fob-reference

we never talked about it. like i had never said a word. the most i got was performative language from my mother in sessions with my psychiatrist. outside of that room, it didn't actually matter to her. it didn't matter that i had bared the softest parts of my soul just to say that i exist. it didn't matter that i was moments away from being another statistic. it didn't matter that i tore my skin open with the desire to escape it. we never talked about it.

the ignorance hurt more than any rejection ever could.

we do not talk about it.

i am now nineteen. i have been on testosterone for roughly 9 months. my voice has dropped and my bones have been covered and my mustache grows in dark. she has helped with injections. everyone who matters calls me gray. we still do not talk about it.

my father is hateful. he has tried to stop me every step of the way and she has enabled him. he has torn down my flags and demanded i act the part of daughter. i continue to grow through the cracks in the pavement.

do not mistake my story for tragedy. my transness is not an ailment or burden. i am loved, not despite being trans, and not even though i'm trans. it is a simple fact of my existence and i am loved in the acknowledgement of it. in the celebration and radical acceptance of it.

it is freeing, and it is terrifying. especially now, transgender people are being aggressively targeted in the government. as of writing this, 821 bills that would harm trans and gender-nonconforming people are in consideration nationwide. 88 anti-trans federal bills were proposed in 2024. two years prior, there were zero.

this is political violence. these are the textbook warning signs of genocide. we are being stripped of our humanity. we are being denied healthcare, employment, homes, respect, acknowledgement, and dignity. our children are being taken from us, our marriages invalidated, our existence pushed out of the spaces we share with our cis peers.

do i threaten you by sharing a stage or a sports team with my brothers? am i brainwashing children by simply affirming that i am a man when they have questions? would you take my medication and my name and my identity from me, knowing that it would kill me?

there is no exaggeration. i would be dead. forcing myself to be a girl killed me in every single way you can be without physically dying. and in the worst of it, i almost did.

my friends, you have allowed me be alive. i urge you stand for all of the trans people in your life. leave no space for hate or denial of our existence. be vocal.

this is not asking you to love every single trans person without question; like everyone else, we can be bad people. this is asking to recognize that transness is not the root of evil. that transness is real and factual and not tied to the worth or integrity of an individual.

i am trans in the same way that i am nineteen and i have freckles and my eyes crinkle when i smile. it is true. there is nothing else to understand.

i am gray.