Cockroach

Deciding to Live

I joke to myself sometimes that I have the stereotypical transition story. The one where the only option was to transition or die. I was at the point where I was suicidal for the fifth year running, and I came out less than a year after I was released from an all day intensive outpatient. There were plenty of times where I should have been admitted into inpatient, but chose not to share that I should go.

I had an idea I was trans before I went to that intensive outpatient program, I gave hints while there but no one caught on. Hints such as “I want a penis” and “I don’t want my name,” but apparently that’s not something catchable. At least not in 2015. I was not sharing it outright because I did not want to believe it. It was something too rare to be me, something too tragic, something too different, too inhuman. The idea of getting gender affirming care excited me before making me feel sick with myself over being excited. I was at war with myself, and I don’t think I shared that with anyone. Sharing it would mean coming out as something I did not want to be.

Then the miracle happened, I came out. My parents were on the edge a bit, but both supported me when they saw my social transition and how it brought me back to life. My social transition managed to convince me that it was the right thing as well, and I got my first T shot in October 2018.

So yeah, tragic trans backstory.

…

If I let cis people define it

My story is used as a way to convince cis people that we have to let trans people exist because otherwise we will die. Being transgender in this scenario is still a tragedy. It’s still a fate that’s only a small step up from death. And while I had to use that logic to push through my internalized transphobia, I refuse to apply it to myself now. I do not want my life to be defined as a way that convinces cis people to merely tolerate my existence, I want my life to be about me.

Instead, this is about a trans kid that refused to die.

I was so close to death where only the fear of failure was holding me back. I had a moment where I stared down a gun for a full minute contemplating shooting myself, and I didn’t. I had so many moments where I decided that despite the fact that I had no future I could see for myself, I would not die that day.

I looked at the world I lived in, both one that held the GSA that let me know I was not alone and showed that trans kids could live, and the one where the same GSA let me know that those trans kids were not treated well. The one that did not let me know what transgender was until I found other trans people. The one that taught me my self-hatred and disgust.

In my evangelical town and in my house with a transphobic abuser, I came out. My mom did not know what transgender was and started to try and find out, while my dad did and wasn’t sure about it. This is not completely an underdog story, if my parents kept me from socially transitioning I may have not made it. I was already up against myself after all. What made this particularly hard still was that I could not wait until I could leave my home town, get away from the kids that knew me since kindergarten, I could not be strategic with my social transition because it was too deadly to wait. I had already taken a chance with my parents, I had to take a chance with my school, with everyone.

I stared down death. I stared down my hostile world. I chose to live. The transphobic shit I was put through got to me at times, I would sit there and cry about how I simply wanted to be “normal.” Other times I used it as fuel for spite. Spite against a world that wanted me dead. I would live because I knew that there were assholes that would be happier if I did not exist. I did not want them to win.

The real tragedy here is that I lived in a culture where something like this was possible. Where it is possible for a fourteen year old to wait until they almost died to finally even come out of the closet. One where they learned so much disdain. One that refused to show them that their life was possible. The tragedy is not the fact that I am trans, it is that I grew up in a world that would only accept that if I was close enough to death.

With no help from the people that would pass trans healthcare bans yet say they care for the safety of our children, I survived. With no help from those who don’t accept it, but don’t want them to die, I survived. I lived, and I did not live for my life to be about proving that I deserve to live. I lived for me.

I am not a transgender tragedy, I am someone who refused to be buried alive. Part of that was luck to get out in time, the other part the audacity to try.