Reading The Metamorphosis as a trans woman hits very differently.
People usually talk about the horror of Gregor Samsa waking up as some grotesque insect, but I honestly think the real horror is watching how quickly everybody’s affection becomes conditional once he can no longer comfortably exist in society. His family’s love only really functions while he is useful, familiar, socially acceptable. Once he becomes something embarrassing, inconvenient, uncanny, the emotional abandonment starts long before the physical abandonment does.
Early transition felt a lot like that.
Not because I literally believed I was monstrous (although I felt that way at times), but because I suddenly became socially difficult to be around. I was visibly trans, visibly uncomfortable, visibly vulnerable. People stared. People whispered. Every interaction in public carried tension. And what shocked me most was not strangers being cruel. Strangers owe you nothing. What stayed with me was how many friends quietly changed once being seen with me came with social friction.
Nobody sat me down and said they were ashamed of me. That would almost have been easier. Instead there was this slow, unspoken distancing. Friends who used to happily spend hours with me became harder to pin down. Invitations faded. Group dynamics shifted. Some people suddenly seemed nervous being seen with me in certain places. You start noticing tiny hesitations everywhere and eventually you realise what is happening.
A lot of people are kind only when kindness is easy.
That period permanently changed how I see relationships. I think before transition I still had this fairly naive belief that closeness automatically meant loyalty, that if people truly cared about you they would withstand discomfort on your behalf. Instead I discovered that many relationships are conditional in ways people do not even consciously acknowledge. They care about you right up until caring about you becomes socially uncomfortable, emotionally demanding, or potentially embarrassing.
Ironically, I pass now. At great effort, admittedly, but I thankfully no longer move through the world carrying the same visible social stigma I did in early transition. Most people meeting me today will never see that version of me. They will never experience the strange atmosphere that used to surround ordinary interactions. In many ways my life is easier now.
But I still remember the feeling.
And I think that is why I struggle to fully trust people sometimes. Because once you have experienced people subtly withdrawing from you during the exact period you most needed support, it becomes very difficult to fully believe affection is stable. Part of you always suspects that acceptance is conditional and reversible. That people are only seeing the version of you that is socially digestible.
Kafka understood something very dark about human beings. Not that nobody cares about you, but that many people care about you only insofar as you remain understandable, functional, attractive, useful, or easy to integrate into their lives. Once you fall outside those boundaries, you learn very quickly who actually has courage and who was simply enjoying the easy version of loving you.