From Belleville, Michigan, USA: "Where I live, it's really hard for me to be proud of who I am. I live in a small conservative Catholic town where everyone I went to high school with grew up at the same church. I don't feel safe talking about being trans or gay or Muslim here. When I was younger, my parents told me and my brothers they wanted us to figure out what we believed for ourselves, but as we've gotten older, sometimes it feels like even they condemn faith. My dad talks about how foolish believing in God is. My mom says there is no way to know. I usually pray in my bedroom with the door shut. There is also a strange relationship between interacting with the LGBT community and being a person of faith. A lot of my friends have had bad experiences with religion and dislike religion as a whole, so sometimes I feel like in LGBT spaces I'm supposed to 'turn off' being Muslim. In Muslim spaces, I feel like I'm expected to hide my LGBT identities. It's difficult to navigate and neither space feels safe for all of me. A safe space should not require you to erase parts of yourself. College is the first place I met other queer Muslims and is the main reason I finally felt like I was allowed to call myself Muslim. As someone who has had doubt in Allah, someone who is transgender and gay, and who has a history of substance abuse and suicide attempts, I felt like maybe I wasn't really allowed to be Muslim. But I read the Quran. I pray, when I have the energy to get out of bed. I want to be my best me in the eyes of Allah SWT. The most important thing for me to remind myself is that my faith is between me and Allah alone. Islam is not a performance. Alhamdulillah."
