Today, I typed into my Google search bar
“How to stop being trans.”
I am so desperately attempting to repress my identity I felt the need to Google it,
I spend day in, and day out, watching women on the internet talk about what it is like to be a woman.
Even now, that concept confuses me.
There is something I will never truly understand about being a woman-
That is the feeling of being female.
It’s something I’ve never really had, even though I go through those hardships and more.
I am talked about like I am an object, referred to as “it” by so many kids at this school,
Just as many of the transgender students going to my school are.
I am treated physically like an object whenever I attempt to present as a woman,
And I realize there is no way to go around being an “it.”
Nothing more than a mere object used for someones entertainment,
Thrown away when they have gotten their thrill out of me.
I am nothing more than a cancelled TV show
Who’s reruns are on at midnight, or early Sunday morning.
I am nothing more than the little wooden toys toddlers play with,
Thought of as ‘cute’ when young,
But told I am to grow out of the phase of playing with toys.
Told to grow out of the phase of being a boy.
No matter how short I cut my hair, or how tight the binders I wear are,
How baggy the jeans, or how many button-ups or flannels I buy,
I am told it is just a phase.
I have been fighting with my identity in the open for nearly five years.
First, it was an internet presence,
I learned the word “genderfluid.”
I used that term for a good three months,
And then I found a new word.
“Agender.”
I was agender for years,
Even somewhat out at the school I went to-
In the fifth grade, I was asked what I truly was.
This question is going to be repeated until the day I die.
In seventh grade, something fully dawns on me.
I am nothing more than a transgender boy with an affinity for putting art on my face.
I panic as I tell the four people I had in my arsenal at the time.
Thus begins the era of “Brodie.”
This lasts for a few months, until I am uncomfortable with the name.
I finally, for two years, settle on the name “Alexander,”
And then, at the end of eighth grade, I am ready to come out to teachers.
No one is able to keep up with it, because it had been at the very end,
But as I start my highschool career, I confidently call out,
“I prefer Alexander.”
The people in my old band class don’t really think twice, but a small murmur falls through the crowd of the homophobes in the corner.
My German teacher opens the idea with wide arms, and takes me under her wing.
I become her son.
I start pondering a new name in the last month of the first year, twisting it over my tongue.
“Julian.”
I like the way it sounds, but no one thinks it fits me.
I sigh, and repress the name until nearly the very middle of my sophomore year.
In my freshman year, I had once Googled the same question.
It has been a year of attempting to repress it on my own.
Google Search still does not give me an answer.
I realize that I am nothing more than a transgender boy.