If You Missed Chapel Today, You Didn’t Miss the Talk!

On my first day at Grace, I met my classmates in the MPR and we sat in circles by advisory. We went around as each group introduced their new students to the whole grade. As it got closer to my turn, my heart started to beat  faster and my hands sweat profusely. When it got to our circle, a classmate introduced me: “this is Mellie, he likes to snowboard and he’s from DC”. While this was an accurate description, I was panic stricken and noticed that Mr. Brown was too; he looked to me with a confused expression. But I didn’t say anything.

The next day, on our class trip, I was sitting alone on top of the mountain we had to climb and Mr. Brown approached me and asked what my prefered pronouns were. I lied to him saying they were female, and I knew that we would have to return to that conversation. In that moment and on the busride back to school, I decided that that conversation needed to happen soon and that starting at a new school was an opportunity for me to start over, start fresh, and start right. So, when I got home that night, I finally came out to my parents as transgender.

I was born a female but I cannot remember a time in my life when I did not identify as a male. My mom signed me up for ballet when I was younger, I hated it. When she made me wear dresses, I cried. I looked up to my brother and always wore his old clothes and stole his toys. My favorite was an old train set with wooden tracks. I always knew I was a boy, and didn’t feel like there was anything wrong or different about me until elementary school when girls started only hanging out with girls and guys with guys and I was just kind of there in the middle. My parents started pushing girls clothes on me more and so did my friends and kids at school. They made fun of me saying: “why do you always wear boy clothes?” And I would just say that I was more comfortable in them.

It was always strange to me that people had such strong reactions. I mean I was in like the third grade and just wanted to live and play outside, I didn’t need people hating on my basketball shorts. I experienced a lot of intense negative reactions and judgement and as a result, I felt like I was a flaw.

I just wanted to be normal. I hated fighting my parents when I got dressed and I hated the embarrassment of when a substitute teacher would call me “sir” and the whole class would laugh. It was humiliating. Every time the clock hit 11:11, every penny I threw into a fountain, and every birthday candle I blew out for 16 years, I wished that I would wake up the next morning in the right body and that everything would be okay.

I first heard the word “transgender” in a 5th grade health class. And as my school nurse was explaining the term, I remember it felt like she was explaining me. She said “there are some people who feel like they are a girl trapped in a boy’s body or a boy in a girl’s body.” I was “yup”. I guess that’s what it is. This disconnect I had always felt with who I am and my body had a definition and that was a very relieving discovery. I was not necessarily alone or a mistake.

It still took me until 11th grade to gather enough courage to tell my parents. I was adopted, and when I was growing up my mother often spoke about how much she wanted a girl and how lucky she felt to have me. When I came out, my mother cried saying she hated that I suffered alone for so long and asked why I didn’t tell them sooner.  I told her I just didn’t want to disappoint her because she I knew wanted a girl. She looked at me and said “I wanted a child.” My mother has been by my side since day one and I feel incredibly grateful that she was so accepting and loving right away.

My dad on the other hand stayed pretty quiet when I came out to them. He’s definitely a more old fashioned guy and so it took him a long time to understand. We had a lot of arguments and it was extremely frustrating and devastating for me because I just wanted his approval. I remember overhearing a phone call he was having with my aunt. When he talked about me, he said “well, she’s decided she’s a boy now…”. I was infuriated and shocked. There was so much wrong with this statement that I immediately started crafting a bullet point list in my head of things I could to say to him. I kept calm. And when he hung up, I looked at him and said “do you really think I would choose this? This was not my decision. Nobody would choose to wake up everyday hating the body they are in.” It took him a little while but eventually he came around and our relationship has become even stronger than it was before.

Coming out was an amazing process, but it was a process. I am very lucky in that I felt- and continue to feel an immense amount of support from my friends and my family. I think it’s easy to forget or just not see how different of a community this school is, or at least it has been for me. I know this is hard to believe because we’re kind of a mess sometimes, but when I first met my grade I immediately felt like Grace was a place where I would be safe and comfortable enough that I could take that risk and choose to live.

In my freshman year at Avenues, I was reaching a breaking point. I felt empty and lost and alone and I didn’t feel like I was living; I felt like I was just kind of existing. I knew that I needed to switch schools but I also knew that I had to initiate a change in order for things to actually be better for me at Grace. Coming out marked the first step towards actively living and living authentically.

But coming out didn’t just solve everything. It was really just the beginning. Being transgender is something that I struggle with everyday despite being out and fairly open about it. I still worry about passing as a male. I have a lot of anxiety about how I act and present myself. I talk in a lower voice when meeting people or just ordering at a restaurant. I worry about which bathroom I can use; even though in NY I can legally use the men’s room, I am still hesitant to do so at school because for such a long time I was terrified of any labelled bathroom and avoided them completely.

And then there’s the medical aspect of transitioning and the testosterone. Once a week, I stick an inch of sharp metal into my own human thigh, injecting hormones into my muscle. I mean it’s a whole mess. And it’s hard! But I would never take it back or wish that I would wake up differently anymore. The challenges I have faced have brought me to breaking points and have even made me question the value of existence at all, but I continue to overcome them and continue to fight. And that is really living.

The most important thing I have learned in my life and in this fight to finally feel alive, is something my mother told me: “feeling alive does not always mean feeling good”. I think that is so important. It’s okay to not be okay. It’s just a part of life. Coming out taught me how to advocate for myself. I felt myself struggling and feeling empty, I decided that I didn’t want to feel that anymore, and I took the initiative to change that.

I have days when I go right back to feeling like I can’t even get out of bed. I’ve been through quite a bit in this transition and I know that, still, many more challenges lie ahead. I’m going to college next year, and I know that I will have to come out there and start this process again and again throughout my life.

I wasted so much of my life feeling so small but I fought to finally feel alive and so I’m going to live. I have an overwhelming sense of trust that everything will be alright for me in the end. There is a John Lennon quote: “Everything will be okay in the end. If it’s not okay, it’s not the end.” I strongly agree with this. You have to make it okay and I’m living proof that you can do that.