Just another transgender coming out story

Let’s start from the beginning

My earliest memory is my mom trying to put me in a spring dress and as I fidgeted my dad could tell I’d prefer one of his shirts so I wore that instead, even though it was so long it was a dress on me. I was maybe three years old. Obviously that’s a very spotty memory and I can’t remember how it was every day, but I remember feeling different in more ways than one. On the first day of 1st grade it was picture day and I hated that I had to wear that stupid spring dress, I frowned the whole day. And I oddly remember the photographer tried to make me smile by calling me pretty and sweet and all those girly words and a part of me thought he was maybe talking to someone else like are those words supposed to be for me? I also couldn’t figure out why I couldn’t just smile like the other girls and thank him for the compliment. My family didn’t understand why I was such an angry kid, and nor did I to be honest. I didn’t understand my own feelings and why I couldn’t just be a normal girl.

I remember my first crush I guess you could say, and it was a girl. I won’t say her name for the off-chance that she or one of my old classmates reads this, so let’s call her Kate. She had beautiful blonde hair and blue eyes and she was my best friend. I did everything with her. She was the only person I was gentle towards and the only person I let near my toys or my CD collection (yes, I had one of those in second grade). Mind you, I didn’t know I had a crush on her because I didn’t think you could feel that way towards your same sex. I knew I had that squishy feeling but in my little seven year old head I thought that meant we were just really close friends. Every chance I got I wanted to impress her, I remember one day I asked my mom to drop me off a little further away from school so I could skateboard up to the school and Kate would see me and think I was cool. It was so obvious and yet no one thought anything of it, and I never told anyone how I felt. I refused to wear girl’s clothes and the only compliments I’d accept were “sharp” or “nice,” no “pretty” or “beautiful” or any of that girly stuff. The point is, Kate made me feel like a gentleman and that was a really euphoric feeling.

In third grade I switched schools and chopped all my hair off with a pair of kitchen shears and went to school. Some kids thought I was a guy and I remember not minding and just kind of going with it, I started using the boy’s bathroom and, already dressing in boys clothes, I kinda got away with it for a little while. But I got caught by a teacher and was sent to the principal’s office. I was told it was inappropriate and they were confused why I’d even want to go in there since boys are smelly and have cooties. I don’t know, I felt and looked like a guy more than a girl and I wanted to express myself as such. But that was unheard of and I stopped immediately when the other kids started making fun of me for it. And then came the day when my dad took me to Hot Topic and Pacsun to try and find a style that was right for me. I was really into Avril Lavigne and Green Day at the time so I started wearing those little wristbands and fishnet gloves and cargo pants and I felt like the kids at school might stop teasing me if they just thought I was emo or something which, in hindsight, doesn’t really make sense. Nevertheless, it worked for the most part. The kids stopped picking on the bits I was vulnerable about (feeling like a boy) and instead wondered why I dressed like a “goth” kid, which was a bit of a facade anyway so it didn’t bother me so much. I stopped wanting anyone to see the real me, the part that nobody, not even I, understood.

So, I stopped trying to be a boy and tried desperately to fit in as a girl, whatever that meant. I prematurely started wearing makeup and wearing floral patterns and whatever else I could do to try to mask the deep seeded feeling I’d always felt. I guess I’d hoped I could grow up and be like Avril Lavigne and be comfortable in being female in boys clothes and that would be enough, but I still felt like I was wearing a costume. At school I was picked on for having a flat chest and even though I loved not having boobs I still went on to stuff my bra so I didn’t draw any attention towards myself. I just wanted what everyone else wanted: to fit in.

I masked that part of myself well for so many years I almost started believing myself, a little fun thing called denial. Isn’t it amazing what our minds can do? How much we can mask and what we can trick ourselves into believing just to survive? Well, my adolescence was a nightmare and I wound up majorly depressed and suicidal as any internalized oppressed person would. I feared telling anyone the truth about how I felt inside, even the dozens of therapists I’d gone to see. I didn’t think anyone would understand or that there’d be a way to describe it or anything. And I couldn’t take another diagnosis about what’s wrong with me. ADHD, depression, anxiety, cyclothymia (mild type of bipolar), etc. etc. Oh my god just make it stop it was far too overwhelming and it made me feel like more of an outcast than ever before.

When I turned 18, I packed my bags and moved to Toronto. Yup, literally felt like I needed to move to a whole ‘nother country to take a minute to breathe and figure myself out. I knew I was bisexual but that didn't bode well for my family and I was tired of fighting and I knew there was much more to how I was feeling anyway. I pretty much slacked off for nine months and was just trying to learn to be on my own, to be an adult. I didn’t really do much soul searching after all. It was a new place and I still feared being judged by my new roommate so I kept my emotions under wraps. I did have a boyfriend though, he lived in New York City and I’d sporadically take the bus down to see him. I was still getting comfortable with him, so I still kept most of my guards up. But I liked him a lot, he introduced me to so many things and I just liked being around him. After all those months of slacking and still not finding work, I decided to move to New York for a job there and stayed with my boyfriend until I found my own apartment.

The first job I got in the city was a retail gig that didn’t last very long on the account that one of my coworkers thought I was a lesbian or something and it made her uncomfortable to work with me, even though I never flirted with anyone and I kept to myself for the most part. Anyway, she told the managers and I guess they were also uncomfortable with having a lesbian working with them and they called me in to the office to tell me I’m getting laid off because I was hired as a seasonal employee, which was total bullshit obviously. I didn’t care to fight it because I didn’t want to work with a bunch of homophobes anyway. Who woulda thought, in New York City of all places…and I’m not even a lesbian!

By this point, I’d heard of transgender but I thought it was synonymous with drag queens and I didn’t relate so it just kind of went over my head. Although, the term ‘non-binary’ was floating around and I snatched that up almost instantly. It was this amazing moment when I thought I found the missing puzzle of my life, feeling like I belonged to a community of like-minded individuals who didn’t identify with their birth sex. I then started an internet deep dive and found the true definition of transgender and how, politics aside, it’s when someone identifies and maybe even transitions from female to male or male to female. And even though when I was a kid I identified as a boy, I had since experienced sexual harassment and assault, and I couldn’t possibly identify with men in the midst of the Me Too movement. So I thought non-binary was the perfect fit, where I don’t identify as either. I started going to support groups and I came out to a couple friends and my boyfriend who were very supportive and it helped a lot that no one seemed to judge me for the way I was feeling.

The next year, I started working at a restaurant downtown and I found out one of my coworkers was a trans guy. I was instantly fascinated and I had so many questions but I didn’t want to make him uncomfortable or anything as he probably didn’t want anyone knowing he was trans. But he was really nice and informative and it sparked my interest into doing another deep dive after I started to feel like maybe non-binary doesn’t completely make sense of how I’ve felt. One article asked me to start socially transitioning and see how I feel. My hair was already short like a guy’s so I could skip the haircut, I bought a binder and tried it on in the mirror and it was such an instant relief it’s indescribable. I started wearing only men’s clothes and packing my shorts and already I was getting called “sir” by strangers and it felt so right it was just instantly affirmed. It took a whole year of breaking down this wall of internalized oppression to be brave enough to accept myself for who I am, a transgender male. I realized it’s okay to be a guy because I’m not one of the bad guys, and not all men are the same despite today's misandristic views. It seems like such a simple thing but my whole life has been me trying to figure this out and now I have this clarity of who I am and it’s a good feeling.

Of course, I’m not just gonna self-diagnose myself and leave it at that so I went to see a gender therapist who confirmed what I have been feeling my entire life is gender dysphoria. I switched primary care physicians to a transgender-friendly office and my new doc suggested I started hormone therapy to ease the symptoms of dysphoria as they’ll only get worse. Problem was, I had enlisted in the U.S. Navy a few months back and thanks to President Trump’s transgender ban that year, I wasn’t allowed to join unless I went in as my birth sex. So, after contemplating whether or not I could do that to my mental health and endure the military’s transphobia for eight years, I decided it was best to come clean to my division’s officers and pull out. Thus, the hormone treatment began! I got testosterone injected into my thighs once every two weeks and I’ve never felt better. I’m learning more about myself as my mind and body grows through puberty 2.0. I only hope my family will learn to understand just as I am, but I understand I’m the first person in my family to be LGBTQ+ so I know it’ll take time. Sometimes I wish I could've been introduced to all of this as a child, not shoved down my throat like they did religion, but just introduced as an option, as a way of saying I wasn't a freak and that there are others. Turns out, representation matters and it's not always given. But I do give myself brownie points for figuring it out at all. LGBTQ+ we tough as helllll.