This piece contains brief spoilers for Poor Things.

Last February, I killed myself.

Or, I should clarify, I killed a version of myself – the only version the world had ever known, because it was the version that I’d (successfully) sold as my “truth” for 22 years. But, in reality, while it looked like something was lost to others, my real “truth” was that this version never even existed in the first place. It was something I had conjured up and projected – and at times, had forced upon me – to protect myself. My true self. The only one I’d ever known. On the outside, it looked like slaughter and succession – the version of me the world was familiar with was murdered, and a foreign figure had taken its place. But on the inside, it felt more like shedding a false skin – finally abandoning an artificial appearance that never fit to begin with, and setting forth with a new lease on life. A lease that offered me the chance to live the way I wished I could’ve since the start, at long last. 

I think it’s because of this universal trans experience that we – and I, specifically – relate so much to stories of rebirth and resurrection. Stories that speak to the unique sensation of being “born again” and “beginning anew.” Being given a chance to start over and do things “the right way this time.” Truthfully, I think everyone yearns for that at one point or another. But only we are fully given the opportunity to completely and entirely reinvent ourselves and our identities from the ground up and re-enter the world as a stranger to society, if we so wish. Said world is our oyster and the sky’s the limit, and though struggles are inevitable, the all-consuming comfort you feel moving through life finally inhabiting a body that aligns with your true sense of self is so outstandingly overwhelming that it can often outweigh the other enmity we experience. Even in my darkest moments, the lightness I feel from no longer living a lie is usually enough to get me through the day. It’s ineffable.

And so, it was also because of this that I knew I’d have a special connection to Poor Things as soon as it was announced. A movie about a woman being brought back from the dead and offered the opportunity to embark on an odyssey of self-discovery and sexual liberation and live a life far beyond the social constraints formerly placed on her? Come on – Bella Baxter is one estradiol tablet away from being an explicitly trans character. And considering how often we get explicitly trans characters in cinema (read: not often), we have to claim a few every now and then whose experiences at least somewhat align with ours. But few have personalities and emotional progressions that run as parallel to ours as well as Bella’s do. The moment I realized Bella was not just “some dead body” that had been brought back to life, but the body of a woman who had killed herself and now inexplicably been given the chance to “start over” (sound familiar?), I knew she was different.

As I already mentioned (and bemoaned), explicitly trans characters don’t come around all that often in cinema. And so, it’s natural I think to start to search breathlessly for something, someone, anything, anyone in art who can speak to what you’re going through – especially an experience as chaotic and complex as this – in order to make sense of the labyrinthine mess your life has become and receive some sort of reminder that, in the end, it’ll all be alright. We’ll get there someway and somehow, because this character did too. At the bare minimum though, I think we just want to be seen. And that’s not even a trans-specific wish – it’s a universal want and need. But it’s most certainly more difficult for us to find, and as such, we’re likely to latch on to even the faintest familiarities when in need of direction or relief. However, with Poor Things, there was no “searching” or “latching” of any kind. I didn’t have to “look” to find something to relate to, because Bella was already there right in front of me, guiding me through both her reawakening and a revistation of the last two years of my transition, simultaneously. She spoke a language only I thought I knew.

In the beginning, “Reborn Bella” has the brain of a baby in the body of an adult woman. And while I wouldn’t say I shared her intellectual atrophy at the start of my transition, I did feel an affinity for her newfound naïveté and wide-eyed innocence and curiosity at an age when most have “outgrown” such sentiments. Bella is quite literally restarting her cognitive development, and in a more figurative way, I was too after coming out way back in the winter of 2022. I had to learn a whole new way to move through the world – physically, emotionally, socially, sexually, and so on and so forth. I lacked the gradual education of womanhood my cis female friends received having already endured the ups and downs of adolescence a decade ago, so I had to play catch-up at quadruple the speed. As a result, the weight of “being a woman” hit me like a semi truck. I sensed every pain and every pleasure of our existence at the same time, sussing out my own survival skills on the fly and teaching myself what others mastered in years in a matter of weeks and months. And like Bella, I grew up fast – because I had to.

For the first year of my transition, I would say I withdrew from the world a bit, experiencing much of this initial education within the comfort and confines of my own home, just as Bella does. But you can’t continue growing when you’re “comfortable,” because you can’t totally and completely learn what womanhood is until you live in the real world as one. It wasn’t enough to learn “how” to; now, I had to act the part. And though there was a sense of fear for sure, there was an element of excitement as well. After much trial and error, I’d fine-tuned who Zoë was and how I’d present her – personally and physically – and the superficial serenity that accompanied my earliest private gender experimentation (commonly centered around acquiring affirming clothes, makeup, and the like that I’d long been denied) was no longer enough. There was a deep yearning not just for exploration, but also connection. For a few years even prior to my transition, I had removed myself from romance entirely, too afraid to share who – and what – I really was with another, but also too tired to lie any longer. Yet now, I found myself at a point where I wasn’t without insecurities completely, but still open to the possibility of intimacy for the first time in four years.

When Bella leaves home, her experience abroad has been reduced so far by many to how much sex she has. And it’s certainly not altogether untrue – she does fuck a lot. But I think those who diminish Poor Things to its sex scenes – or its leading lady’s nudity – are missing the point entirely. It’s not the act of sex itself that’s important to Bella, but what it teaches her about herself. What she learns about what she likes, what she doesn’t, how she can use her sexuality to her advantage, and how it can be used against her. Likewise, while sexual exploration and experimentation might not be a part of everyone’s transition journey, it most certainly played a role in mine, in the messiest yet ultimately most meaningful manner possible. After refusing to characterize myself as a sexual – or even gendered – being for almost five years, I think it’s only natural to be consumed by a yearning for connection when finally feeling aligned with your body for the first time in forever. But the strength of that yearning means you’ll throw yourself into countless questionable situations just to feel something – anything. However, it’s only in that recklessness – and in the mistakes we make along the way – that we learn who we really are.

It’s almost impossible to describe. I technically wasn’t exploring my sexuality for the first time, but in a way, I think I was. The body I used remained the same, but there was someone else in the driver’s seat – someone who was completely uninhibited and liberated, and allowed to perceive passions they’d only ever dreamed about up until this point. I had to learn a whole new sexual language, an experience that was as intimidating as it was invigorating. Like Bella, I relearned what I liked to have said and done to me, what I wouldn’t and didn’t accept, how I could command my sexuality to influence others, and how it could be exploited and objectified. Unfortunately, as someone who wasn’t socialized as a woman growing up, I don’t think I had properly mentally prepared myself for that last bit, and for how many troubles would follow those first few thrills. For the slew of sexualized slurs men would now use against me. For the self-consciousness that would consume me the first time I was catcalled. For the shock and shame that accompanied the first time I was groped by a stranger at a club. For the fear I felt the first time a man followed me to my car at night and I imagined a million different things he might do to me and my body. On the outside, I was a 23 year old woman. But, like Bella, on the inside, I felt like a little girl, still playing catch up.

Still, when looking back at the nearly two years of my transition – and the last year in particular – I’m able to now see more clearly how it was only through those initial struggles and growing pains that I was able to further and fully solidify my sense of self, both as a sexual being and also simply as a woman. Like how Bella’s bouncing from suitor to suitor offered her an existential education, I too learned who – and what – I want as a partner, and who I wanted to be as well. I learned the essentialness of securing self-empowerment (instead of deriving worth from my sexual appeal), and I orchestrated ways to take ownership of my agency, as opposed to allowing myself to be at the mercy of men. I didn’t listen to what the world told me a woman “was” or “did”; I offered my own answers. I also began to explore my burgeoning bisexuality at this time after neglecting to ever interrogate it before, and in doing so, I discovered that my internal definitions of intimacy and companionship had expanded, especially by experiencing the unique attraction between two women for the first time (something Poor Things integrates effectively and effortlessly). This era of my enlightenment is far from over – next year I embark on the months-long trek towards vaginoplasty, which itself brings countless new complications (including the anxiety of losing your virginity again at the age of 25) – but Bella reminded me of the importance and worth in sexual self-awareness and what it means for ourselves overall, and to explore my interests and insecurities without shame. And I didn’t know how much I needed to hear that until I did.

By the time Bella returns home at the end of the movie, she’s undoubtedly evolved, but it’s made clear that she’ll likely spend the rest of her life learning, and I think I will too (personified most potently in a third act excursion in which a presence from her past life re-emerges and attempts to exert control over her and she must find the strength to shake him off once and for all, just as we – and I – will never stop having to argue for the right to define ourselves and our lives on our own terms with those who refuse to see us as we are today). There are some who might look down on her for this, just as they could look down on her for her origin – something else she shares with the trans community. To many, we may be no more than “freaks” or “monsters” or yes, even “lab experiments.” And that hurts. And sometimes, after hearing it so much, you start to believe it too. But then I remember the beauty of Bella’s beginning – and mine. Bella was not merely resurrected; she was brought back to life by having her damaged brain swapped with that of her unborn fetus’. In short, she is both mother and child, creator and creation – and so am I. I am both the life that came before me and the one that followed, and one had to die so the other could live, though we still share the same body. And who among us can say the same? No, Bella and I are not “monsters.” We’re miracles.

Poor Things is in select theaters today and will expand into wide release on December 22, 2023.
You can read our review of Poor Things here.
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