It takes confidence and strength for a trans person to go out into the world and exist every single day. And today I didn’t have that.
My life has been the most together it’s been in a while. I’ve got a good job, I’m making good money, I’m building a social life, and I’m doing it while totally and completely out. There’s no part of my life - not work, not friends, not family, not anything - where I’m not out as genderfluid. And that’s been great but it’s also been really freaking hard.
I work in a school and I’ve been able to be out as a staff member to so many trans and gender nonconforming kids. But I’ve also had kids shout at me things like, “Is that a man or a woman?” and, “Who the fuck are you to tell me what to do, you’re a man and you wear dresses!” Today was the first time I presented as a woman since the latter of those two incidents and I just didn’t feel safe.
Logically I don’t think I was in any danger, but I think I had some sort of extended panic attack. Every time I heard kids laughing while I was nearby I wondered if they were laughing at me. When I heard someone say, “Can you tell the difference...” I thought they were building up to some transphobic comment. I was at work for an hour before I had to leave because I couldn’t control my fears.
Being trans is really hard and the nice thing is I KNOW I’m not the only one who has to deal with stuff like this. Sometimes we don’t talk about the hard stuff because we don’t want to bring people down. But if you’re like me and you’ve ever had something like this happen to you, you’re not alone.
