hive

When I first was introduced to the prospect that people are not always cisgender, I was absolutely confused more than anything else. Trans people around me would describe how they experienced gender, and I would mull it over for a long time--how could they be trans if they described feeling exactly like I did, and I wasn't trans? Isn't that just how everybody felt? I was talking about this with my first queer therapist at the time, and she invited me to consider: how did I know what gender I was? All of a sudden, things changed for me. Trans folks were no longer other people living separate lives, completely distinct from mine--I was a trans person myself! At first, this was terrifying, to be honest. I had been given a whole road map to follow for my life as a person assigned female at birth, and suddenly I was realizing that a lot of those things weren't guarantees--in fact, they were actually entirely optional. This kept happening for me as I got more involved in my local trans community. All of the rules in my life that I had clung to for so long started seeming less absolute, less restrictive, and more like something I could CHOOSE to take or leave based on what I wanted to give structure in my life.

This might sound like it's entirely out of the realm of possibility for a lot of folks, especially depending on where you're located. But being in community with other transmasc people in person, having one on one conversations with people who honestly and truly understand you in a way that most other beings won't? That's life-affirming. That's life-saving. I had no idea how alone and broken I felt until I was staring at someone who was undeniably whole and wanted saying those same words back at me about themselves, who was living a life so similar to my own and yet felt so remarkably lonesome. If in-person community is not viable or safe (for disability reasons, physical safety reasons, financial reasons, any other reason), finding virtual support can be just as valuable. There are discord servers, there are Facebook groups (if you're an older person like I am and still use Facebook, anyway). I promise you, there are places where your presence is wanted, even if they don't know it yet. Even if you don't know it, either. The closet can be safer, but that doesn't stop it from being treacherously lonely at the same time. Finding an online community can be like having a small piece of Narnia to escape to as we sit amongst the mothballs and the dust spending their days in the closet with us.