On being a Trans boy

By: James V. Age 29

Age 0: Doctors proudly proclaim to his parents that they’ve been blessed with a beautiful baby girl, Jamie Lynn, he needs to spend some time in the nicu, but he’ll be alright. They decorate in pale pink, Minnie Mouse, and buy tiny headbands and cute little dresses.

Age 1: His hair covers his tiny little ears now, curling at the edges, he’s a happy baby, anything that isn’t a hand-me-down is firmly pink, feminine, beautiful and they have the pictures to prove it.

Age 2: His hair grows longer, he learns how to use the toilet, he is starting to learn the differences between boys and girls.

Age 3: He screams and cries when he has to put on a shirt in the kiddie pool when his cousin Michael doesn’t have to, it isn’t fair and he doesn’t understand.

Age 4: He learns in preschool how to pray, at the end of pre school he overhears the Pastor of his Lutheran school tell his parents he’ll have to repeat preschool because he’s the youngest one and the Pastor is worried that he won’t develop breasts at the same time as the other girls. His parents decide to ignore the pastor and send him to public school

Age 5: He starts public school, kindergarten, a girl from church grabs his arm as he walks towards the boys bathroom with his new friends. She tells him, “You’re a girl” and for some reason the thought hadn’t occurred to him before this.

Age 6: He decides being a girl isn’t all that bad, he has a football cake for his birthday, he proudly slows his scraped elbows from learning how to rollerblade, his favorite shirt is a football jersey.

Age 7: In an effort to make him more feminine his parents buy him headbands to pull his bangs out of his eyes, but the next time they go to the hair salon he begs the hair stylist to cut them shorter. She does. His parents buy him more feminine clothing, white shirts with embroidered flowers, hot pink basketball shorts instead of the green ones he begs for, purple shoes instead of grey.

Age 8: After his parents tuck him in every night he whispers to himself, to God, to “Please let me wake up a boy tomorrow” and it never works, he wonders what is wrong with him, why God has betrayed him, why he has to be a girl.

Age 9: He makes a friend who is a girl, they ride their bicycles through corn fields pretending they’re dirt bikes, make ramps out of coolers and plywood, they rollerblade down the driveways and back up, they pretend that a radio flyer wagon is a skateboard and ride the driveway down it standing up and subsequently get road rash from their poor decisions. He forgets about waking up a boy, for now.

Age 10: One of his girl friends starts her period, he panics, one of his other girl friends starts to show breasts and shows off her training bra in the gym locker room before gym class. He changes in the stall, afraid to look at them, to let them see him, to look at himself. He goes back to begging to God nightly. Every morning when he wakes up and he’s still a girl he grits his teeth angrily.

Age 11: His mom takes him bra shopping, he hasn’t begun to develop but she figures its time, she tells him about periods which he’s already learned about at school, and about how to use Tampons and Pads when the time comes for his period. He’s not sure when, but he stopped smiling, his mom takes him to the doctor for anti-depressants, they don’t make him happy again, but they do make him less sad.

Age 12: His mom asks him monthly if he’s started menstruating, he hasn’t, at this point all of his friends who are girls have started their periods. His mom takes him to the doctor and the doctor assures her that he’s developing fine, that he has years before they need to be worried about him not menstruating. He trades tshirts for sweatshirts, shorts for pants, he stops begging God for anything. God has betrayed him every day for the last four years.

Age 13: He wakes up in excruciating pain, throwing up for hours, his mom takes him to the emergency room, they diagnose him with PCOS and bursting ovarian cysts. The doctors all ask if he’s sexually active, he isn’t, he’s tired. More than tired, he’s sad, all the time. The anti-depressants don’t work anymore. His doctor starts him on birth control, he gains weight, a lot of weight.

Age 14: His body betrays him. Menstruation is the devil, he cries for hours before he tells his mom that he’s started his period. She buys him candy to celebrate.

Age 15: For the fifteenth time in three weeks Ron asks him out on a date, he refuses, he isn’t interested in dating boys, or looking at them, he dates a girl on the internet in secret, he tells her his name is Jake, he doesn’t realize that she’d eventually catch on to the fact that he was a girl

Age 16: His classmates catch on to the fact that he isn’t dating boys, he’s a lesbian, he tells his family. He starts to smile, a small weight has been lifted from his chest, he is happy.

Age 17: His happiness begins to fade, he isn’t sure why or how, but something isn’t right. He’s dating girls now, still something isn’t right. Deep in the night on the furthest corners of the internet in 2007 he finds the word “Transgender” he swallows hard, his tears have never come harder, he’ll never tell anyone. He graduates high school without whispering a word.

Age 18: He tells everyone, anyone who will give him the time of day, his name is James. He shaves his head, he learns about binding, he layers too many clothes for the time of year, his parents do not understand. He will always be their baby girl, they will never call him James, they will always, always, be there for her. He contemplates seriously ending his life.

He moves.

Six hundred miles, to date a girl he met on the internet. She calls him James, his new friends call him James, his work calls him James, he is James.

Age 19: He moves to college, an additional two hundred and fifty miles away, his parents still won’t call him James.

Age 20: He’s in love with her, the girl he moved for, they do everything together. Her family calls him James, their friends, some of his aunts and uncles start to call him James. His grandmothers call him James, they don’t understand it, but they love him.

Age 21: His mom calls him “Son” for the first time and he cries. He asks her if she’d like to pick a middle name for him for him, she declines. He starts to see a therapist so he can start his transition medically. She’s nice, but makes him relive his childhood, which he didn’t understand. He adopts a cat.

Age 22: He gets a letter from his therapist so he can start Testosterone, he searches for doctors for months, he finally gets on the waiting list for a primary care physician and makes his first appointment. This is the first time he experiences Transphobia in the medical field. His doctor has him come to the first appointment, then a second, a third. He contemplates again if life is worth living

Age 23: A fourth appointment, fifth, sixth, he stands up for himself after his doctor tells him he’s uncomfortable prescribing hormones. He’s spent over two thousand dollars on blood work, appointments, therapy letters. He tells his doctor to refer him to a specialist if he refused to help him. He’s put on a waiting list. He meets the specialist four months later, she apologizes for the other doctor, she hugs him, she prescribes him hormone therapy. His voice changes, he gets acne.

Age 24: His voice changes more, he starts to shave his face, he proposes to his girlfriend while they vacation in Ireland. His parents call him James, all the time, his siblings do too.

Age 25: He changes his name, legally, to James, two days after his name change goes through his mom tells him she’d like to pick his middle name, he tells her it’s too late, he’s already picked one. She cries.

Age 26: He has surgery to remove his breasts, he marries his girlfriend, they adopt a puppy, two puppies, he stops shaving, grows a beard.

Age 27-28: He glances in the mirror and realizes he’s smiling, he’s been smiling, he’s happy. He’s not sure when the good began to outweigh the bad.

Age 29: He reflects, he smiles this time instead of cries. He’s complete.