trans•gen•der
“Denoting or relating to a person whose self-identity does not conform unambiguously to conventional notions of male or female gender.”

When I was younger, I always knew I was different than the other kids. I didn’t know it yet, but I was Transgender. I didn’t understand as a little kid because I hadn’t even heard of the word. When I was in middle school, I started to realize that I liked girls. A lot. I had no interest in boys at all. When I started to realize that I was a lesbian, I was fine with it. I felt this huge pain in my chest because I felt like I was wrong. Like I wasn’t true to myself about who I was. When I finally came out in the beginning of freshman year, I felt better but I still felt wrong about myself. I felt like who I was, was wrong. I came out to my mom first, and she was completely supportive. She was skeptical at first, but she soon came to terms with it. I came out to my dad and he was just glad that I couldn’t get pregnant. My friends were even more supportive. My friend Kylyn was about as excited as an 8th grade girl could be. She absolutely could not believe what I had told her.

At the end of my sophomore year, the GSA group here at school had a movie night at Mindframe Theater. The movie was called Trans. It was about the stories of five people who were transgender. After the movie, a woman named Rachael spoke about her story as a transgender woman. She spoke about how she felt as a child and how she came to the conclusion that she was transgender. I realized that the whole time I was watching, that I was connecting. I went home and I started researching more and more. Some of the things I looked up on my phone were the stories of other people like me, the types of surgery and therapy and how much everything would cost. After a day of researching everything I could, I decided to meet with her. After we met, I finally knew who I was. I was a transgender boy. I felt like that part of me that was empty, was then filled. It felt incredible.

When I came out as a Transgender boy in March, some of my family wasn’t that supportive. My mom was supportive-ish. She still calls me my birth name and refers to me as her daughter. My dad does the same. I can’t really blame them because they’ve spent the last 17 years calling me that, but it just sucks. My cousin Jessica wrote on my Facebook post, “I remember when you were little and we asked all the kids what they wanted to be when they grew up and you simply said, a boy.” My friends on the other hand, they were great. They all started calling me, “Eli” or “Elliot” right away and referring to me as their guy friend. My friend Emilia in particular, she helped me pick out my male name. She even gets mad when people call me a girl or by my birth name. She also introduced me to one of my biggest sources of support I have; my girlfriend Brittany.
For some, like myself, the worst part about being Transgender is the disgust and the hate that comes with it. Not necessarily for anyone else. Just for ourselves. We want to change every detail about ourselves because it sickens us looking at our reflection. We want to change ourselves because we know more than anyone that we were not born who we were supposed to be. The hell we put ourselves through to hide who we are from the world is not a hell most people understand. Transgender men, for example, we have to bind our breasts. Well, except for those who were blessed with small breasts. We have smaller hands and feet and bodies than “regular” men. We have higher voices than “regular” men. We also have vaginas. Transgender women have bigger feet, bigger hands and deeper voices. They have flat chests and penises. We put ourselves through pain to try and pass as someone we desperately want to be and it really isn’t easy. It actually is very emotionally draining. It really sucks.

Some start to hate themselves more and more each day. We stare into the mirror at our reflection picking out everything we hate about ourselves. Our hair. Our face. Our body. Our voice. We hate it and our reflection because it isn’t who we were supposed to be. We have to go through months and months of therapy and spend thousands upon thousands of dollars on surgery and hormone therapy. As Transgender men, we are injected with Testosterone to make our voices deeper, have a more masculine body and facial structure, and to be able to gain muscle. Transgender women have to be injected with Estrogen to grow their own breasts, have a more feminine body and facial structure, and to heighten their voices. On top of all this, we have people who say things like, “It’s only a phase” and “You’re young, you don’t know what you want.” We have people who torment us, whisper about us and laugh at us. We hear and read about stories of Transgender men and women being set on fire and shot and drug behind cars for only being different and it scares us to the point where we are sick about it. A few examples are: Brandon Teena. 21 year old Transgender man raped, shot and killed by 2 men because they found out he was different. Venus Xtravaganza. 23 year old Transgender woman strangled and stuffed under a bed in a hotel. Stories even worse than these have been reported and still happen today.

Things like that, make all this so much worse. Nobody besides another Transgender person will ever be able to relate to us on a physical and emotional level. Nobody but another Transgender person will be able to understand the pain and the strength it takes to pull through and not give up. Even after all this, we still stand strong. We are some of the strongest people out there. We are no different than anyone else. Physically, yes but besides that, no. We are somebody’s son or daughter. We have hopes and dreams we want to accomplish. We have feelings and emotions. We get sad like everyone else. We get happy like everyone else. We breathe the same air, walk the same streets and drive the same roads. We have blood coursing through our veins like anybody else. We are no different than you. It’s time that we started getting treated like it.