The Irony of Acceptance.

In the time of more acceptance for LGBT people than ever before, we are not yet done fighting. This is my personal story of acceptance causing me to be in denial.

It's 2016 and the term "transgender" is the new biggest thing in high school. Its acceptance eventually reached even the most rural of schools, with new identities not uncommon- teens exploring their new expressions with pronouns, hair styles, gender roles, even art. This is where we find young me, a 12, maybe 13 year old, full of angst and insecurity trying to navigate her place in the world. I was largely alone, not many friends due to my immense shyness, insecurity in who I was, and severely bullied.

I yearned to be like my female peers, trying makeup and the latest cool hairstyle, wearing skirts, but felt like I was an imitation of something I wasn't. So what, who, was I? Everyone around me was starting to explore romantic relationships, and here I was, relating more to the guys than the girls, but not feeling attracted to men like my female peers around me. What on earth was so wrong with me that I just couldn't fit in with the girls around me?

Doctor Google to my rescue. Don't feel attracted to guys? Maybe you're a lesbian. A whole online realm was opened to me. Girls who could look and largely present like guys, who were also not attracted to males just like me. Being a small town, LGBT still had a large amount of stigma among adults. I hid in the closet, debating if this is why I was different, why my changing body felt so uncomfortable. Maybe I was just destined to be a weirdo. Straight and can't fit in, gay and the odd one out.

And then came along Alex. The first non-binary student in the school. A year older than me, they shook my world upside down. Not a girl, as they had been at birth, but not a guy either. "A happy medium", as they put it. This was the first person I felt connected to, and I began joining dots. They looked like me, felt as I did, I was attracted to them, could this be the reason I was different?

And so back to Doctor Google. And then Youtube... and Reddit. As I changed schools due to the bullying, I began going down a cyber rabbit hole, finally understanding what made me different. I was transgender. A female, at birth, but as far as science can make out so far, with a male brain. This is why my body disgusted me, why I wasn't attracted to men, why I stood out like a sore thumb.

My new school was the largest in quite a considerable distance, and subsequently home to a beautifully diverse community. I found my year group's "Queer Kids", and with loud, intense support from them, I began to socially transition. Short hair, male pronouns, a new name, chronically wearing a chest binder, which is a piece of clothing designed to squish down your breasts to give a male appearance. Outside of the friend group I was still largely in the closet, but the yearning to fit in had been mostly quelled. I had a community, acceptance, and a sense of self. The gay children in the friend group often came out as trans.

I turned 16 and legally changed my name. At 17 I started hormone replacement therapy, in which I took testosterone, thrusting myself into a second puberty. I took birth control to stop the gut wrenching, mentally distressing periods. At 18 came the surgery, the removal of my breasts. I finally had family acceptance.

At 19 came the doubt. The anxiety ridden thoughts, each time shoved further back than when I was initially in the closet. "What if it's my extensive amount of trauma causing me to feel different?" "What if I've made a mistake?" "What if I end up regretting everything?" Having moved away from my family home, and therefore changing doctors, I quietly came off of the testosterone and birth control. I took time to see how I felt. It wasn't as distressing anymore. Was I a girl after all? Surely not, I'd have known by now.

I started looking back on my childhood. Pressure to transition from my friends, strangers online, my doctor, thinking it was what I wanted. I thought I wanted it. I realized I'd made a massive life decision without addressing my childhood trauma, my sexuality, without sitting through the uncomfortable puberty like everyone else. My bullying had been down to me being severely underweight, and a girl being insecure with her new changing body saw me as something to envy. Me, the girl who didn't feel comfortable for a second! The internet and my environment had pushed transition as a cure for my long list of trauma.

And then, as I finally started to begin my adult life, I met out and proud lesbians. They were not weird, as my small town had made them out to be. They were not questioning if they were trans. They were not shouting the same phrases from the rooftops, like some sort of odd hivemind. They didn't disown people for asking questions. They didn't push steroids and major surgery as a cure. They didn't scorn therapy!

I'm not saying they were perfect people, nobody is, but things started to fall into place. I'd been in a group of uncomfortable, often damaged, young people, who had screamed about acceptance and transition being the cure. Ironically, that acceptance had actually led to my prolonged denial of who I was, who I am- a lesbian. Of course, there are transsexual people out there, valid and complete. But there is a notable trend where trans is the new cool thing, the thing that cures you. I found a whole online community of people sharing their similar stories after detransitioning. Will there be more of them? Time will tell. But this is mine.