I always knew I was different from an early age. 

I remember being in first grade and getting caught using the boys bathroom. I never felt like a girl. On Sunday when I would have to wear a dress to church I felt even more unlike myself than usual. I really believed as I grew up that at puberty my right gender would show. Puberty came and my body stayed the same but still I didn’t feel like a girl. I wasn’t me, not the me in the mirror at least. 

I never really fit in with the girls but I just wasn’t boy enough either. As I matured my struggle increased especially spiritually and I was convinced I was going to hell. Because of this I never felt I could be saved enough. This led to an unhealthy obsession with heaven and hell and my faith. But being so young it really affected my growth and left me a constantly worried sick child. I really felt I had no one at that point to turn to. I had no way of educating myself being in this small town much less expressing how I actually felt. 

I never felt like a girl when I day dreamed of life, love, and marriage. I always pictured myself the man. As a teen the struggle really took a toll and I fell into a deep depression from the constant anxiety, loneliness, and confusion. I tried being straight for my family but the touch of a man left me spiraling from dysphoria and feeling as if I had done something really, really wrong. I came out as gay because it was the closest thing to my identity that I had been aware of or educated on. 

So I stuck to my guns and never looked back. When I got out of high school I was fearless to the point of naivety. I trusted a man I barely knew who was going to set me up with a job. I hopped on a plane hopeful for my fresh start. When he followed me into my hotel room and locked the door behind me I knew instantly I had destroyed my life. I was raped at gun point and held hostage for days. 

I was held at gun point everywhere we went. I could not call home or the police or attempt to escape because a foot away from me there was a laptop with round the clock surveillance of my family’s home. He was having them watched from across the country. I could see them coming and going as if it were just a normal day. At that moment I made the choice to endure to survive. However on the fourth day I couldn’t take it anymore. I pretended to be sick and for the first time I was alone. 

As soon as he left I made my escape. I only told the manager of the hotel, it was snowing so he hid me in his office and called me a taxi. When the taxi arrived he paid the driver and literally put me in the car himself. When I made it to the airport finally they had cancelled my flight due to the massive snowstorm... For fifteen hours. I remember being terrified because I knew he was looking for me. I slept on the floor of the women’s bathroom until people started to arrive and tried to blend in as much as I could. I found an elderly couple sitting on a bench and fell asleep next to them. 

They sat there for hours as if they knew I was in trouble. When it was finally time for their flight they gently woke me up and I made my way along until my flight watching everything. As I finally made it home I realized my life would never be the same. My innocence was stolen and my mind broken. I’ve spent the last ten years devoting my life to finding myself and loving who I truly am. After all I’ve been through coming to terms with being trans is the hardest. I feel more educated now than I ever have before but in the world we live in I am more in danger than ever. 

Danger to my for fear of losing my battle in this life. Danger of losing my life simply because people hate us and want us dead. Still I keep fighting everyday to be myself. It’s harder when you grow up where I have grown up. A place where no one understands you when your different. A place where they only care that you are in fact different. They only want to judge and hate and justify their hatred. 

They look at you as though you are trash to burned by the fires of hell. Still I am blessed as I have some family and friends who love me unconditionally and won’t disown me. For that I am beyond grateful because I have family and friends who will disown me regardless. But I still don’t feel supported, I don’t feel heard or seen. I don’t feel understood. I’m grateful to those who try but I need them to take it upon themselves to really make an effort to understand and accept me for who I am. 

How can I find the comfort to become my true self if the hurt and confusion it brings on others is all I am met with. I just want to be. But you would rather me be what you see than me be the me that I see. All we seek is a safe, supported, and respected environment. Because it is, it is ok for me to be me. Whether or not you agree. It should be ok. 

Have you ever had to wonder what it’s like to be so lost, afraid, or uncomfortable in your own skin that you don’t even know what bathroom to go in? Standing in the middle wondering if you were to go in the women’s looking like a boy would they make a scene like so many times before? Or if I were to go into the men’s would they see that I wasn’t man enough? I am diagnosed with severe anxiety disorder and PTSD. 

I fight everyday to stay alive. A decade later my attacker still makes attempts to contact me. I AM NOT A DISEASE. I AM A HUMAN BEING. I AM A SURVIVOR. I WILL NOT LIVE MY ONE LIFE HIDDEN IN YOUR SHADOWS. My journey may be long, dark, and deep but My God has never left me. God knows me and loves me for who I am. God will never love me less. My relationship with God is my own as is my journey. They both are not for you to decide. 

My life is my own and I LOVE MY LIFE. I LOVE WHO I AM. Being different isn’t a burden and I don’t have a disease. I just want to be me, the me in the mirror. Nothing will stop me!! If you know someone who is LGBTQ or a survivor of sexual assault then please I implore you to take a moment and attempt to understand. Educate yourself before you write someone off with such disdain that you look at us directly in our eyes with absolute disgust. Looks can kill too. Do not however mistake the broken for weak for our pieces are forged from fire and we will not be moved!!! 

-S