I didn’t know much about the LGBT community until middle school. I was a church kid growing up, and I remember early on having feelings for girls. I remember at least having an attachment to women, and as a kid I liked walking around with no shirt and I liked not wearing a bra and I liked pictures that made me look like a boy. But then I hit puberty and I was an awkward preteen, and in my sophomore year of high school I struggled with my sexuality. I eventually grew confident in that but the word lesbian and gay never felt right, at least lesbian didn’t. Because I mean I like guys but even when I liked girls more it still didn’t.
Around the time I was getting comfortable with my sexuality I started to question whether or not I was transgender. I pushed it aside, because I was like, no, I just figured out my sexuality–I can’t just have something to figure out like that again. I denied it for a few months until I started to think about it. I was still denying it but I was questioning. I told my Mom two months ago and I talked to my therapist about it.
I can’t start any hormones or anything for the following reasons: My mom doesn’t wanna rush into this. She supports and accepts me but she doesn’t want to rush. I’m in a religious school and to even be open about my sexuality is a risk.
These days I still question but yet I think to myself, ‘If you really weren’t you wouldn’t be this involved in questioning.’ But then again, what if I have myself thinking I am? I suffer from dysphoria, but some days I don’t know what to think. Maybe I am, maybe I’m not.
I appreciate and love that my parents accept me. I just wish I could be who I feel I am on the inside. I pass on a regular basis, but it isn’t in ways I want to–I want to pass because I look like what I wanna look like, not because I look like a tomboy.
Leelah may not have been perfect but she really is an inspiration. And it sucks that people have to die for a statement to be made. Hopefully this helps move along things and converse therapy is banned everywhere. Kids, adults, teens–anyone–doesn’t need to go through that.
This is 2015, people. It’s time we start to accept our differences. People used to be this way towards blacks and look where we are now–a world without colored and white bathrooms and water fountains. One day people will look back at the LGBT movement and say, “Did people really not accept that?”
My kid will look at me one day and ask me that. And I’ll hopefully be able to tell them, “Yes, but it’s not that way anymore.”
Stay strong, okay? Promise. Because believe it or not, you’ll be okay, it’ll get better–and I know you don’t believe me. But please….stay strong. You’re strong enough to get through this and you’re worth every second of air you breathe. It’ll be okay. I promise.
-Sarah
Sam