On coming out.
October 21, 2018
I am leaving Instagram, but I have used it as an intimate public diary documenting my transition for years.
For posterity sake, I have downloaded my data and will be reposting the most important memories as short essays here. I hope they give you insight into the person I have become.
I wanted to wait until my birthday next month to do this. I was going to have [………] take a new picture of me, maybe share my news surrounded by close friends and celebration. It was going to be a hopeful thing, metempsychosis, the start of a new go-round in this endless cycle of samsara. I wanted to have the power to choose when, where, and how I told my story.
Unfortunately, I had that choice taken from my hands and crushed into diamonds today. This morning, the New York Times (fuck the New York Times) broke news that the Trump administration is a few weeks away from implementing a sweeping, government-wide plan to erase the hard-fought gains in civil rights and protections that transgender folks have won throughout the last decade. They plan to systematically take our power and destroy our identities, literally scrubbing away the language that defines us as human beings. That is not hyperbole, go read it for yourself. If thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought. Language is power.
A quarter century is a lifetime too long to hide who you are. But if you want to keep a secret, you must also hide it from yourself. People talk about coming out like it’s a singular event, but unfortunately the reality is a nearly unending road of emotional labour, especially for transgender folks who are required to constantly justify our identities and fight for existence every day.
If you can vote, and you choose to stay home on November 6th, you can walk right out my life, exit stage left. I refuse to be undefined. To everyone who has helped me take my first steps along this journey the past few months, thank you so much. I love you more than you can know.
Someone dear to me once said that the most radical mark you can make as a human being in this fucked up world we all inherit, is to be true to yourself and claim your space to exist.
So, this is her. This is me. Unapologetically, with love, and Grace, too.