#the true transition from normal high school bully story to oh god oh fuck here comes the supernatural with a steel chair

[navycat305]

Something something Max Jagerman prevented Pete from shooting his shot with Steph when he was alive by beating him up and then prevented Steph from shooting her shot with Pete as a ghost by stopping the fucking bullet she was trying to shoot him with

#the true transition from normal high school bully story to oh god oh fuck here comes the supernatural with a steel chair #starkid #nerdy prudes must die #max jagerman #stephanie lauter #peter spankoffski #original post #does this make sense? i don’t know #do I care? maybe. I get anxious about these things #npmd

[ablogthatsathing-blog]

Surprise, I’m transgender! While this may be a shock to some, to others this might have been expected. I owe everyone reading this an explanation, and that will be conveyed through this long-ass story. I am sorry that this took so long to say, and I hope that regardless of how you may know me, that this does not change anything. (sorry I curse a lot in this… I wanted to stay as true to myself and this is most alike to how I talk and how I would say it. A lot of this is un-edited raw thought so with that said, have at it) Before we dive into the story, I would like to preface this by saying that I never wanted to be trans. I would also like to reinforce the fact that being transgender sucks and I almost wish that this was a choice, because I would love to wake up one day and just decide not to be trans. That day isn’t going to happen though, and I can personally vouge for the “it’s not a choice” argument. Trust me, being transgender has stopped me from doing quite a few things. If I could magically switch to being cisgender so I could live a normal life, I would. So, without further or due, here’s my story, in a terrible chronological order almost as bad as that in the movie, Citizen Kane. Let’s start from when I actually found out I was transgender. Any doctor’s favorite question is, “How did you know you were trans?”. The “transgender” term came to me by accident, as I was being the introvert I still kind of am, watching YouTube videos up in my room at my grandma’s house. I was 12 at the time, and while scrolling through the “recommended” section, a video titled something along the lines of, “How I knew I was transgender” popped up. By clicking on that video, I unknowingly opened up my Pandora’s box of shit. Listening to this trans man talk about his experience, as well as with his struggles with gender dysphoria as a teenager felt something freakishly close to what I was feeling about my own body at the time. The term “transgender” though, was just something too big for me. Having already dealt with Lyme disease the year prior to that, I really didn’t want any more problems in my life… so I pretended like I never even heard the word, or related to that dysphoria that the man talked about, and went on living my life suppressing every ounce of pain I felt. I figured I would only deal with it when I had to. Girls were getting boobs and hourglass bodies, and guys were getting squared jaws and broad shoulders, as well as facial hair. When it was my turn to step up to the puberty plate, I tried to do everything I could to mask the changes that were happening to me. Which is quite strange, because at the time I was also denying any possibility of being transgender. Periods were a nightmare (and still are), causing deep depression that was a mix between dysphoria and self-rejection, as well as many crying episodes. Luckily small boobs run in the family, and I was able to get through middle school and into high school wearing double sports bras to hide those “almost A’s”. To deal with the hair situation, I cut that shit short at the end of 8th grade, and braced myself for the reputation that it would bring me… *Cough* *Cough* Lesbian. All of the things that I was doing to hide my gender and my body really didn’t throw many people off. That’s not to say that they didn’t think it was weird, but it wasn’t unlike me to dress “construction casual” like the other boys. I was always the tomboy, often seen rocking some lacrosse shorts and some sort of athletic T-shirt all throughout elementary school. My best friend and I also only played with the boys during recess. That was until I was too much of a weirdo (was it the pony tail mixed with the basketball shoes and all male wardrobe?). I was ousted from that crowd and bullied pretty heavily. Even though it was terrible at the time, Im grateful for the experience, as it really did build character as well as a little confidence when I finally was on the other side of it. Anyways, flash forward to about 8th grade during the Emo ultra butch phase…At that point people kind of expected things like short hair and guys clothing from me. They just figured I was some uber lesbian that was finding myself. Little did they know that yes, while I did like girls, I didn’t like the fact that I was technically a girl, but in all fairness I wasn’t consciously aware of it at the time either. I think I did have an idea, because the term transgender lingered on my shoulder ever since I watched the video. I tried so hard to forget about it, but while on the inside I was working hard to convince myself I wanted to be a girl, on the outside I was already beginning my transition process. Remember that whole “Ill deal with it when I have to” plan? Yeah, well that “time to deal with it” bell rang right before my 15th birthday. It was right about that time when I slipped into a constant state of terrible depression. For the most part I should have been happy at the time, as I had a girlfriend who supported me in everything I did, and never batted an eye or questioned any of my “gender hiding” habits. While we did not end up working out, I am forever grateful to her for being the first person I was able to come out to, as well as for always accepting me for who I was, not as the gender I identified by, or the clothing choices I made. Anyways… September/ early October of 2015 was when it occurred to me that it was time to either deal with the situation at hand, or to commit suicide. I hated every part of myself… I didn’t fit in right on either side of the gender spectrum, and I had to accept the hard fact that I was transgender and that there was no changing it. For my 15th birthday, I bought some of my friends presents instead of accepting anything, as I figured I wouldn’t make it to my 16th birthday and I wanted to show my love and appreciation for them. So, in between that October to March of 2016, my depression was getting so bad that even the slightest things would result in the thought of “I guess I’ll just die… that’ll make things better”. My depression was playing a nasty game of Cuban missile crisis with my mind. Brinksmanship was the only thing that brought me to actually say the words “I am not comfortable in my own body, I am transgender.” It was either that or Depression was going to launch its nukes. I thought I opened Pandora’s box when I watched that YouTube video when I was 13, but boy was I a fool for not realizing that Pandora seems to have an unlimited number of shit filled boxes. See, the issue with telling your parents your trans is like, “Wow! I feel so relieved that the thing that almost caused me to kill myself is finally off my chest… oh wait, now I actually have to really deal with it.” The best metaphor I can think of to describe the situation is that it’s like peeling an onion. Each layer, while gradually getting closer and closer to the core, makes you cry and stinks up your kitchen. If only being transgender came with a pair of onion goggles that would keep the tears away. Unfortunately, the elves didn’t stop by to drop off my pair the night that I came out to my mom. Instead, I woke up many days to, “now what” conversations, and a lot, and I mean a lot, more crying. Here’s another thing that the Fairy (no pun intended) god mother doesn’t tell you about being trans. As far as I can tell from the experience I have, it actually gets way harder when you actively begin to transition, up until you’re on hormones for a couple months! If being trans was a plot structure graph, English teachers would have one hell of a time trying to explain all the rising actions, climaxes, and falling actions to their students. You know when you’re on a school break or summer vacation and your parents still have to go to work, so you stumble out of bed at like 10:30 only to find a giant list of chores you have to complete before your allowed to go out? I experienced something similar to that after I came out to my parents, except instead of the list being signed “XOXO -Mom” mine had something like, “Have fun bitch! -Your Superego”. The mental list that I had come up with for myself looked something like this: · Come out to close friends · Come out to my sister, my cousins, my aunts and uncles, my grandparents. · Come out to the school administration · Come out to school · See a psychologist that can get me a testosterone letter · See an endocrinologist to get testosterone · Get both parents on board with testosterone I wanted to come out to my close friends first for two reasons… One was that my girlfriend already knew, so what would the difference be if the friend-group we were both in knew as well? Two was that I wanted to practice actually saying the words, “I am transgender” to my friends before I started playing tranny hot potato with my family. Telling my family kind of stood in the way of telling the school administration, as well as my classmates, because my sister, along with two of my cousins and I, all went to the same school together. “Hey Katie, I just heard someone say Kieran’s a boy now?” Needless to say, that would be a little awkward. The list got totally re-made many times, and as the list continues to increase in size, I’m sure it will also continue to change its order of priorities. The ever-changing list is like a fucking hydra… cut off one problem and two more shall appear. Over the course of a year I came out to many of my close friends, along with other acquaintances. Originally, this was a feat that seemed insurmountable, but with each conversation came more and more confidence. While I had yet to fully accept, and love myself, coming out to my friends allowed me to get in touch with a lot of feelings I was pushing away. Many of them wanted to hear my story, and wanted to understand what it was that caused me to feel this way. I began to recall all the situations that raised many gender crisis flags, some of which I had never felt comfortable to talk about until then. I told them my communion story… The one where I was so upset about having to wear a dress, that I ran off the church lawn after a couple pictures, and stripped out of my dress in the parking lot. It didn’t even phase me that I was completely nude in front of most of the town, I was just focused on getting that dress off. There are many stories very similar to the communion nightmare, and if you look back into family photo albums, you rarely find me wearing dresses or girly clothing. When I was 7 my second cousin was getting married in Washington D.C. and my entire family drove down for the wedding. In all the pictures, we have from the wedding, I can be seen wearing a pony-tail, blue polo shirt, a pair of khaki Capri’s and some super sexy blue crocks. I was that cousin… and no it was not because of the crocs. Sorry to jump out of chronological order here, but let’s jump to June of 2016, when it had been 3 months since I had told my parents and a couple of friends that I was transgender. I started seeing a new therapist in hopes of getting a letter for testosterone. Depending on where you live, or which doctor you see, the process for getting testosterone usually goes along the lines of seeing a therapist for x amount of time, seeing an endocrinologist, and then getting your testosterone recommendation letters and giving them to the endocrinologist who will, fingers crossed, write you a prescription for those goodie- good hormones. That’s the over simplified order because, let me tell you, that is never how easy it is going to be. So, I start seeing this new therapist, right? I’ll just make it clear that I personally hate therapy. That’s not to say that I have anything against the people who find therapists or therapy helpful, it’s just that the whole system doesn’t really work for me. As a passionate overthinker, as well as a person who has spent the last 6 years seeing therapists, I love to also psycho-analyze the shit out of myself. It’s such an awful habit, because I end up making myself more depressed than I was and then I’m stuck feeling like shit for the rest of the day. Going to therapy for me just sucks because when the therapist asks, “So maybe it’s the fact that you have X going on, its causing a lot of sad feelings?” and it’s like “Um no actually X was a small problem that made me feel let down as well as furthered my trust issues with people. Problem Y and Z are the things that are causing me to feel sad but there’s nothing I can do to change them so here’s a shit ton of my parent’s money, let’s sit here for another 45 minutes and bullshit the rest of this session.” It’s kind of sad when you get to the point that your therapist sucks so much, you have to psycho- analyze them to try and figure out what led them to their psychology major, and love of leather recliners and notepads. My favorite type of therapists are the therapists that haven’t spent any time in the chair themselves. They’re your stereotypical “so how does that make you feel?” therapists, the ones that always have their pen going. They stand out like a sore thumb to anyone that has seen their deal of therapists, as they struggle to remember small facts, and the DSMR is their only solution to your problems. Their psych evals start off with “ummmm… would you consider yourself to be a worrier?” and when they ask, “do you have any questions for me” they’re really saying, “please don’t ask me anything I have exactly 26.2 seconds until this appointment is over and I do not have the time nor the experience to answer anything, don’t let the door hit you on the way out kiddo.” Usually the only question I have for inexperienced therapists like this is, “where the fuck did you get you psychology degree?”. The 10 weeks of summer was a rushed mess between crippling depression and therapy appointments, and it was late August when my parents finally agreed it was time to go see an endocrinologist. Long story short, it is now February 23rd, and tomorrow I see a doctor that will most likely be writing my prescription for hormones (which according to predictions, should start in March). It has been an incredibly long journey, full of plenty of tears and new understandings. I know it will continue to be a long and tough road, but there is no way to properly express how grateful I am to be at this point. So now that you’ve heard my story, I’m going to switch gears to part 2 of this mini project. “Why?” Is a question I ask myself often. “Why am I transgender?” “Why am I like this?” “Why couldn’t I have been born normally” “Why can’t I just stop being trans?” “Why do I have to live my life like this”. To many cisgender people, being transgender seems like a conscious decision made by those who identify as a gender separate from that of the one they were given at birth. As a transgender person currently seeking medical treatment to help me cope with the life I am forced to live, I can assure you that this is not something people chose. It is not fun. It is not cool. It’s not exciting getting to live with a foot in both worlds. Do you have any idea how fucked up my ribs are from years of wearing sports bras and duct tape or ace bandages that were too tight? Try running in two, way-too-tight sports bras and tell me how you feel after about a mile. Those bruises that I’ve had since 8th grade? That sit right along my bra line? They don’t seem to be going away any time soon. My back hurts all the time from the binder I have to wear. When I forget to air dry it in time for school the next day, and I’m forced to wear the double sports bras again, I can’t get a full breath without being in terrible pain until 2:55 when I finally get home. Bathrooms are so much fun! There’s nothing being out with a friend and having to travel all around town to find a place with a single bathroom instead of having to deal with your traditional men’s and women’s rooms. Sure, I look enough like a guy to use the men’s room, but what happens when you see one of your schoolmates or maybe a family friend that knows you as female? Using the bathroom in school is super lit too. I usually have two options, one is to go during second period when nobody is down in the bathroom by the field entrance (oh and then not go to the bathroom for the rest of the day), or two is to go to the nurses and awkwardly ask to use their bathroom. While I have made an extreme effort to become close with the nurses, it doesn’t change the fact that it’s pretty weird to go there to use the bathroom. To avoid bathrooms overall, I usually just don’t drink anything starting from 9pm at night, until 3pm during the next day. That usually never works out though. I take medication for ADHD that makes me extremely thirsty and dries the fuck out of my throat, so what ends up happening is I’ll go to bed at around 8 on a dose of Nyquil (or else I’m never able to sleep), and then proceed to wake up every hour usually around the exact same time, drink a crap ton of water, and then go back to bed. That’s usually fine if it’s a weekend, because I won’t go out until later in the day, but on schooldays this is terrible because it means that I’ll have to use the bathroom all day but I can’t. Another great thing about being trans? Trying to look as masculine as possible, following the “whatever it takes!” notion. Nothing like picking up some awesome eating disorders. Last year, anorexia/ binge eating, lead to orthorexia, and then finally led to a forever fucked up view of food. Oh, and you know what eating disorders do to an already fucked up stomach like mine? Fuck it up even more, so kiss and Dairy/ Grains goodbye. I hate eating outside of my house because I’m still scared of calories, and when I eat at home I have to eat worrying about every single thing I put in my mouth. If I get fat, I won’t look as masculine. If I get too skinny, the doctors won’t give me hormones because they’ll know I have an eating disorder. If only they understood that the eating disorders were caused by being trans, and hormones would rid of my eating problems because I would look masculine without having to starve myself (oh or work out every day and ruin plans because I need to go to the gym or else I feel like I can’t see my friends because I look too feminine) Of course clothes help, but they usually don’t look right on my disproportionate body. I also don’t gain muscle half as fast as regular ol cis guys do, so even when I bust my ass in the gym every day (looking like a scrawny fool to all the other guys there) I don’t see like any results which throw me into a terrible depression because what’s the point of going to the gym then? Oh, that’s right… if I don’t go to the gym, I won’t look like a guy, and I can’t eat then because I’ll look to feminine. Ruining things is also a really fun hobby! Whether it be relationships, friendships, ties with relatives, social outings, or maybe even just a car ride or just sitting around in your living room, you can always count on being trans to ruin shit. Who knows how your crush will take it when they find out your trans? Disgusted? Maybe, “That’s a shame, I would have dated you if you were cis”? It’s always a gamble, you can never tell how people will react. Close friends usually take it well, sometimes they just want to understand the whole thing. That’s totally okay with me, as it is my job to help people understand what being trans is, and it also helps me understand and come to terms with myself. Family is super tough. They’re the ones that mean the most to you, and even if you’re out to them, there’s always potential to ruin shit. You really can’t beat ruining dinner with your mom, like how I did the other night. We hadn’t had the chance to sit down and talk in a while, and after 15 minutes of me talking about trans stuff (cause you know the question “how are you” automatically segways into the trans shit) she slams her fists down on the table, starts crying, and says “please can we just talk about something happy in your life?” and then you start crying because you just ruined dinner and oh yeah, there’s nothing happy about living a life where you constantly want to kill yourself, because of how much you hate yourself. So, even when you dry your eyes and ask “how’s work going?” and your mom puts down her food and says she’s not hungry anymore, you realize not only did you just kill the dinner vibes, but you literally ruined dinner. My sister really loves to deal with trans stuff too! The second I try and correct her on pronouns, she rolls her eyes. That usually starts a fight. Monday night, it ended with me fighting back tears, saying “You know sometimes when you hate yourself so much, one of the few things that keeps you going is a pronoun.” She rolled her eyes again and laughed, and I started sobbing. If anyone wonders why my sister and I have a bad relationship, that’s why. I can’t imagine how hard it is for my immediate family. I wish I didn’t have to put anyone through this. I wish I could change so they didn’t have to deal with my mess, and so many tears didn’t have to be shed. I wish I was never trans. I wish I didn’t have to bind in order to feel a little bit better about myself. I wish I didn’t have to plan out every single thing about my day in school, like using the bathroom and avoiding locker rooms. I wish I actually could envision myself going to college, or living to see my next birthday. I wish my first reaction to things wasn’t “I’ll kill myself then I won’t have to deal with it”. I wish I could run cross country or track again. I wish I could use the bathroom without having to worry about seeing someone, or being afraid of being questioned or worse. I wish I didn’t worry about the pitch of my voice when talking to strangers. I wish I fit in with guys. I wish I didn’t ruin things. I wish I could drink water. I wish I didn’t have problems with food. I wish I could not worry about talking to girls because of the fact that I’m trans. I wish I didn’t have to work out in order to be able to leave the house. I wish I could be okay with myself. Now that you’ve gotten through all the shitty stuff, here’s some positivity. I know I say plenty of times that I hate myself, and that I think about suicide as an option for everything. Rest assured, while yes, some days are worse than others in regards to depression and suicidal thoughts, I still have hope. There are so many amazing things in this world and I acknowledge that killing myself, won’t allow me to see. I love making films and writing. I love making other people laugh, and laughing at my own jokes. I love to make people happy. Personally speaking, one of the greatest things about being in a relationship is waking up every day and thinking, “how can I make this person’s day awesome?”. I love seeing my friends succeed (and helping them out when they mess up). I love to meet people. I love talking to people, even strangers. I love hearing other people’s stories, and learning about people. I love hearing why your favorite animal is a flamingo, and I want to know the story behind what made you hate striped shirts. I love music, both making it and listening to it. I love to learn (although I hate learning in a classroom setting). I love to read books, read opinions, read the news, read different perspectives, read about religions, read about philosophies on life and our existence. I love bike riding, skateboarding, and running. I love exploring, and the trouble that it sometimes gets me into. I love adventure, as well as change. Even though I love adventure, I also love staying home and watching movies. I love hugs. I love to chill and watch Netflix. I love to sleep and I also love waking up early to work out. I love to suck at piano and guitar. I love to dance terribly. I love animals. I love being upstate and out in nature. I love San Francisco (but I hate planes so idk when ill visit again). I love (and really miss) good food. I love to bake. I love to cook. I love photography. I love my friends, I love my teammates and I love my family. I love so many things, I couldn’t possibly trade my life for all of the above. Look at the things I wish were different and compare them to the list of things that I love. The love list far outweighs the wish list. Seeing black or whatever the hell happens after you die, can never compare to the opportunities I have been given. My family and I might have our struggles, but whose family doesn’t. I’ve been gifted with a great education, an ADHD brain that allows for extremely creativity, a great family, amazing friends, and a world is filled with so many stories that need to be told, so many ideas that need to be here, and so many opportunities that are ready to be taken. To all of you who have made it through this entire thing, I want to say thank you. From the bottom of my heart, I genuinely appreciate the fact that you took the time to read this. I would really like to express that I do not want any sympathy from this, and that the whole point of writing this was to help people gain some perspective and understanding, as well as to come out to those that didn’t know I was trans. Just because we all may experience different struggles in life, it’s impossible to say that we all don’t have a list of things we love. Regardless of race, gender, sexual orientation, social class, or disability, there will always be room for love. Once again, thank you for reading this, it really means a lot to me.

[illthinkofausernamelater12-blog]

Surprise, I’m transgender! While this may be a shock to some, to others this might have been expected. I owe everyone reading this an explanation, and that will be conveyed through this long-ass story. I am sorry that this took so long to say, and I hope that regardless of how you may know me, that this does not change anything. (sorry I curse a lot in this… I wanted to stay as true to myself and this is most alike to how I talk and how I would say it. A lot of this is un-edited raw thought so with that said, have at it)

Before we dive into the story, I would like to preface this by saying that I never wanted to be trans. I would also like to reinforce the fact that being transgender sucks and I almost wish that this was a choice, because I would love to wake up one day and just decide not to be trans. That day isn’t going to happen though, and I can personally vouge for the “it’s not a choice” argument. Trust me, being transgender has stopped me from doing quite a few things. If I could magically switch to being cisgender so I could live a normal life, I would. So, without further or due, here’s my story, in terrible chronological order that is almost as bad as that in the movie, Citizen Kane.

Let’s start from when I actually found out I was transgender. Any doctor’s favorite question is, “How did you know you were trans?”. The “transgender” term came to me by accident, as I was being the introvert I still kind of am, watching YouTube videos up in my room at my grandma’s house. I was 12 at the time, and while scrolling through the “recommended” section, a video titled something along the lines of, “How I knew I was transgender” popped up. By clicking on that video, I unknowingly opened up my Pandora’s box of shit. Listening to this trans man talk about his experience, as well as with his struggles with gender dysphoria as a teenager felt something freakishly close to what I was feeling about my own body at the time. The term “transgender” though, was just something too big for me. Having already dealt with Lyme disease the year prior to that, I really didn’t want any more problems in my life… so I pretended like I never even heard the word, or related to that dysphoria that the man talked about, and went on living my life suppressing every ounce of pain I felt. I figured I would only deal with it when I had to. Girls were getting boobs and hourglass bodies, and guys were getting squared jaws and broad shoulders, as well as facial hair. When it was my turn to step up to the puberty plate, I tried to do everything I could to mask the changes that were happening to me. Which is quite strange, because at the time I was also denying any possibility of being transgender. Periods were a nightmare (and still are), causing deep depression that was a mix between dysphoria and self-rejection, as well as many crying episodes. Luckily small boobs run in the family, and I was able to get through middle school and into high school wearing double sports bras to hide those “almost A’s”. To deal with the hair situation, I cut that shit short at the end of 8th grade, and braced myself for the reputation that it would bring me… *Cough* *Cough* Lesbian.

All of the things that I was doing to hide my gender and my body really didn’t throw many people off. That’s not to say that they didn’t think it was weird, but it wasn’t unlike me to dress “construction casual” like the other boys. I was always the tomboy, often seen rocking some lacrosse shorts and some sort of athletic T-shirt all throughout elementary school. My best friend and I also only played with the boys during recess. That was until I was too much of a weirdo (was it the pony tail mixed with the basketball shoes and all male wardrobe?). I was ousted from that crowd and bullied pretty heavily. Even though it was terrible at the time, Im grateful for the experience, as it really did build character as well as a little confidence when I finally was on the other side of it. Anyways, flash forward to about 8th grade during the Emo ultra butch phase…At that point people kind of expected things like short hair and guys clothing from me. They just figured I was some uber lesbian that was finding myself. Little did they know that yes, while I did like girls, I didn’t like the fact that I was technically a girl, but in all fairness I wasn’t consciously aware of it either at the time. I think I did have an idea, because the term transgender lingered on my shoulder ever since I watched the video. I tried so hard to forget about it, but while on the inside I was working hard to convince myself I wanted to be a girl, on the outside I was already beginning my transition process.

Remember that whole “Ill deal with it when I have to” plan? Yeah, well that “time to deal with it” bell rang right before my 15th birthday. It was right about that time when I slipped into a constant state of terrible depression. For the most part I should have been happy at the time, as I had a girlfriend who supported me in everything I did, and never batted an eye or questioned any of my “gender hiding” habits. While we did not end up working out, I am forever grateful to her for being the first person I was able to come out to, as well as for always accepting me for who I was, not as the gender I identified by, or the clothing choices I made. Anyways… September/ early October of 2015 was when it occurred to me that it was time to either deal with the situation at hand, or to commit suicide. I hated every part of myself… I didn’t fit in right on either side of the gender spectrum, and I had to accept the hard fact that I was transgender and that there was no changing it. For my 15th birthday, I bought some of my friends presents instead of accepting anything, as I figured I wouldn’t make it to my 16th birthday and I wanted to show my love and appreciation for them. So, in between that October to March of 2016, my depression was getting so bad that even the slightest things would result in the thought of “I guess I’ll just die… that’ll make things better”. My depression was playing a nasty game of Cuban missile crisis with my mind. Brinksmanship was the only thing that brought me to actually say the words “I am not comfortable in my own body, I am transgender.” It was either that or Depression was going to launch its nukes.

I thought I opened Pandora’s box when I watched that YouTube video when I was 13, but boy was I a fool for not realizing that Pandora seems to have an unlimited number of shit filled boxes. See, the issue with telling your parents your trans is like, “Wow! I feel so relieved that the thing that almost caused me to kill myself is finally off my chest… oh wait, now I actually have to really deal with it.” The best metaphor I can think of to describe the situation is that it’s like peeling an onion. Each layer, while gradually getting closer and closer to the core, makes you cry and stinks up your kitchen. If only being transgender came with a pair of onion goggles that would keep the tears away. Unfortunately, the elves didn’t stop by to drop off my pair the night that I came out to my mom. Instead, I woke up many days to, “now what” conversations, and a lot, and I mean a lot, more crying. Here’s another thing that the Fairy (no pun intended) god mother doesn’t tell you about being trans. As far as I can tell from the experience I had, it actually gets way harder when you actively begin to transition, up until you’re on hormones for a couple months! If being trans was a plot structure graph, English teachers would have one hell of a time trying to explain all the rising actions, climaxes, and falling actions to their students.

You know when you’re on a school break or summer vacation and your parents still have to go to work, so you stumble out of bed at like 10:30 only to find a giant list of chores you have to complete before your allowed to go out? I experienced something similar to that after I came out to my parents, except instead of the list being signed “XOXO -Mom” mine had something like, “Have fun bitch! -Your Superego”. The mental list that I had come up with for myself looked something like this:

·       Come out to close friends

·       Come out to my sister, my cousins, my aunts and uncles, my grandparents.

·       Come out to the school administration

·       Come out to school

·       See a psychologist that can get me a testosterone letter

·       See an endocrinologist to get testosterone

·       Get both parents on board with testosterone

I wanted to come out to my close friends first for two reasons… One was that my girlfriend already knew, so what would the difference be if the friend-group we were both in knew as well? Two was that I wanted to practice actually saying the words, “I am transgender” to my friends before I started playing tranny hot potato with my family. Telling my family kind of stood in the way of telling the school administration, as well as my classmates, because my sister, along with two of my cousins and I, all went to the same school together. “Hey Katie, I just heard someone say Kieran’s a boy now?” Needless to say, that would be a little awkward.

The list got totally re-made many times, and as the list continues to increase in size, I’m sure it will also continue to change its order of priorities. The ever-changing list is like a fucking hydra… cut off one problem and two more shall appear.  

Over the course of a year I came out to many of my close friends, along with other acquaintances. Originally, this was a feat that seemed insurmountable, but with each conversation came more and more confidence. While I had yet to fully accept, and love myself, coming out to my friends allowed me to get in touch with a lot of feelings I was pushing away. Many of them wanted to hear my story, and wanted to understand what it was that caused me to feel this way. I began to recall all the situations that raised many gender crisis flags, some of which I had never felt comfortable to talk about until then. I told them my communion story… The one where I was so upset about having to wear a dress, that I ran off the church lawn after a couple pictures, and stripped out of my dress in the parking lot. It didn’t even phase me that I was completely nude in front of most of the town, I was just focused on getting that dress off. There are many stories very similar to the communion nightmare, and if you look back into family photo albums, you rarely find me wearing dresses or girly clothing. When I was 7 my second cousin was getting married in Washington D.C. and my entire family drove down for the wedding. In all the pictures we have from the wedding, I can be seen wearing a pony-tail, blue polo shirt, a pair of khaki Capri’s and some super sexy blue crocks.  I was that cousin… and no it was not because of the crocs.

Sorry to jump out of chronological order here, but let’s jump to June of 2016, when it had been 3 months since I had told my parents and a couple of friends that I was transgender. I started seeing a new therapist in hopes of getting a letter for testosterone. Depending on where you live, or which doctor you see, the process for getting testosterone usually goes along the lines of seeing a therapist for x amount of time, seeing an endocrinologist, and then getting your testosterone recommendation letters and giving them to the endocrinologist who will, fingers crossed, write you a prescription for those goodie- good hormones. That’s the over simplified order because, let me tell you, that is never how easy it is going to be. So, I start seeing this new therapist, right? I’ll just make it clear that I personally hate therapy. That’s not to say that I have anything against the people who find therapists or therapy helpful, it’s just that the whole system doesn’t really work for me. As a passionate overthinker, as well as a person who has spent the last 6 years seeing therapists, I love to also psycho-analyze the shit out of myself. It’s such an awful habit, because I end up making myself more depressed than I was and then I’m stuck feeling like shit for the rest of the day. Going to therapy for me just sucks because when the therapist asks, “So maybe it’s the fact that you have X going on, its causing a lot of sad feelings?” and it’s like “Um no actually X was a small problem that made me feel let down as well as furthered my trust issues with people. Problem Y and Z are the things that are causing me to feel sad but there’s nothing I can do to change them so here’s a shit ton of my parent’s money, let’s sit here for another 45 minutes and bullshit the rest of this session.” It’s kind of sad when you get to the point that your therapist sucks so much, you have to psycho- analyze them to try and figure out what led them to their psychology major, and love of leather recliners and notepads. My favorite type of therapists are the therapists that haven’t spent any time in the chair themselves. They’re your stereotypical “so how does that make you feel?” therapists, the ones that always have their pen going. They stand out like a sore thumb to anyone that has seen their deal of therapists, as they struggle to remember small facts, and the DSMR is their only solution to your problems. Their psych evals start off with “ummmm… would you consider yourself to be a worrier?” and when they ask, “do you have any questions for me” they’re really saying, “please don’t ask me anything I have exactly 26.2 seconds until this appointment is over and I do not have the time nor the experience to answer anything, don’t let the door hit you on the way out kiddo.” Usually the only question I have for inexperienced therapists like this is, “where the fuck did you get you psychology degree?”. The 10 weeks of summer were a rushed mess between crippling depression and therapy appointments, and it was late August when my parents finally agreed it was time to go see an endocrinologist.

Long story short, it is now February 23rd, and tomorrow I see a doctor that will most likely be writing my prescription for hormones (which according to predictions, should start in March). It has been an incredibly long journey, full of plenty of tears and new understandings. I know it will continue to be a long and tough road, but there is no way to properly express how grateful I am to be at this point.

So now that you’ve heard my story, I’m going to switch gears to part 2 of this mini project.

“Why?” Is a question I ask myself often. “Why am I transgender?” “Why am I like this?” “Why couldn’t I have been born normally” “Why can’t I just stop being trans?” “Why do I have to live my life like this”. To many cisgender people, being transgender seems like a conscious decision made by those who identify as a gender separate from that of the one they were given at birth. As a transgender person currently seeking medical treatment to help me cope with the life I am forced to live, I can assure you that this is not something people chose. It is not fun. It is not cool. It’s not exciting getting to live with a foot in both worlds.

Do you have any idea how fucked up my ribs are from years of wearing sports bras and duct tape or ace bandages that were too tight? Try running in two, way-too-tight sports bras and tell me how you feel after about a mile. Those bruises that I’ve had since 8th grade? That sit right along my bra line? They don’t seem to be going away any time soon. My back hurts all the time from the binder I have to wear. When I forget to air dry it in time for school the next day, and I’m forced to wear the double sports bras again, I can’t get a full breath without being in terrible pain until 2:55 when I finally get home.

Bathrooms are so much fun! There’s nothing being out with a friend and having to travel all around town to find a place with a single bathroom instead of having to deal with your traditional men’s and women’s rooms. Sure, I look enough like a guy to use the men’s room, but what happens when you see one of your schoolmates or maybe a family friend that knows you as female? Using the bathroom in school is super lit too. I usually have two options, one is to go during second period when nobody is down in the bathroom by the field entrance (oh and then not go to the bathroom for the rest of the day), or two is to go to the nurses and awkwardly ask to use their bathroom. While I have made an extreme effort to become close with the nurses, it doesn’t change the fact that it’s pretty weird to go there to use the bathroom. To avoid bathrooms overall, I usually just don’t drink anything starting from 9pm at night, until 3pm during the next day. That usually never works out though. I take medication for ADHD that makes me extremely thirsty and dries the fuck out of my throat, so what ends up happening is I’ll go to bed at around 8 on a dose of Nyquil (or else I’m never able to sleep), and then proceed to wake up every hour usually around the exact same time, drink a crap ton of water, and then go back to bed. That’s usually fine if it’s a weekend, because I won’t go out until later in the day, but on schooldays this is terrible because it means that I’ll have to use the bathroom all day but I can’t.

Another great thing about being trans? Trying to look as masculine as possible, following the “whatever it takes!” notion. Nothing like picking up some awesome eating disorders. Last year, anorexia/ binge eating, lead to orthorexia, and then finally led to a forever fucked up view of food. Oh, and you know what eating disorders do to an already fucked up stomach like mine? Fuck it up even more, so kiss and Dairy/ Grains goodbye. I hate eating outside of my house because I’m still scared of calories, and when I eat at home I have to eat worrying about every single thing I put in my mouth. If I get fat, I won’t look as masculine. If I get too skinny, the doctors won’t give me hormones because they’ll know I have an eating disorder. If only they understood that the eating disorders were caused by being trans, and hormones would rid of my eating problems because I would look masculine without having to starve myself (oh or work out every day and ruin plans because I need to go to the gym or else I feel like I can’t see my friends because I look too feminine) Of course clothes help, but they usually don’t look right on my disproportionate body. I also don’t gain muscle half as fast as regular ol cis guys do, so even when I bust my ass in the gym every day (looking like a scrawny fool to all the other guys there) I don’t see like any results which throw me into a terrible depression because what’s the point of going to the gym then? Oh, that’s right… if I don’t go to the gym, I won’t look like a guy, and I can’t eat then because I’ll look to feminine.

Ruining things is also a really fun hobby! Whether it be relationships, friendships, ties with relatives, social outings, or maybe even just a car ride or just sitting around in your living room, you can always count on being trans to ruin shit. Who knows how your crush will take it when they find out your trans? Disgusted? Maybe, “That’s a shame, I would have dated you if you were cis”? It’s always a gamble, you can never tell how people will react. Close friends usually take it well, sometimes they just want to understand the whole thing. That’s totally okay with me, as it is my job to help people understand what being trans is, and it also helps me understand and come to terms with myself. Family is super tough. They’re the ones that mean the most to you, and even if you’re out to them, there’s always potential to ruin shit.  You really can’t beat ruining dinner with your mom, like how I did the other night. We hadn’t had the chance to sit down and talk in a while, and after 15 minutes of me talking about trans stuff (cause you know the question “how are you” automatically segways into the trans shit) she slams her fists down on the table, starts crying, and says “please can we just talk about something happy in your life?” and then you start crying because you just ruined dinner and oh yeah, there’s nothing happy about living a life where you constantly want to kill yourself, because of how much you hate yourself. So, even when you dry your eyes and ask “how’s work going?” and your mom puts down her food and says she’s not hungry anymore, you realize not only did you just kill the dinner vibes, but you literally ruined dinner. My sister really loves to deal with trans stuff too! The second I try and correct her on pronouns, she rolls her eyes. That usually starts a fight. Monday night, it ended with me fighting back tears, saying “You know sometimes when you hate yourself so much, one of the few things that keeps you going is a pronoun.” She rolled her eyes again and laughed, and I started sobbing. If anyone wonders why my sister and I have a bad relationship, that’s why. I can’t imagine how hard it is for my immediate family. I wish I didn’t have to put anyone through this. I wish I could change so they didn’t have to deal with my mess, and so many tears didn’t have to be shed.

I wish I was never trans. I wish I didn’t have to bind in order to feel a little bit better about myself. I wish I didn’t have to plan out every single thing about my day in school, like using the bathroom and avoiding locker rooms. I wish I actually could envision myself going to college, or living to see my next birthday. I wish my first reaction to things wasn’t “I’ll kill myself then I won’t have to deal with it”. I wish I could run cross country or track again. I wish I could use the bathroom without having to worry about seeing someone, or being afraid of being questioned or worse. I wish I didn’t worry about the pitch of my voice when talking to strangers. I wish I fit in with guys. I wish I didn’t ruin things. I wish I could drink water. I wish I didn’t have problems with food. I wish I could not worry about talking to girls because of the fact that I’m trans. I wish I didn’t have to work out in order to be able to leave the house. I wish I could be okay with myself.

Now that you’ve gotten through all the shitty stuff, here’s some positivity. I know I say plenty of times that I hate myself, and that I think about suicide as an option for everything. Rest assured, while yes, some days are worse than others in regards to depression and suicidal thoughts, I still have hope. There are so many amazing things in this world and I acknowledge that killing myself, won’t allow me to see. I love making films and writing. I love making other people laugh, and laughing at my own jokes. I love to make people happy. Personally speaking, one of the greatest things about being in a relationship is waking up every day and thinking, “how can I make this person’s day awesome?”. I love seeing my friends succeed (and helping them out when they mess up). I love to meet people. I love talking to people, even strangers. I love hearing other people’s stories, and learning about people. I love hearing why your favorite animal is a flamingo, and I want to know the story behind what made you hate striped shirts. I love music, both making it and listening to it. I love to learn (although I hate learning in a classroom setting). I love to read books, read opinions, read the news, read different perspectives, read about religions, read about philosophies on life and our existence. I love bike riding, skateboarding, and running. I love exploring, and the trouble that it sometimes gets me into. I love adventure, as well as change. Even though I love adventure, I also love staying home and watching movies. I love hugs. I love to chill and watch Netflix. I love to sleep and I also love waking up early to work out. I love to suck at piano and guitar. I love to dance terribly. I love animals. I love being upstate and out in nature. I love San Francisco (but I hate planes so idk when ill visit again). I love (and really miss) good food. I love to bake. I love to cook. I love photography. I love my friends, I love my teammates and I love my family. I love so many things, I couldn’t possibly trade my life for all of the above. Look at the things I wish were different and compare them to the list of things that I love. The love list far outweighs the wish list. Seeing black or whatever the hell happens after you die, can never compare to the opportunities I have been given. My family and I might have our struggles, but whose family doesn’t? I’ve been gifted with a great education, an ADHD brain that allows for extremely creativity, a great family, amazing friends, and a world is filled with so many stories that need to be told, so many ideas that need to be here, and so many opportunities that are ready to be taken.

To all of you who have made it through this entire thing, I want to say thank you. From the bottom of my heart, I genuinely appreciate the fact that you took the time to read this. I would really like to express that I do not want any sympathy from this, and that the whole point of writing this was to help people gain some perspective and understanding, as well as to come out to those that didn’t know I was trans. Just because we all may experience different struggles in life, it’s impossible to say that we all don’t have a list of things we love. Regardless of race, gender, sexual orientation, social class, or disability, there will always be room for love. Once again, thank you for reading this, it really means a lot to me.