#my parents waste no opportunities bashing queer and trans people

[saybees]

Okay, so I’ve struggled with my gender identity literally since I was a kid. I always used to wear boy’s clothes and I would play with the boys and I had only boys as friends and I was A Boy, okay. But I wasn’t.

Once I hit teenage-hood and my best friend came out as a lesbian I started to learn more about sexuality and gender and it was not too long after that that I realized I was not straight and I eventually came out as pan.

Then when I was in uni I was taking a course called Religion and Sexuality. My prof was a Jewish rabbi (he was one of my fave profs and I adore the man and the class was bomb). One day we were talking about gender stuff and the prof had pulled up that comic that went around here for a while about gender. I can’t remember exactly what it was right now, but it was a popular post here and when he put it on the big screen I recall that I had seen it before on tumblr, but I hadn’t really connected with it like I did that day. I shed tears in class that day, quietly, by myself. I realized, at that moment, that I’m not cis.

I had mostly ignored a lot of those feelings, or I tried. One day I decided I was going to go to the mall and I was going to dress like a boy. My at-the-time boyfriend was all for this. He had come out as bisexual in highschool (after we broke up a year later he came out as gay). He took me clothes shopping and I bought two pairs of men’s jeans that I still have to this day, but am too self-conscious to wear. I had bought a cheap binder off the internet and I wore that to the mall. My boyfriend was extra clingy to me that day (because I looked like a boy and he was gay, in case you hadn’t put those things together, but I digress).

Since then I have not played much with my gender identity. I pushed those feelings down because I didn’t think it mattered. I dated another boy for 3 years who treated me like garbage and I never talked to him about gender stuff. He would never understand and he would be nasty to me about it. So I continued to pretend that Yes I Am A Woman.

I have told my current partner that I do not identify as a woman. He is not concerned with it. We don’t talk about it much, but I think about it a lot. I think about what it might be like if I transitioned to male. I think about what my face might look like if I was on T and what my voice might sound like. I think about the body hair I might gain. I think about being free from the constraints of being a woman in society.

My whole life I have pushed these feelings aside as best I can because it would do me no good to come out as trans and transition. My family would disown me and my parents would tell me all kinds of horrible things. They are so painfully Christian and old fashioned and closed-minded. My sister would support me and perhaps some of my cousins might, but overall I would lose a lot more than I would gain. I would never be able to afford a transition anyway. It would be more time and money and energy than I can afford to spend.

Sometimes I hear about how much happier a person becomes after they transition and that losing their family was a price they were willing to pay. Those people are more brave than I will ever be.

It does break my heart that I will forever be stuck in this female form and never get to know what life might be like if I could be the man that I want to be. When I was a child I often wished I could shapeshift into a boy. I had dreams about being a boy. I still have dreams about being a boy.

I don’t know if I will ever be willing to pay the price that transitioning will cost. I don’t know if I could risk losing almost everyone in my life. I don’t know if my partner would stay with me, and I know that if he wouldn’t then I’m better off without him, but still, the thought of possibly losing the man I love is more than I can bear. I don’t particularly like my parents and I know they are not really very good people because of the many biases they hold, but I do still love them and they are my parents and to lose them would hurt more than I care to admit.

I don’t think about all that I might gain from transitioning, but instead think about all that I might lose. Not that I have much to begin with, but that’s exactly it. I already don’t have much. If I lose even more than I already have then I’m even more alone.

I don’t know. I just feel very alone and lost and frustrated. I don’t know what to do or who to talk to. I’m afraid to reach out to anyone about this because I fear judgement. I fear what they might say to me. I don’t know who is a safe person to talk to. I have talked to my bestie Ryan about it a little and he’s an angel and is incredibly supportive of me. I adore him to the moon and back. I just don’t feel super great about the future. Or the present. I hope I can learn to accept myself and accept the gender I was born with, but right now, and for years, it has felt like such a burden.