose dirt and healthy conifer.

But Lake Edison isn’t actually a wild place. Its very name belies the truth. The Vermilion Valley dam was built in 1954 as part of a massive hydroelectric project designed to provide power for the fast-growing city of Los Angeles. That’s why the one-lane road over Kaiser Pass was built in the first place — to provide access for dam construction. Once the valley was flooded, they named the nascent lake after the inventor of the light bulb.

Once, when I was eight or nine, I met one of the old men who ran the tiny campground general store next to the Lake Edison ferry dock. “I went up here every summer as a kid before they built that dam,” he told me, a distant look in his eyes. “It was the most beautiful place you ever saw. Acres of pristine alpine meadow. Wildflowers everywhere. No more peaceful valley on this whole wide planet.”

***

I spent last week traveling to the East Coast and coming out as a trans woman to some of my best friends. I flew to New York City and North Carolina, sharing my secret with half a dozen amazing human beings. I could have simply called them up, of course, but I didn’t just want to tell them what I had learned about myself — I wanted them to see me as I begin to live my truth. I wanted them to get to know the woman I’m becoming.

I’m usually good at predicting how people react to serious things, but I’ve learned fairly quickly that my intuition is unreliable when it comes to this particular conversation. All of my friends have been warm and accepting so far, but my predictive abilities end there. Some of the people I’d expected to want to talk things over for hours seemed more interested in expressing their support and moving on. Others were riveted by every word I said.

(One particularly amusing reaction: one of my male friends jumped up, threw out his arms in a hug, and said, “bring it in, man.” He instantly realized his mistake, and we all had a good laugh.)

But there has been one constant in everybody’s response to me so far. Without exception, every person I came out to on my trip told me that they could sense something different about me right away.

“I could tell something inside had changed from the moment you gave me a hug at the airport. The way your body moved. The lack of tension.”

“You seem so much happier. So much more at ease.”

“I didn’t realize it until now, but you always had an energy about you that was anxious, or maybe angry, I don’t know. But I do know that it’s not there anymore.”

“The way you sit and carry yourself is so different. Your body was so closed off before. So tight. So wrapped up in itself.”

“There used to be an anger inside you. I could feel it. I never felt unsafe around you or anything, never felt like you’d direct it at me, but it was there. Even on days when I could tell you were in a good mood, it was still there.”

They’re right, all of them. I’ve struggled with anxiety my entire life, and it got progressively worse every year. I developed elaborate coping mechanisms, but they left me treading water at best. Even minor decisions like what to have for lunch caused me to spin out of control for hours at a time, emotions leaking down my spillway, my sense of self flitting around the room like a frightened wren. I couldn’t handle crowds, or new things, or certain people, or simply a lack of concrete plans. The list of things that I couldn’t handle seemed to get longer each year, and it felt like was nothing I could do about it.

My relationship with anger is even trickier. I’ve always been better at reading other people than myself, so I tried to believe my wife and friends when they told me that I was developing an anger problem. Even still, I didn’t really see it. I knew that I tended to verbally lash out at people from time to time, but it never seemed all that bad to me. If I had an anger problem, then so did everybody else on Earth.

It wasn’t until I began to accept myself as a trans woman that I realized why I had always minimized that particular negative aspect of my personality. My occasional outbursts were bad, but they didn’t even register compared to the rage that lived inside me all the time. It was a lake of anger and anxiety, increasing in volume and pressure, crushing me from within.

I lived in it. I nearly drowned in it. I assumed everybody did. I thought that was just what life was like.

I can’t really tell you why I feel so different now. Hormones would explain it, but I haven’t started HRT yet — there’s still an unfortunate amount of testosterone surging through my bloodstream, messing with my neural pathways. This is not a biological change; it’s an emotional one. The only thing that’s different is how I see myself.

It has made such a difference.

I am still an anxious person, but anxiety no longer defines me. As I walked the streets, subway platforms, and crowded bars of New York City last weekend, I didn’t feel dizzy and claustrophobic. When the graphics card on my laptop broke in North Carolina, (Two days before a major writing deadline!) I was able to deal with the situation in a calm and logical way. I used to lose control of myself and drown in my emotions at least once every 36 hours; it has now happened just twice over the past six weeks. It feels like my baseline level of distress has been turned down by about 80%. I don’t even know if they make medicine that effective.

I’m not sure I fully know who Cassie is yet, but a few things are starting to become clear to me. She’s kind. Compassionate. Easier on herself. More understanding of others. She’s more capable of enjoying life, of appreciating uncertainty, of finding beauty on difficult days. She cares deeply. Loves fully. Expresses herself in direct and healthy ways. Adores her friends.

I’m even starting to think that she — I — might be strong enough to face everything that comes next.

This is not to say that everything is always okay. The more I learned about what dysphoria was and how I’ve always experienced it without being fully aware of what it was, the more distress I feel when doing activities or having conversations that trigger it. But monsters are easier to fight when you know their names and weaknesses. Being able to tell myself “this is dysphoria” instead of simply feeling like my world was falling apart without knowing why has been good for my mental health. I no longer feel helpless. I no longer feel trapped under ten million gallons of rising lake-water.

When I think about my journey so far, I can’t help but picture what the Vermilion Valley would feel if we blew that fucking dam to pieces. Sixty-five years of pressure gone in an instant. The clay-red dirt that gave the valley its name allowed to breathe once more. It would look like a stark moonscape at first, scarred and gray, but the stream would eventually return to its original bed. Trees would migrate back to the valley floor. Herds of deer would join them, along with flocks of wren and grouse.

Eventually, no one could ever tell a lake had been there at all.

Eventually, the wildflowers would blossom again.