BEING ELLIOT PAGE

WHAT I’VE LEARNED

Elliot Page, actor and advocate, 35, New York City

What have I learned from transitioning? I can’t overstate the biggest joy, which is really seeing yourself. I know I look different to others, but to me I’m just starting to look like myself. It’s indescribable, because I’m just like, there I am. And thank God. Here I am. So the greatest joy is just being able to feel present, literally, just to be present. To go out in a group of new people and be able to engage in a way where I didn’t feel this constant sensation to flee from my body, this never-ending sensation of anxiety and nervousness and wanting out.

When I say I couldn’t have ever imagined feeling that way, I mean that with every sense of me.

My dad had a cabin on the south shore of Nova Scotia with no running water or electricity. I was obsessed with tree frogs. I would watch them hop along for hours, probably because of how tiny they were. I’ve noticed as an adult how nourishing and crucial it is for me to feel connected to nature. I need it. When I’m in those spaces, my whole body will relax. My stress dissipates. I can get quiet.

I spent a lot of my childhood in the woods.

When I was a little kid, all I wanted my parents to play was the Bodyguard soundtrack. Loved. And Annie Lennox, Medusa. I think that had a lot to do with the cover. I’d just stare at Annie Lennox. My mum’s music was a lot of Cat Stevens and Sting. The Tragically Hip—they’re fantastic. My dad was more jazz—Shirley Horn, Ruth Brown.

I don’t think I ever actually saw The Bodyguard. I should watch it. Now I’m feeling embarrassed.

I went to a different school every year during high school, so I never really had that single teacher mentor. When I left Halifax to go to Toronto in grade eleven, I thought the bullying would lessen, in regard to what people were clearly bullying me about. And that wasn’t the case at all. Bullying puts you in a place where, later, you have so much unlearning to do. If you’re getting teased and made fun of and called names on a daily basis, there’s no way that’s not going to get inside of you—particularly when you’re already feeling so much shame. Nobody even needs to open their mouth and you’re already feeling it.

Those kids left a whole bunch of shit that I had to dig through and unlearn. I’m sure I could bring up a moment and one of them wouldn’t