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And, when we are given the opportunity to tell our stories ourselves, queer narratives are all too often picked apart or, worse, universalized—one person becomes a stand-in for all. There are an infinite number of ways to be queer and trans, and my story speaks to only one.
These memories shape a nonlinear narrative, because queerness is intrinsically nonlinear, journeys that bend and wind. Two steps forward, one step back. I’ve spent much of my life chipping away toward the truth, while terrified to cause a collapse.
My imagination was a lifeline. It was where I felt the most unrestrained, unselfconscious, real. Not a visualization, far more natural. Not a wishing, but an understanding.
Oh, these strange roads we travel.
My brain could not comprehend that I simply wasn’t interested, that I just didn’t want to go through with it, which would be a completely appropriate feeling and response.
I was punished for being queer while I watched others be protected and celebrated, who gleefully abused people in the wide open.
As I aged, it became clearer that I wasn’t going to be a pretty straight girl.
Stewing in my shame, exhausted, lonely, and depressed, I wished to be the person so many wanted me to be.
We do not realize the extent of the energy we are losing until we find where it is seeping from. Invisible until it is not.
Someone will break your heart but you will break one, too.
I spent so much of my professional life performing that I had come to the realization that I could not also perform in my personal life. I should not have to perform,
Enthralled by possibility, I poured my whole self into that world—I was in a place where being a weird kid was good.
I had grown bored and numb. Why couldn’t I feel more? I wondered at the time.
It is not trans people who suffer from a sickness, but the society that fosters such hate.
Boundaries are important, and learning to not feel guilty about setting them is crucial.
The beginning of the pandemic was full of unknowns, an unprecedented event we were living through and still are.
How do people do it? How do they shut off the noise? And I don’t mean “happy,” they may not be happy, but they seem to be able to exist at least.
Even though I am extremely lucky, this narrative where trans people have to feel lucky for these crumbs—that we fought hard for, and still fight for—is perverse and manipulative.
