I am a Trans Woman. Period.

I am a trans woman, and I am tired.

When I walk around the city streets, I wonder how many of me have before and felt the same looks of disgust follow their back like a shadow.

I imagine a future where I will have more to harvest than the fact that the last X amount of years have ended.

The rest of the "alphabet soup" I'm lumped with get their praise for doing things that were heroic, while my people were jailed for being on the wrong street in the wrong dress.

I went to an LGBT movie night at the library once. Every night of the week they were playing some sort of movie featuring a LGBT hero or pioneer. Their lives were documented so fully and detailed, they even knew the last time Harvey Milk drank Milk before he was assassinated!

Even though these were not my "kind" I felt honor and pride in the community I was a part of. I almost couldn't fall asleep the night before they were to show the "T" hero,

I tried to guess who it was going to be, and I couldn't think of anybody, because the heroes of my people were never celebrated.

Marsha P. Johnson threw the first shot glass at Stonewall and died of AIDS a few years later. Another statistic, another reason why the dirty homos should have never been allowed in our bars and schools.

I felt all of these feelings of fear, and confusion about just where I come from melt off my back as I walked into the library.

And for it to all come tumbling back when I saw they chose Boys Don't Cry.

The story of Brandon Teena. The young trans man who was raped and murdered by his friends when he was discovered to be trans.

I re-read the poster on my way out of the library.

"Come witness the legacies of the pioneers of the LGBT movement!"

I was wondering when our legacy would finally be revealed and we would mark our name somewhere other than in a gravestone.

Then I realized, that even to those that are supposedly our own kind, this IS my legacy.

Death. Loss. Unaccepting family. Lost relationships. Sex work. Addiction.

I am a trans woman and I feel so defeated.

The rest of pride month, I walked the rainbow crosswalk the government painted for "us" and tried my best to see that as acceptance.

Even when we pave our own roads. people run them over anyways.

Then they call it progress because they never had to look back at the carcasses they left laying out on the street.

When the rain started a couple months later, the rainbow markings on the pavement had all but washed off.

But knowing that they were there once before is better than never having it been there at all right?

June gave us some beautiful weather, but for the last 4 days, it poured all day, and drag queen bingo and the queer speed dating socials were all cancelled, much to everyones disappointment.

I am a trans woman, and I bite my tongue. I bite it because LGB pride month is a special event for everybody.

As those drag queens would say, the "tea" is that my supposed brothers and sisters whom are supposed to meet me with compassion and solidarity, all try to ignore that I am even there.

For any of you whom read this, anywhere out there, regardless your identity, take a close look at the group of friends you keep, and try to look between the shadows for what could possibly be the remnants of someone like me, who is no longer around, either by death or because those who got us out into the light, left us back in the dark when they realized that we were dangerous.

I am a trans woman and I am tired.

Its been raining for 5 days now.

Yet still, for the past 3 years of this new existence.

I try to remember what the sun feels like.