BaconGames

happy pride month from everyone's favorite transgender LESBIAN video game characters!!!

I'm standing in my childhood bedroom with a one-way ticket to America in my pocket and I can't stop crying because

she's not coming with me.

We haven't even given each other gifts. Not really. No bracelets or lockets or mixtapes. Just screenshots of our video calls and voice memos I play on repeat. I keep running the numbers. The visa applications. The immigration forms. The "proof of relationship" documents that reduce us to paper when we are so much more than that. We are late night Discord calls where she falls asleep first and I watch her breathe. We are sending each other estrogen schedules like other couples send good morning texts. We are "I saw this meme and thought of you" and "you looked so beautiful in that photo" and "I want to hold your hand while we both get our makeup done."

I want to bring her with me. I want to wake up in some cramped American apartment with her head on my chest. I want to go to the pharmacy together and pick up our prescriptions side by side. I want to introduce her to my new coworkers as my girlfriend, my partner, my future. I want to build a life that isn't measured in time zones.

Instead I'm leaving her behind in a country that knows her name and I'm terrified that America will swallow me whole and I'll forget the exact way she laughs or the specific color of her eyes in sunlight.

But here's the thing. Here's the hope I'm holding in my mouth like a secret:

I'm going to bring her with me. Not in my suitcase. Not on this flight. But I'm going to work every shitty job and fill out every form and save every dollar until I can buy her a ticket too. Until I can stand in the airport with a sign with her name on it. Until I can finally touch her face without a screen between us.

She's worth the distance. She's worth the wait.

But there was one moment that really upset me.

My friend has respiratory issues, and this guy from the warhammer crowd was standing in the doorway smoking while talking on his phone, letting all the cigarette smoke drift straight inside the store. It immediately started making her cough. She very politely asked if he could maybe move out of the doorway a little, and instead of just being decent about it, he started lecturing her about “how to properly speak to people,” saying she should introduce herself first before “demanding” things.

Meanwhile she was literally struggling to breathe.

You could see her shrinking into herself while he kept talking down to her, and honestly it made my blood boil. So I stepped in and defended her, because nobody deserves to be treated like that for asking someone not to blow smoke into a doorway.

Afterwards though… she got really emotional.

Later that day she quietly asked if she could have a hug, and the second I said yes she just clung to me. She held onto me for almost two whole minutes and wouldn’t let go, and while she was holding me she admitted nobody had really defended her before. She talked about how alone she’s felt for so long, how weak and anxious she always feels around people, and how me standing up for her made her feel safe enough to actually be herself around me.

And then she said something that genuinely broke my heart a little.

She told me that when she’s with me, she feels like she doesn’t have to stress or constantly be on guard anymore. That she really likes being around me, and that in that moment she never wanted to let go.

I’d been feeling pretty dysphoric lately after seeing a photo a coworker took of me while I was working at a miniature convention. You know how sometimes pictures taken by other people just look... wrong? Like somehow they capture a completely different version of you. I didn’t feel feminine in it at all. It just didn’t look like me, the me I see in the mirror, the me I’ve been growing into.

So this morning I was doing my usual routine before work: grabbing breakfast at a local restaurant. I headed to the bathroom. Even now, as a trans woman, I still get nervous about using the women’s restroom because there’s always that little voice in the back of my head telling me I don’t pass well enough yet.

I ended up using the men’s room and was walking out when a woman stopped me.

She looked genuinely concerned and said, "Ma’am, you’re in the wrong bathroom. That’s the men’s bathroom."

Then she pointed toward the women’s restroom.

When I just stood there for a second, completely caught off guard, she pointed at the sign again and said, "They should really make that thing more visible."