I can’t keep starting these letters telling you this week has left me speechless, but here I am gasping for words again. What you haven’t seen behind the scenes is the constant questioning if I should speak. I quietly removed my pronouns from my social media profiles Monday night out of fear. Then I added them back Tuesday. My girlfriend and I had a lot of conversations the last few days that I never thought I’d have about if I want to keep coming out. 

Every time I came out to people I love throughout my life, I always looked for the perfect time and conditions. I wanted to make sure I didn’t catch them off guard. I needed to say the right thing so they would understand. Instead it always burst out of me against my will, typically prompted by a question I couldn’t make up the answer to or an emotion I couldn’t stomach. I still remember sitting at my desk the night of coming out to my Mom when I was 16. As I told her I was gay, deep sobs that made my lungs and chest ache poured out of me. I was so scared she wouldn’t love me anymore. 

Saying “I’m gay” seems so simple compared to explaining I’m trans and to me it means this body never fit. Trying to navigate the conversation around how I always knew it from the first time I got a hat and looked at myself in the mirror when I was 7. If you don’t know what it feels like, it’s hard to understand. But the binary definitions and political rhetoric are pouring gasoline on a fire of misunderstanding about me. It creates this place where we feel the need to post memes that say “trans people have always existed.” Don't forget where existing starts: being seen. Being real. Giving someone a chance to see that there’s someone out there who they can say is “just like me.” 

I fundamentally believe it would have changed my life to know someone like me when I was 16, 18, 24, or 30. I lived so much of my life distancing myself from a caricature created by Hollywood instead of knowing who I am. If being a little scared means some other child gets a chance to live their life differently? I’ll come out again. 

I will allow myself to be seen by the people who hate me so the kid who feels more comfortable in a hat than a dress knows what’s possible. I’ll talk about work on stages in my body for the professional trying to figure out how to show up in their career with the context of hate. I will create my art - my writing - filled with joy, love, and hope eternal despite a world that tells me I don’t matter. Despite my instinct to delete who I am and hide in a world that tells me I should, my act of resistance will be my existence and lifelong persistence to do overwhelming good.

I will choose to keep coming out at the cost of what, I'm not sure. I just know the cost of silence is way too high for any kid to thrive and I’m willing to part with whatever it costs me.