u/zemljaradnika

​

So far, this summer has been far from inspiring.. there has only been the half-hearted slog, the yearly activities of planting and caring for crops, only to watch them wither up and die in one of the worst droughts we have experienced since we moved to these arid plains nearly three decades ago. We have spent four of the last 5 years in what has been categorized as a severe drought for the region, years that have taken a harsh toll on the landscape and the people who call it home. The year has been a harsh reminder of just how dependent we are on the generosity of the heavens for our very existence, how quickly our efforts come to vain when the rain refuses to fall, when weeks upon weeks are marked by triple digit temperatures. Add hot southern winds that only serve to expound upon the futility of your existence and to be honest, it's been a struggle, the kind of struggle that comes with deep depression, the kind of struggle that's capable of stripping your soul of any sort of excitement or joy for the day before it even begins.

And yet the summer hasn't been without at least a few positive developments. One of those developments has been the opportunity to get back on our town's volunteer fire department. For me, there's a deep sense of finally being able to start to rebuild my life, the sense of a phoenix rising from the ashes of what had previously been burnt to the ground when I chose to pursue transitioning, The sense of finally being able to claw my way out of the depression and fear that had come with choosing to take a path I was sure would lead to rejection and ridicule. The summer I cracked my egg and realized I really wanted to transition, was a pretty rough experience for me. Mentally, I didn't deal with it well, I shut down in depression and had missed enough meetings with the fire department that I had been asked to leave. I had accepted that as an inevitable conclusion, Really it was only fair, and if they knew where I was in terms of being trans, there's no way they would want me back. I had allowed those thoughts to dominate my mind, to overwrite the sense of guilt I felt every time I saw those fire trucks roll, knowing that my friends were headed out to serve our community, and I was sitting on the sidelines, doing nothing. It would be that guilt that finally led me to reapply to the department this spring in the aftermath of a fire that burnt nearly a million acres, wanting to serve my community, knowing that being on had once been a way I could, once been a way that I had.

For some reason, despite my appearance, despite my insecurities about how I am perceived in my community, enough of the members of the department voted to allow me back on. Honestly, it's really nice to be back, there's a sense of returning home, the reminder of just how much I had missed the traffic on the radio, the smoke, the grime, the flashing lights in the darkness. There is a sense of having a little piece of my heart given back to me, a piece of my heart that I thought I had given up that day I admitted I really wanted to take HRT.

And yet there's also that dissonance that I suspect is par for course for those who choose to pursue medically transitioning without socially transitioning at the same time. The dissonance of being considered a good man in your community while privately struggling with how much you don't want to see yourself as a man, while privately wondering just how quickly that assessment would change if they actually knew you were taking HRT., wondering just how quickly that assessment would change if they knew you were trans, just how much one little word and everything that was associated with it would change the way everybody else viewed you. In spite of those fears and questions, there's also that silent disappointment that even 5 years into taking hormones, that evidently I'm still seen as being masculine enough that there's not even a moment's hesitation to be referred to as a man, or him or he. The way it's just simply accepted without any sort of question, that internal sense of at least wanting a question, a stutter, even if it made life harder, even while knowing it's probably better this way..

On the other side of that coin is the question of the fact that despite those little bits of discomfort, I'm largely okay with it if it means that I get to be there, that ultimately to me getting to be part of the organizations of our community is more important to me than necessarily how I'm gendered when others speak, The acceptance of the idea, that of course, they would see me as being male, why should I expect anything else when that's all they've ever known me as, when at 6 ft and 220 lbs,I still tower over the majority of my neighbors. Why would I expect anything different, even if I have been taking hormones for several years?, it wasn't like I was going to suddenly lose 6 in of height and 70 lbs? Why would I ever hope to be seen as a woman in a community where sex and gender are seen as a singular thing, when I'm perfectly aware of what I was born with between my legs and so is every body else

And yet, how can I claim to be transgender if I simply accept that? How could I choose to continue to take hormones if I'm willing to accept the idea that I'll never be seen as a female, is it imposter syndrome that I would doubt the validity of calling myself transgender, or am I truly an imposter for thinking I fit into a label when my actions are such a far cry from those who have pursued far more radical transformations.

I honestly don't know how to answer any of these questions ultimately, I know that there doesn't have to be a certain box that I have to fit into, that really, it's up to me to define what I want my life to look like, how I want to live it, what goals I want to pursue, who I want to be in pursuit of those goals. Ultimately, I know that simply trying to be a good human bean to those around me is far more important than whatever expectations or stereotypes are normally associated with certain roles or labels. Ultimately, I know these are truths, and yet when I'm standing in front of the mirror at the end of the day, still wrestling with my doubts, it is still so easy to be caught up in the second guessing, still wanting to fit in somewhere, even while pursuing a life that very much doesn't fit in anywhere.

I'm not sure those questions ever really go away, maybe they do for some, but do they for those who choose to live between the two worlds? I don't know, I guess I'll find out. In the meantime, I'm going to keep taking my hormones, keep trying to pursue my life, and I'm still grateful, so incredibly grateful, for any time I'm still allowed to be part of my community.

​

"I hope you find what you were looking for

I hope your heart ain't hurting anymore

And you get moving on, all figured out

And you don't hate me somehow

'Cause I hope you're happy now"

You'd think that nearly five years after that fateful conversation that was the end of our relationship, the one where I fessed up that I had chosen to try taking hrt despite her telling me that she didn't think she could stay with me if I chose to transition, you would think that I would have gotten to a point that song by Carly Pearce didn't absolutely tear me apart. That I would have gotten to a point where I'd made peace with the fact that my decision to transition ended our relationship, gotten to a point where I was able to say that the freedom to embrace a version of me that I had always longed to exist was worth the price paid. To be honest, I haven't. In truth so much of that is pretty mixed. To be honest, there's not a day my heart doesn't ache at her absence, doesn't long to hear her voice or her laughter, long to see her in those little glimpses I'd get to see during the day, the way she'd curl up in her favorite chair with a book and a cup of coffee, the sight of her working her horses in the corral, the way her smile radiated happiness like sunshine itself. I still see her from time to time, the ghosts of images that haunt our house and the fields around it, the memories contained in each season of the year, the way she used to visit in my dreams........sometimes angry, sometimes kind, but she doesn't visit anymore, and there's part of me that knows that's probably a sign of healing.....and part of me that is deeply saddened by that fact, saddened by the realization that i have lost even that, saddened by the truth that trying to move on with life requires letting go of what was an incredibly beautiful time in my life.

Was it worth that? It's such a mixed basket. Am I grateful for the wavys that HRT has changed my body? Absolutely, I'm grateful to see a person in the mirror I actually like, grateful for my body to actually feel like a home and not just an object of disgust.. I'm grateful for the personal growth that has been required in terms of wrestling with decades of shame and self-loathing, grateful for a process that has required learning to be at peace and acceptance with myself rather than trying to navigate life in the fractured state that I did before.. I'm grateful for the process of actually learning to like who I am as a person, learning to believe that I can be enough simply as I am rather than simply trying to fit into everybody else's box. Grateful for the trials that taught me to overcome my fears and beliefs that if people actually saw the real me, there was no way that anybody could possibly like me, no way I could possibly be accepted, possibly actually be tolerated in other people's lives. Instead, I have learned to treasure every single interaction in which people choose to treat me with kindness instead of the disgust and hostility I once believed I would receive....even if I still receive that on occasion.

Still, was it worth it? Despite everything I'm grateful for, time has a way of revealing the full costs of our choices. For me that is a staggering list, the loss of a beautiful relationship, the death of dreams of a family and children that once walked hand in hand with that relationship, the forfeiture of getting to watch the next generation grow up on this place, the heavy weight that comes with knowing that I will be last generation of my family to work this ground, that when I no longer can carry that weight, that it will be the end of an era and a death of a family legacy. These are incredible costs to live with even if they seem hard to understand or even ridiculous to those raised outside of agriculture. It's so easy to look at that and wonder if I made the wrong choices, so easy perhaps for somebody else to believe that I did. If I had to do it all again knowing what I know now, there is so much I wish I could change. I wish I could have changed the way I participated in so many conversations, wish I could have learned to battle through my fear and shame to be the kind of person she needed me to be. And yet in all of those hypothetical desires to redo the past, the wish that I hadn't chosen to pursue transition isn't in the list, only that I had figured this out sooner, that I hadn't spent so much of my life trying to fit into other peoples boxes in pursuit of relationships that didn't want me as i am, that I hadn't waited to figure that out until my decision to transition broke her heart, that I could have navigated it in way that we had remained together. So many regrets, but actually deciding to take hrt isn't one of them, only the fact I chose to take it without getting her permission first and betrayed her trust in the process. I suppose that says something, or maybe a lot of things all at the same time.

Ultimately none of us are responsible for the happiness of others, although our actions do create the conditions others have to fight to carve their happiness out of. I'm not so naive as to believe that I ruined her life, just as it would be irresponsible to blame my unhappiness on her decision not to stay, or even to state that I had managed to ruin my own life without believing that I still have an ability to influence what is to come. It's been years since we've talked, last I knew she had chosen to go back to grad school, graduated, had managed to get a job teaching at some college and was training horses on the side. I'm not sure I'll ever quit being proud of her, quit believing she was, is and will always be an amazing person, not sure there will ever be a day when I quit wishing and praying for her success, safety and happiness......even if that no longer includes me. I no longer fit that description and that's understandable, even if it was incredibly painful for both of us. And yet, I'm also not sure there will ever come a time when I don't both desperately cling to the memories of that time we spent together, and am torn apart by the memories of how we ended, anger, the frustration, the belief that she had wasted a part of her life with me, that I same part still long and wish for. Though I know that our healing and peace cannot be dependent on others, there is still part of me that still desperately longs to hear that she doesn't hate me, Even though I know that she has every right to, every reason to want to. There's part of me that understands that regardless of how much progress I make in finding peace with myself, that will always be an incredibly hard cost to live with.

​

It's taken a lifetime to find her 

This person I've become 

The one who lives at peace with herself 

And the past that she's come from 

The one who's learned to hold their head up high 

To believe in her own self worth

The one who's learned to face her shame, 

Her fears and her hurts 

The one who's learned to fight the battles 

Raging in her own head 

The one who's learned to quiet the voices 

And find her peace instead 

The one who's learned to find  grace 

For herself and for others 

Secure enough in herself 

To truly love her sisters and brothers 

The one who's learned to smile 

Though her heart still breaks inside 

Knowing that grief and sorrow 

Do not erase the need for one to choose to be gentle and kind 

The one who's learned to make her way 

Living somewhere between two worlds 

The one who chose not to give up 

Even if her dreams now come with extra hurdles 

And I wonder if you had met her 

Would you have perhaps chosen to stay 

Would that person still have offered enough 

For you to find a way 

To love the person I was inside 

And not just the shall I wore 

Could our love have still offered enough 

That I was still worth fighting for. 

I don't blame you for leaving 

For I offered so little of what you wanted 

That summer that was so full of fear and doubt and insecurities 

And yet, despite all that, I am still haunted 

By every conversation that could have gone better 

Every olive branch that didn't land 

Wondering if there was an alternate timeline 

In which we emerged still hand in hand 

And I guess I'll never know 

By now, too much time has passed 

The wounds once fresh have long since  scarred 

Our love now firmly in the past 

Yet still fresh enough I wonder,

Still long for what we once knew ,

The hardest part of finding me will always be ,

That it came with the cost of losing you

I hope you don't think that I take that lightly ,

I hope you don't think I valued your love so cheaply ,

That I didn't understand the cost of being what you didn't want,

That I don't miss you so incredibly deeply 

And I know that I am probably the villain in our story 

If you even tell it to anyone 

And I know that is something that I can't change

and still I wish, 

That perhaps if you had met her,

that you might be proud

Of the person I've become

​

I spent last night helping clean off the bleachers at our county fairgrounds.  In typical small town fashion, the volunteer fire department had agreed to bring some of its grass rigs out and wash everything off with the wildland hoses off the back of the trucks on training night.  Beings it was going to be fairly easy evening, those with kids brought them in.  While the adults went through the fairly unglamorous business of spraying and scraping bird poop off of the aluminum, the kids sprayed water at  each other with nozzles off the front of the trucks and played in the mud of the rodeo arena.  Honestly It was cute as hell. 

Like so many other things in my life anymore, the time I spend with the fire department comes with a huge mix of emotions.  Given that at one point in time when I had cracked my egg, there was no way I would have believed that my presence there as a trans person would have been tolerated, I am just so incredibly grateful for the opportunity to be back on, grateful for the opportunity to once again be part of that fire chasing tribe, grateful for the opportunity to serve my community.   And yet there are the lingering questions,   just how tenuous is that acceptance?  How much have people really figured out? Given the absence of a social announcement, a formal name change, and a proclivity for for existing in boy mode, is it possible that some of them just haven't figured it out?  Just how much will change when they do? This is one of the many costs of my approach, I get to spend much of my life in this strange guessing of wondering whether I'm truly welcome and and accepted as I am or not, wondering just how tenuous that status is.  There's no way of knowing the answers to those questions without things becoming about the fact that I'm trans,  That's something I've never wanted, something that I intuitively understand wouldn't end well.

And yet for all those questions of whether I'm seen or not. It is also apparent that some of the members evidently have figured it out, and are visibly uncomfortable with my presence.  In a small town where the local gossip mill still holds a fair amount of power with a somewhat limited number of people to talk about, it is a reminder that I've probably been a subject of discussion more than once.   A reminder that every interaction in which I'm still treated like a normal person is a gift, the gift of someone choosing to look beyond just what has been said about me and still choose decency.

I'm still having to learn to be comfortable with the idea of being seen.  For many of the early years of my transition, I operated out of a deep desire for invisibility,  careful to wear multiple layers of clothing when I went to town,  careful to avoid situations that might attract unwanted attention, careful to avoid situations where I might have to speak in front of others.  That desire for anonymity, born out of insecurity and a fear of judgment, served its purpose, but it also came at a deep cost in terms of isolation and self-erasure. 

 In some ways it's ironic, that even after cracking my egg and choosing to transition, I would continue to maintain a belief system that the only way I could possibly be accepted is if nobody actually knew me.   There are so many reasons I would have adopted that belief system, just like there are so many reasons that that really isn't a very healthy way to live. 

 It's been a long slow journey for me, and I'm not exactly sure what changed, but I've also reached a point roughly 5 years since I started taking hormones, that I'm becoming more comfortable with the idea of being seen,  becoming tired of the idea that I will always have to hide.  I'm not sure what lies ahead, I'm still not at the point I feel comfortable wearing a tank to town instead of a T-shirt. I'm sure there will be rejection and ridicule.  There certainly have been plenty of instances in which I can tell that my appearance or presence makes people uncomfortable,  and who knows what is said behind my back when I leave.  But if this summer has taught me anything,  It is that there will be people who decide to treat me like a person instead of just a label, and For those who might be uncomfortable with that much, it's still my hope that over time I can live such a life of peace, grace and kindness that even people who are maybe predisposed to dislike me will be forced to challenged their prejudices, stereotypes and the narratives it seems are so prevaliant in culture.

And yeah, 100 degree temps and just a few hours of sleep a day doesn't exactly do the body wonders

Hopefully not working

Hopefully you have a better weekend than this one's starting off as

​

It is so easy to get caught up in that battle with the mirror..   there are mornings I wake up genuinely happy with that person staring back at me,  thankful to see her, grateful for the chance to simply exist.  There are just as many days when she's nowhere to be found, and I only see him,  that fool of a man who destroyed his life for something that obviously can't be..  

 I haven't figured out what dictates which version of life I see when I get up, but so often that first encounter has A huge amount of power over how I feel about the entire day. In reality, I know that first take is often heavily influenced by depression, but even that so often that falls into questions along the linea of the chicken and the egg.  Am I depressed because of the costs that came with choosing to transition, or do I struggle to make peace with those costs because of the depression? 

One would think that by now it would be easier.    5 years since I took that first dose of estradiol, you'd think by now I would have a little more of this figured out.   If I'm honest, in some ways it has gotten easier,   the existential dread with which I viewed the question of transitioning through has largely proved to have been overblown.   I'm still here, still getting to do many of the things I love.   I'm starting to figure out how I can still fit into my community,  slowly gaining acceptance, or at least tolerance even if I am a bubble off plum.   In so many ways, life is so much better than I could have ever imagined in my younger years before I knew transitioning was actually something people did, before I actually chose to pursue that path myself.

For all the wins, the costs are there on a constant basis too.  From the outside, so much of my life is the same, yet without the person I used to share it with, it seems so incredibly empty.  Nearly every inch of this place and activity of the year comes with memories that we made together,  every dream I still pursue was once meant to be shared.  Every small victory of being accepted and still able to function in my community comes with a realization that the only reason these small interactions are celebrated as a wins by me is because they are set against the backdrop of a knowledge of understanding just how misunderstood, distrusted and disliked this category of people I find myself amongst is within the society at large.  

 I still live with the doubts.  Did I really make the right choice?  Is this really worth what I chose to give up in the process? Yes,  on the good days I feel way better about my body than I ever did before,  more at peace with who I am as a person,  but is that really worth it, if it came at the cost of a beautiful relationship and the dreams of family once had?  Beyond the amount of energy that is expended in trying to fight the nature of your own body, is it even morally right to want to change it?  Is this a decision that becomes a necessity for dealing with mental health, or one that comes with so much isolation and stigma it will eventually leave me in the worst place than where I started?   What does the fact I still constantly deal with questions along these lines actually mean? Is it a sign that I made the wrong decision?   Or is it simply a testimony to the idea that sometimes in life we are faced with very difficult decisions that come with severe costs on both sides,  the types of decisions that leave us entertaining the idea of alternative timelines long after they were made.

So often I see the question floated around in online spaces.  " If you were all alone on a deserted island, what would you do?". Maybe that is helpful for some people,  I don't know, maybe it helps give clarity to some people. But it is also so removed from the reality that we'll live in after making that decision.  I struggle with the question of what advice would I try to give that version of me that existed 5 years prior,  I don't know, and so here I am, living somewhere in between wondering whether this was the right decision or not, and simply wishing that I had been able to begin my journey so much sooner and I did..

Today, one of the guys I served with happened to be passing through my AO, and chose to stop and share a meal and a couple hours worth of conversation with me before moving on. For me, it was the first time I'd seen anybody from my unit since I had turned in my s*** nearly two decades ago. We traded stories about deployments and training cycles,, memories of those we've lost over the years, and caught up on what we knew of those who still remain. I'm not sure I can put into words just how incredible that experience was, how nice it was to have that experience without the WTF about how I appear now, to still be seen as a person, still be seen as a brother. I suppose to some, it may seem as somewhat silly, but this was an outcome I could not have imagined receiving 5 years ago when I was contemplating the decision to transition. At the time I had looked at that decision with an understanding that choosing to transition would likely come with a loss of respect from anybody I had served with, and considering that they were the tightest family I'd ever had, that was a very painful thing to consider. The fact that I can be who I am now and still seen as a person and not just as a label worthy of automatic dismissal is so amazing. I realize I may still get that outcome from plenty of the others I served with, but for at least one person to see me as a person ..... absolutely blows my mind

Ps. Yes I know some would consider the fact I still wear my old BDU jackets as nekulturni, and that there are many ways I'm not particularly femme, but oh well, c'est la vie.. this is me :)

Many of us like to use the phrase "cracking our egg" to refer to that moment when we first came to terms with the idea that we really wanted to transition or began to realize that we might be transgender. I've never quite managed to put a finger on the idea of just what sort of imagery is supposed to accompany that statement.

For some, it might come with the idea of new life pecking its way out of the shell that once constrained it.  For others,  the image of something that rolled off the kitchen counter and didn't survive its encounter with the floor might be far more accurate.  It's a moment that changes everything.  A moment that comes at great cost for whatever that egg had once been meant for.  Lying there, broken in the dust,  we wonder if this is it? The end of everything beautiful about our lives?  Fearing that the answer to those questions might be yes, we silently wait for those those who we share our lives with to break out the dust pan and broom and rid themselves of something that is no longer wanted or useful.

For many of us, the cracking of our eggs is honestly a little bit of both,    At least, that's how it was for me.  There were those moments of excitement in allowing myself to openly dream of a future being the person I actually wanted to be.   Like so many others, I wasted far too much time with face app, desperately wanting that other version of me to be a possibility.   There were those moments of self-acceptance,  the realization I wasn't alone, that I wasn't the only person who struggled with this, that there might actually even be medical reasons for it. Those were the good moments.

They were just as many if not more moments that weren't pleasant at all .  I faced that decision to transition,  overwhelmed by the realization of just how much this path could cost me,  wondering just how much of my life would be left standing if I chose to pursue this. Would anything be left?  My relationship with my fiance?  She'd already told me that if I were to transition she didn't think she could be with me. My relationship with my family?   I'd already sat at the dinner table for far too many conversations in which I'd watch my family deride transgender people as mentally ill individuals claiming something that didn't exist .  Social acceptance in my community?  Unlikely. The ability to get a job?   Even more unlikely.The possibility of harassment or physical violence?  It definitely was a possibility.  Every metric by with which I judged my life screamed that this was a bad idea,  inch yet, I still wanted to transition.  What did that even mean?

 Honestly, I didn't deal with any of it, well. I let the depression, something that had always been a familiar companion get to me. I shut down, withdrew.   I stepped away from many of my social engagements.  There were so many evenings that ended with me sitting in my pickup truck staring at the windshield,  avoiding that sense of conflict waiting on the other side of that door  of what used to be my home but no longer felt like one anymore.  It may have been a natural reaction to the situation, but it ensured that at least one of those outcomes I had been afraid of would come true,  I live with the questions of whether my relationship with my fiance could have survived if I had been able to show up in a better manner,  live with the regrets that I didn't.

It's been nearly 5 years since that day I swallowed my first dose of estradiol.   I wish I could say that it gets easier. In some ways it has. I'm slowly learning how to navigate my way through my community, slowly learning the confidence and self-acceptance required to do so effectively.   Slowly beginning to step back into some of the roles I once held before I transitioned.   Instagram beginning to believe transitioning doesn't necessarily have to cost me everything about my life.  There are days, I am incredibly grateful to be the person I see staring back in the mirror,  at peace with myself, at peace with my body, happy just to be alive. 

 There are also just as many days when I wake up with no real desire to begin the day,  lost in deep depression over the dreams that were lost when I chose to transition, the relationship that was destroyed in the process.  There are days when I still struggle with questions over how I am perceived by others,  insecure in the idea that others could still manage to see me as a good person.   For those who have no ability to imagine what it's like to live with gender dysphoria, from the outside looking in, it would be so easy to say that I made the wrong choice,  that I gave up more than I gained.  Even I wonder that sometimes. 

Did I make the right choice? I don't know. What is done is done.,  The bridges that burned are burned, the ship I arrived in no longer offers a path home.  I'm left with the realization that even if I did make the wrong decision, I have no desire to go back to being the person I used to be,  no desire to fit back into the box that was acceptable to everybody else.  I like this person I'm becoming, even if nobody else does,  I just wish she hadn't made such a mess of things when she showed up.  

I'm still struggling to find my purpose in life, still struggling to find some meaning for my existence,  some sort of motivation I can hold on to on those tough mornings when I am surrounded by the all too familiar accusations and thoughts of self-deletion. Some reason to keep living beyond simply not wanting to make more problems for those around me.  Some reason to believe I still have something to offer,  that' something good and beautiful can still come from this mess. In the meantime,  I'll keep putting one foot in front of the other, picking up the pieces I can,  I'm desperately holding on to the belief that our lives aren't really over until we quit trying.   For those this resonates with, I wish you peace and wisdom in your own struggles.

  Best wishes, sretan put

I don't remember pride month being a thing when I was a kid. I'm sure that there were parades and protests in the far distant cities, but in the little mountain valley where I grew up, summers were mostly marked by long days that lasted until sundown and the long list of chores that needed tended to. The grown-up discussions of things far away, if they happened at all, weren't even remotely on my radar screen.

​

What I do remember is a more than ample supply of Sunday mornings spent sitting in a wooden pew of that First Baptist Church, drowning in a pool of sweat while listening to the preacher man rail against the evils of homosexuality. I was too young to understand what was going on at the time, but by the early 90s the culture wars were heating up over the issue of gay marriage, and our preacher had more than eagerly stepped up to the plate to make sure that his congregants understood just how much God hated that idea. Even more than drinkin', being lazy or fornificatin'. You could be forgiven for those, hell, You could even be forgiven for stealin' and murderin', but if you were gay, there was nothing waiting for you but hellfire , brimstone and eternal damnation. A society that tolerated the presence of gay people was just asking for God's wrath to come pouring down on it just as surely as It had on Sodom and Gomorrah.

​

I'm not sure what was more uncomfortable; the fact that it was usually a bajillion degrees inside that wooden building with its stained glass windows that didn't open, the almost palpable vehemence that practically radiated from the pulpit with every spittle filled rant, the sweat that was soaking in my arm pits and ran down the small of my back before settling in the seat of my pants, or the obvious discomfort of most of the congregation. That was before we even got to that gnawing question of wondering just what it meant for me if I was a boy who was becoming increasingly uncomfortable with my body and spending far more time wishing that I could change it and that somehow I had been born a girl than was probably even remotely healthy. It hadn't explicitly been mentioned as being homosexual, I was pretty sure I wasn't attracted to boys. but it also didn't exactly seem normal and I wondered if the fact that they didn't talk about it meant that it was actually something far, far, far worse.

​

To be honest, the preacher man really didn't need to work as hard on the subject as he was. Home for me was a community organized around logging, cattle ranching and coal mining. It was the sort of place that prided itself on raising hard men up to the tasks required of them, the sort of place where most young males dreamed of making it big riding roughstock on the rodeo circuit, where a scholarship to play football at some community college or the decision to join the military was considered making something of yourself, and where pretty much anything that didn't fit into the social norms of the area invited accusations of homosexuality. Them was considered fightin' words, and beings my classmates figured out that calling me a faggot or queer got under my skin, I ended up spending a lot of time fighting. Sadly I wasn't very good at it, which pretty much meant that the pattern was destined to repeat itself on a pretty regular basis through the school year. I lived for summer break when I could help my uncles on their cattle ranch without the constant harassment of my classmates.

​

I did what so many other trans kids of the early '90s did, I did my best to run away from the battles raging between my two ears, to pretend that battle and those uncomfortable questions didn't even exist . I learned to hide my feelings and fears while secretly drowning in shame, depression and self-hatred. Unable to find any version of myself that I even remotely liked, I found myself still looking outwards for acceptance and approval. I learned to work hard in hopes that I could have value to adults even if I was ridiculed and despised by my classmates, and when that time came, I pursued a path in the military, desperate to prove to myself that I had what it took to earn the respect of others, desperate to prove that somehow I was an okay person. Nearly a decade and several deployments later I got out with far more questions than answers, unconvinced that I had managed to prove anything at all.

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30 some years later since those Sunday mornings spent filling a pew as an adolescent, I find myself somewhere on the other side of that cultural divide. There are so many days I don't feel like I really fit into either world. So many of my life's experiences and interests have been in a world filled with people to whom I can relate, but who still harbor deep prejudices against people like me and pretty much anybody else in the LGBT community. I should want to leave, I don't know how many times I've been told it would be healthy for me to leave, but this is home, these are my people, and in truth I often find it just as hard to relate to many of those in that same community that I now find myself on the distant periphery of.

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Maybe it's just a sign of how young I am in my journey, but I still have difficulty relating to the whole idea of a pride month, an even harder time understanding just what people mean when they say happy pride. Honestly I'm not proud to be trans, life would be so much easier if I had been content to stay as I was. It's just something that is . I'm deeply grateful to be able to exist as I do now, deeply aware that there's no way I would ever want to go back to living in the same box of other's expectations that I did before. I'm deeply grateful for the ability to finally find myself, deeply grateful for those who paved the way for me to be able to do so, but I still struggle with having some sort of sense of pride in having made that decision. The decision to transition is one that came with heavy emotional and social costs to me, costs that I live with on a daily basis. It was a decision that forfeited many of the blessings that are bestowed upon those who are able to find a partner and raise a family, It was a decision that forfeited much of the respect and many of the friendships I once enjoyed in the community that I live in. It was a decision that caused a huge amount of hurt to the incredible woman I shared my life with at the time I chose to transition, and whom I still miss daily.

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No, there's nothing about the fact that I'm trans that makes me any more special ,accomplished, or worthy of respect than anybody else, but there's also part of me that deeply resents the idea that somehow it should make me automatically less worthy of respect. That it should become an asterisk on all of my previous accomplishments., a footnote used to discount everything else about me, A dismissal that somehow I am less worthy of the ideas of life, liberty and pursuit of happiness than anybody else. Even if I'm still struggling to find pride in my decisions to be who I am today, I am also deeply resentful of being told that I should be ashamed to even exist, deeply resentful of those who seem determined to make it harder for people like me to exist and deeply resentful of those who seek to recreate the conditions that I grew up in. That spiteful, judgmental world that I grew up in didn't keep some of my friends from realizing they were gay, it didn't keep me from having to deal with gender dysphoria, it didn't make that constant desire somehow. I can change myself go away, didn't lessen the disappointment and self-hatred I had for my own body, What it did do, was to create deep layers of fear, shame,and self-hatred, that I had to overcome before I could exist in a way I could make finally make peace with. These are struggles that I know are not unique to my experience, struggles I have heard reflected in so many of my friends' stories. I don't know if I understand pride, but I do understand that deep desire to still be seen as a human being by others, even if I am a little bit different. May you all find peace in your own journeys, best wishes, sretan put

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Somebody faced their fears and got back on their volunteer fire department. :). So thankful, it's so good to be back, and yes, I know one of those pictures isn't even remotely flattering, but I got to spend all morning running a chainsaw, and I was happy as a clam