On 30 years.

November 17, 2023

The concept of a deadname implies that you have laid someone to rest. I think I’ve always had a different relationship to my prior self than many trans people do. For many others, they draw a hard line in the sand between a person that they never really were, and the person that they will be for the rest of their lives.

For me, I think of Aaron as a kid in his early twenties, struggling to find the meaning of “growing up”. In a way, those years were a sort of pre-adolescence for me. I had the chance to experience some incredible things: moving across the country to study at a University I would eventually grow into representing as its student President, having the opportunity to live around the world in Germany and Nepal, graduating and feeling the existential challenge of figuring out what I should be when I grew up, and stumbling my way through a series of lucky coincidences to find myself in San Francisco.

I talk about the early days of Grace as my second puberty. Like my first, there was a lot of pain in those early years. Dealing with the stares and whispers of transphobia from strangers, having this beautiful metamorphoses trigger the emergence of my bipolar disorder, having to leave two different jobs to go on disability when it became too hard to handle on my own, and finally finding the medication that allows me to manage this strange brain of mine.

When I cleared my mid-twenties, I thought I was out of the woods. It wasn’t until I learned of the concept of a Saturn return, where the planet revolves back into the same place it was in the sky when you were born and tests you to see if you’ve learned the lessons you needed to in order to thrive in the next decade, that I realized that another growth spurt was coming. I lost a majority of the friends that got me through my coming out. I dealt with some immense family trauma, had two gender affirming surgeries, and survived a global pandemic and a suicide attempt. I also found women’s rugby and played in a national championship. I confronted my internalized transphobia and swapped a toxic community for one full of other trans people who inspire me daily. I got to travel to Iceland, Aruba, London, Paris, and Japan. And almost one year ago, I moved across the country to NYC, the first place I ever travelled to on an airplane as a child.

I never thought I would make it to thirty. I used to try and visualize myself as an old man, and all I could conjure was darkness. But today, as I turn the page on a new decade of my life, all I can see is hope. Surrounded by loved ones, with a beautiful niece and a nephew on the way, with a steadfast confidence in the person I am, and beginning to work on building my own business, I think I can close this chapter of change knowing that I have grown more than many do in a lifetime.

To everyone past and present who has been in my life the past ten years, thank you for testing me, for teaching me, for holding me, and for celebrating all of my transitions.

Love is truly all you need.