Talulah Eve

How I Learned to Stand Up for Love with Talulah

I did love myself, innocently. As a child you just love everything, anything that makes you happy. It really is that simple. But that mindset quickly fades as you awaken to the reality of life and the box that the world puts you in. What makes you happy suddenly becomes about keeping other people happy. Meeting the expectations of those around you. Fitting the mould in the best way that you can.

We always knew what love was right from the moment we were born. It’s what we’re drawn to, it’s the energy that pulls us and the smiles that are wrapped around our faces. But then love becomes about labels, it becomes about marriage. It becomes about all the expectations that are put on love and on us.

What made me happy was simple. Just being me. Femininity came naturally to me. I didn’t see the difference between me and other girls until society, school and family told me and explained the labels of what we all were, and what those labels meant.

It meant that I would grow up conforming to boyhood, even though that wasn’t me. I had to suddenly grow a façade and present myself to the world in a way that I didn’t know how to or didn’t come naturally to me.

My authentic self was frowned upon. It wasn’t accepted because it didn’t come in the form of what biologically made a girl. At such a young age, that’s when I truly felt heartbreak. I fell out of love with me and forced myself to fit in.

Talulah Eve

But little did the rest of the world know. The real me, the Talulah inside was growing. Who knew such beautiful things could grow in the dark?

I would always think of ways in which I could escape to being me again. I would dream about reaching adolescence and actually making my own decisions about who I wanted to be. I would look up at the stars and pray that the universe would bless me and keep all of my feminine attributes so that I could rebirth the moment I grew up, and I did!

Trust me it wasn’t easy though. The hardest part was learning to love myself again when society was forever beating me down.

I realized that a lot of how we love ourselves is based on the acceptance of other people. It’s hard to accept and love yourself if other people don’t love you either.

And that’s what often makes us trans women so resilient, is that we loved and accepted ourselves even when nobody else would and that takes a lot of courage because we’re built to believe that we’re nothing without everything.

We’re often seen as the forbidden fruit. Overly confident, obnoxious, you name it, but actually we are LOVE. We are the example of capability, resilience and self-acceptance, growth and determination!

Don’t get me wrong, in the past seven years of my transition I have fallen in and out of love with myself more than I have changed my Ann Summers underwear and that’s a lot. But I know my soul and every time I come back to love it harder.

The problem is that we categorise love, attraction, emotions and everything else far too much. It’s we as humans who complicate love. Love is actually simple and we’re all entitled to it!