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The journey of a transgender man in rural Texas |
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| Transformation is the process of taking one thing, and turning it into another thing all together. If I light a fire underneath a piece of paper, then I transform that paper into ash, which is roughly what I felt I was doing by coming out as transgender. Living in the more rural sections of Texas and being a transgender person seemed like social suicide, but not coming out at all felt like actually dying day after day. No matter what I did for the first 24 years of my life there was always a secret, this thing that blocked me from ever being completely honest. It’s been year since I started to transition from Nicole to Noah, six months out of the past twelve I’ve been taking weekly injections of testosterone to change my body as well as how I saw myself outwardly in the world. The whole year has been a struggle with intermittently beautiful moments. The moment I told my mother I was going to transition and she told me she would always love me, for instance, is a moment I’ll never get. For years I thought my entire family would disown me. The moment I stepped into my local transgender support group and found a room filled with other people like me, though, is the moment things really started to change. I started to see the community behind the identity. After all, when you’re a “pedophile” and a “pervert” in the public eye, you start to feel as though you need a support group. To start, when I came out, the political position of the United States on transgender people was coming along in a positive way. It felt relatively safe, and like there were good things coming in the future. Then Donald Trump got elected, and hate grew faster than I have ever seen happen. My state of Texas is rolling back rights from LGBT people every single day as we speak. Just last week all LGBT people in Texas lost all benefit of being married under the law. We can pay for the ceremony, but now the law see’s us as less than everyone else. They’ve made it okay for discrimination in every area that they can. I’m scared to walk into a public bathroom in almost every building in this city. The first thing I look for when I walk into a room is the exit. Yes, I’m scared. I’m scared because I’m so One thing a lot of people don’t understand about transgender people is that transitioning can be a very slow process. I have taken almost 26 shots of testosterone for half of a year, and I barely pass as male. I’m at a place where I really don’t pass in either restroom. I rarely meet a stranger who knows how to address me. Is it a she, or a he? Things are changing but let’s say the middle period lasts longer than you would ever hope for. We have a lot of work to do in the realm of helping people understand the transgender community, and that’s what I’m trying to do here. This will start as a blog released little by little, but my hope is to release this as a book. In the meantime, if ever you have a question, I am open to providing an answer. |
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