By the time I was five, I already knew my body was a mistake. Every night, I’d kneel beside my bed, eyes squeezed shut, and beg Jesus to let me wake up “fixed”… soft where I was hard, quiet where I was loud, a girl where I was told to be a boy. I didn’t have the words for it then, but I felt it: a bone-deep certainty that something had been taken from me. I’d sneak into my mother’s closet, slip into her dresses, and parade down the sidewalk in heels, my nails painted with her polish. For those moments, I felt pretty. Whole. But the world always crashed back in.
Puberty was a betrayal. My voice cracked into a stranger’s. Hair sprouted like weeds. I drowned the girl inside with weed, beer, and a performative hyper-masculinity: a beard thick enough to hide behind, nights at strip clubs where I’d laugh too loud at jokes that curdled in my stomach. I tried way too hard to be the man everyone wanted me to be.
But in the quiet hours, I’d fantasize about disappearing. Running away to some nowhere town where no one knew my deadname. Transitioning in secret. Returning years later to my high school reunion, unrecognizable long hair, soft curves, a voice that finally matched the one in my head and watching their jaws drop. It was a recurring daydream, a mental refuge when the mask grew too heavy. But fear always won. What if I lost my family? What if they found me? What if I still hated myself anyway?
Candi, my dog, saved my life twice. The first time was literal: she knocked the gun from my hand the night I tried to end it all. I promised her I’d stay alive until she died. But as her muzzle grayed, panic set in. What happens when she’s gone? I’d spent years bargaining with God, with myself, with the universe to either fix me or let me go.
Therapy began as a last-ditch effort to “cure” myself. I had hoped to discover that all of these thoughts and experiences I had were just completely normal stuff all guys go through. Instead, it unearthed what I’d always known: I couldn’t outrun the girl in the mirror. Starting HRT in 2022 was like finally exhaling after decades of holding my breath. The suicidal thoughts that had haunted me nightly dissolved. For the first time, I slept through the night.
My sister surprised me. No questions, no hesitation just a fierce, immediate love. The day I came out to her, she said it didn’t surprise her and she marched me through the aisles of Ulta, determined to arm me with every shade and tool I’d need to face the world as myself. For the first time, someone saw the girl I’d always been, not as a secret to keep, but as a truth to celebrate.
My mother’s support was a lifeline, but not everyone stayed. Decades long friendships destroyed in an instant. While some coworkers have shown me acceptance others deadname and misgender me, their words deliberate grenades that send me spiraling. Some days, I want to claw my throat out just to silence the voice that still betrays me. Now, as political winds shift, that fear sharpens. Executive orders from the Trump administration target my community, emboldening strangers and lawmakers alike to call us “predators,” to erase our healthcare, to debate our right to exist in public spaces. Many of my community debate going back into the closet or fleeing the country.
Here in Michigan, we have protections a fragile shield against the storm. But federal laws could override them overnight. I scroll through headlines about anti-trans bills in other states and wonder: Will my HRT be next? Will they rip my prescriptions from my hands? Even here, the rhetoric trickles down. People who once stood by my side at the start of my transition now begin to disappear, longtime friends gone. More often I find people repeating far-right propaganda that has long been used against the LGBT community. Coworkers “accidentally” misgender me louder, bolder, as if testing the waters. The same streets I walked as a child in my mother’s dresses now feel like minefields.
Pride feels like a luxury when survival still takes so much work. But I’m learning to hold space for the child who prayed so fiercely, the teenager who bargained with death, and the woman who finally stopped asking permission to exist. Candi’s gone now, but I’m still here. Fighting. Becoming.
And yet, the future terrifies me. I’ve survived so much, my own body, my own mind, but now I’m staring down a world that’s weaponizing transphobia like never before. They want us silent. Invisible. But every morning, I choose to step outside as me. To wear a dress in a state that still allows it, for now. To say my name, even when others twist it into a slur. To exist loudly, defiantly, in a storm of their making.
This is my rebellion: I am still here.
Making Lily 