I can’t say that I’ve always known that I was different. Looking back on it, I’m pretty sure that other people knew that I was different long before I did. 

I only knew for sure in freshman year of high school that I wasn’t straight, and it would be years later when I accepted that I was transgender. 

Growing up religious didn’t make any of that acceptance easy. Maybe that’s not the right word for it because it went farther than just “religious.” We prayed every night, and verses of scripture were drilled into my head, etched into my bones. We went to Mass three times a week, and an extra day in the week was spent at church events. Every day was filled with talks of God, Jesus and what they’ve done for us; they give us everything and all they ask in return is our everything. In the face of the divine, our needs and wants are nothing. 

I don’t think my parents genuinely meant to harm us because they truly believed they were saving us. That doesn’t change the fact that it did harm. 

There was a lot of guilt in realizing that I was queer. All of those years of wanting to please my parents and avoid hell warred with the unhappiness of having to pretend to be someone I wasn’t. The only relief was school — a place where I could talk to my friends and be myself fully. 

I could go into so much more detail, but I think it’ll suffice to say that school saved me, as stupid as that sounds. It was the place where I met most of my closest friends that helped me soothe the pain of being the kid that my parents didn’t want me to be. It was where I met my best friend and outgrew some of the guilt that Catholicism instilled in me. 

When I accepted that I was trans, I was a freshman in college. I was in the one-room apartment that I had rented as soon as high school ended. I found myself with a bottle of half-empty coconut rum, and I was sobbing into my hands under the pale light of the kitchen. There were many more moments where I mourned being the straight and cisgender girl that my family wanted me to be. 

Yet, there was also so much all-encompassing joy. I found true happiness in being with people who saw me as the man I know I am, a new family who actually accepts me filled with so much love. It’s a good feeling. At the end of the day, I love being queer and trans. I love this community that I’ve fostered and the one worldwide. It’s a community that has always and will always exist.

Even in the face of bigotry running rampant, in hate being allowed to fester and laws that drag us back decades, we still exist. I spent years denying a part of myself, and I am not going back to that, not for anything.