Welcome To The Table: The Story of One Trans Soul

This is an unedited, anonymous gift of the story of one trans person. To protect their identity we aren’t sharing a name, but I want to honor this soul with one important detail. She uses she/they pronouns. So when you read and share their story please hold that fact with reverence. You are going to read some raw, honest, and heartbreaking details of their loss, their grief, their internalized homophobia, and their joy. You’re going to bear witness to how painfully the world tries to make trans people disappear inside themselves - how families can do it without even knowing they are. If you draw nothing else from this story, I hope you see that trans people don’t want to die because they hate themselves. They often want to die because they know the world and their religious communities and their families hate them. This is NOT just a story of heartbreak though. Make no mistake, queer joy radiates from the tender moments, the safe places, the experiences of full expression. This is holy ground for all of us. As a cis woman, being invited into this kind of vulnerability is a gift that I will never take for granted.

CW: suicide, assault, homophobia, death, transphobia, binge drinking

I grew up in a Christian household where all of my relatives hold the same beliefs. Some of my earliest memories include playing with neighborhood kids, bugging my mom about when dinner would be ready, and wishing for a different life. As far back as I can remember, I have felt like something about me was different. I remember laying in bed at night wishing that a group of women that looked like The Hex Sisters from Scooby-Doo would kidnap me and through science turn my body into that of a girl. Funnily enough something similar would happen, but not for decades later. 

I have always had these feelings, and it wasn’t until college that I actually had the vocabulary to accurately describe what I was feeling. Dysmorphia. While my sister and I grew up I would see her reach different milestones that I desperately wanted to participate in. She got to get her ears pierced, start painting her nails, and my mom even helped her try on makeup. A few times either my mom or my sister would give in to my pleading and paint my nails, but after a few times of my dad coming home to find his “son” with painted nails and yelling at us about me needing to “be a man” stopped that short. I would still try to find ways around this. Sometimes I would get an older girl at school that would watch us until my mom was done with her work, she taught at the same school, to paint my nails. It always made me so happy and I could see that my mom knew how happy it made me, but she also knew that she needed to remove it at home before my dad got back from work, so those brief moments of joy were short lived and soon they would stop altogether as my fear of making my dad angry outweighed my desire for gender euphoria. Another source of gender euphoria growing up was when my sister and girl cousins would play dress up. They would apologize to me that they only had dresses to use for dress up and I would pretend to be disappointed, but would play along with them to be nice. I probably had more fun during those play times than they did, although when my sister and cousins would go to the family room to put on a little fashion show I would either just stay in the playroom to enjoy wearing a dress for a little while longer, or would quickly change out of the dress I was wearing and accompany them to the family room in my stereotypical boy clothes. I would pray to god every night to either change me into a girl during the night, or make how I felt go away. Little surprise that nothing would happen.

Growing up in a Christian home meant church every Sunday, at least once, and youth group or awana every Wednesday. I saw how other people reacted and talked about god in church, but I never actually believed. I wanted to. It seemed so important to my parents that I thought it must be true. I even asked my mom one night how do we know that the Bible is true. She said because people found some old scrolls that mentioned the same things that were in the Bible. My first thought was well who wrote the scrolls, that there had to be a beginning to it and if someone wrote the scrolls then how do we know that the scrolls are true, but I could see from the look in my mom’s eyes that she didn’t want to be pushed further about it so I just said ok and went back to playing. I went to a private Christian school from kindergarten all the way until I graduated college. The entire time getting the Bible and Christianity shoved down my throat and told some of the weirdest things. One time at youth group when I was in the seventh grade we were separated from the girls to have the porn talk. They told us that if we watched porn that we would essentially turn into serial killers because that’s the conclusion some pastor came to after interviewing a serial killer before they were sent to the electric chair. It might not look like it from the outside or other perspectives, but looking back on it, the church and school felt like a cult. One of my Bible teachers, we had a mandatory Bible class each year in school, told us that babies went to hell because he believed they were intelligent enough to know the gospel and if they didn’t accept Jesus into their hearts then even babies newly born would go to hell if they died.

It was during junior high and high school that I tried my hardest to shove down and dismiss the feelings I had. It shames me to remember it, but I went full-on hardcore homophobe. I used the word gay as a way to describe something bad or uncool. I used the t slur a lot, and called people “its”. I can remember a conversation my parents had in the car when they thought I was asleep. We had just left a popular ice cream and putt-putt place near our home and there had been a trans women a few tables down from us. She was probably in her late fifties or early sixties. My dad called her an abomination while referring to her as an “it” and my mom said that she didn’t think that people like her should be allowed around children while using “it” to talk about her. I had been trying to repress what I felt strongly and deeply, but the feelings were still there and hearing that conversation cemented in my mind that I could never talk to my parents about what I had been feeling since I could remember. 

It wasn’t until my freshmen year of college that I knew what transgender people were. All along I just thought I was this weird outlier of a person. A man who thought that women were so pretty and beautiful and men so gross that I wanted to be a woman. I mentioned my feelings to a couple of close high school friends, but even they didn’t know that transgender people existed. I made some friends in college that I found out were either gay or bi. They were so nice and welcoming that I instantly felt comfortable and at home with them. I don’t remember if it was from a google search or if I heard about it from one of those friends, but I finally found out about trans people and it was a key fitting into place. Unfortunately, the door I unlocked would bring a lot of pain and sadness along with the peace that I wasn’t the only ones feeling the way I felt. I went into a massive depressive spiral. It was nice to finally have words to put to what I was feeling, but the crushing weight of my parent’s homophobia and transphobia threatened to pull me under. I failed multiple classes. I slept during any free time I had. I even took a handful of Advil hoping to either have some of the pain I felt numbed or die. When it didn’t do either of the goals I had in mind I just went to sleep. It was better to be unconscious at least. Sleep is like dying, but without the commitment. I was severely suicidal and my friends started to notice. Well, my friends in the lgbtq community started to notice. For everyone else I had a perfect mask in place, because mental health was a myth in my family. People who are depressed should just cheer up, and people who commit suicide were just selfish. My university offered free counseling which my friends urged me to take. I went to a handful of sessions before the school semester ended. They seemed to make me feel worse than better. The therapist didn’t really talk much and I didn’t know what to talk about so most sessions would just be us sitting there in silence. I asked to be put on anti-depressants, but the therapist said that since the school year was ending soon he wouldn’t be able to observe me to see if the meds were helping or not so he didn’t put me on any. The last session we had before summer break my therapist wanted to tell my parents that I was very depressed and suicidal and should continue therapy during the summer. I begged him not to tell them I was suicidal, because I wanted as few questions from my parents as possible. He agreed to only tell them I was depressed and that he strongly urged that I continue therapy. I didn’t have a car yet, because freshmen weren’t allowed cars, so my dad had to pick me up from college. On the way home he awkwardly told me that my therapist had called and told me the only therapist they knew of was one that my best friend, who I wasn’t out to yet, had gone to and that they would have to ask her mom for the therapist’s number, but that I wouldn’t want her mom to know that I was going to therapy did I? I said I guess not. My dad said the other option would be to talk to our pastor, who isn’t a therapist, and that was for sure not an option for me. I did not want to talk to my homophobic pastor about how I was trans and wanted to kill myself because my parents would never accept me. That was the end of it. Occasionally my mom would me if I was “still feeling down”, meaning depressed in our home, and I would say yes. She would ask me why and I would just lie that I didn’t know why.

My sophomore year of college I discovered the lovely world of binge drinking. My group of fellow gays would stuff ourselves into a tiny home one of the seniors had off campus and get crazy drunk every weekend. Thankfully I am a happy drunk. It was my escape. When I drink the bad feelings go away. It was also a place that I could truly be myself. I had many affirming friends that would let me be me. They would use she/her pronouns and call my pretty or beautiful even when I felt ugly and mannish. Even when I grew my denial beard they would still call me beautiful and compliment me on my beard. It was a safe place where it didn’t matter what I looked like on the outside, they knew I was a woman and treated me that way. The alcohol helped me to forget the cruel and harsh world outside of the house we would drink in. We even formed a lgbtq support group that we dubbed The Underground and had meetings where we would discuss things like gay rights and how we could better support one another. I finally was feeling the weight ease up a little. The next year my mom died.

I was away during the summer between my sophomore and junior years of college working at a Christian cheerleading company that held camps for high schoolers all over the country. It was at the very beginning of June when I got a call from my dad one evening that the doctors had found a brain tumor in my mom during a scan. She had been feeling off and her body wasn’t responding the way it should. I was hundreds of miles away. I had a couple of close friends I had made among my colleagues that helped me not break apart completely. After the first few hours of crying when I came back inside the host home we were staying at it felt like a dream. This couldn’t be happening. This happened to other people, but not to my family. The host parents were amazingly helpful. The mom was fighting breast cancer at the time so they knew at least a little bit what I was going through. Most of my coworkers didn’t really know how to handle me or how to help. I don’t blame them. What can you say besides I’m sorry to someone who just found out their mom is going to die? A month later during fourth of July week I was allowed two weeks off because my mom was going to have brain surgery to remove as much of the tumor as possible and try to extend her life. They got as much out as they could without removing parts of her brain. When I left to go back to work my mom was positive. We all were. Besides the patch of hair missing from her head that she covered with a scarf she looked and acted normal. I had about a month between when work ended and the next school year started up. My dad had been taking off time from work all summer, so when I got home he went back to work and I stayed home and helped my mom. She had already started chemotherapy and radiation. The effects were starting to be visible. She was very weak and couldn’t walk very far on her own so we got her a wheelchair. She would get too nauseated going up and down stairs so she slept in a lazyboy recliner on the first floor. One day my dad had to wash the cushion and put on a waterproof cover because my mom had peed herself in the night. I remember that a story was circulating about a woman out in Washington I believe that had brain cancer who had committed medically assisted suicide somewhere in Europe so she wouldn’t have to get weaker and weaker and die in a bed. My mom found out about the story and I remember her crying to my dad about how she wanted to do the same. My dad would try to shut down that kind of talk as soon as she brought it up, but I still heard it and it hurt, but I understood where she was coming from having been suicidal for a while at that point. I took her to appointments for radiation, but thankfully she took her chemotherapy in pill form so she didn’t need to sit and have it drip into her through an IV. I went to school that fall slightly hopeful. She had been getting worse, but it was in tiny increments. Some time before fall break my dad let me know that she had lost a lot of hair so they had just shaved off the rest. I came home for fall break with my own head shaved in support for her. I never mentioned why I had shaved my head, but when she saw me as I walked in the front door I could see in her eyes that she knew my reasoning and her face filled with love and happiness. She had gained a lot of weight from sitting in her recliner for most of the day, and I took that as a good sign because I had heard how many cancer patients sort of waste away as their cancer kills them. I went back to school feeling hopeful. Thanksgiving break was hard. The doctor told us that he believed the tumor had grown. My mom was speaking only in small quiet sentences and she slept most of the time. The day I packed to come home for winter break my dad texted me to tell me that my mom had been moved to hospice. This is what I was fearing. People only go to hospice. They don’t leave it.

I would visit my mom every day for at least a couple hours. The first time I visited she was conscious and able to grunt acknowledgements, but after that first day she was only conscious a few more times before falling asleep. My dad spent all of his waking hours at the hospice. Family members and friends would come and visit frequently. I remember one time my aunt, my dad’s brother’s wife, came to visit she was talking to my mom. I was reading in the corner. Suddenly my aunt just broke down and started crying over my mom. Then she stopped for a second and looked up at me with a question in her eyes like “why aren’t you crying too?” it felt very performative, but she’s entitled to her own feelings. Christmas day neither side of our family had anything planned and we didn’t have the time or energy to make a Christmas meal so my sister and I picked up some Chinese takeout, famously one of the only kind of restaurant open on Christmas day, and took it over to the hospice to eat with our dad. A little Christmas celebration with our mom hooked up to all kinds of machines. Our dad’s side of the family had its Christmas celebration on the 28th. It was fun. All the cousins in mine and my sister’s age group were in the basement having our annual mario kart and just dance tournaments. We even made plans to go see a movie. My sister and I just wanted to stop by our home real quick to drop off our presents we had received and change clothes. We wanted to stop by the hospice really quick too to drop off some Christmas cookies our grandma had made for our dad. It was on the drive home that our dad text us that we needed to come the hospice ASAP. Mom didn’t have much time left. 

I held her hand when she died. 

When we got there my mom’s family was there along with our dad. Some were crying. We got hugs from everyone. My sister stood in the back of the room with a blank look on her face. I assume I had a similar one on mine. My dad was on one side of the bed my mom was in and I was on the other. We each held one hand. Her breathing sounded like a drip coffee maker when it finishes a pot of coffee. I learned later that is what people refer to when they say a death rattle. The machine flatlined and my dad told me to press the call button to get a nurse in. I stood up to make room for the nurse to check my mom’s vitals and she confirmed that my mom was dead. I just felt numb. My dad started crying and holding my mom. It is the only time I can remember my dad crying. We heard air escape from my mom’s mouth and dad urgently told the nurse that she must be wrong and that my mom was still alive, but she sadly informed him that was just her lungs deflating. My dad sank to his knees and cried into his wife’s chest. Most people in the room started crying, but I just stood there with my hand awkwardly on my dad’s shoulder. Eventually he stood up to go call the funeral home that would take care of my mom’s body. They’re a family friend. The daughter was actually in one of my mom’s classes in elementary school and was one of my coworkers for the cheerleader camp thing. My aunt, my mom’s older sister, asked if I wanted to say goodbye to my mom. I walked forward and went to hug my mom and that was when everything inside of my broke. I started sobbing uncontrollably into her chest just like my dad had done moments before. It all felt like a dream. In a way it still does. This doesn’t happen to my family. It only happens to other people. To this day I still have a hard time remembering that my mom is dead, has been dead for the past six and a half years. 

The funeral felt like a joke. My dad had our pastor give the gospel during the ceremony which I felt was sort of manipulative. I met so many people that day that I had never seen in my entire life and haven’t seen since. All these people in tears that I didn’t know existed until today felt fake as fuck. Some of my friends were able to make it and they helped a lot. My sister had a friend that stayed close by and would grab us water or snacks when we needed them. I’m pretty sure she even had a flask of whiskey, but I never had a chance to take a swig. A few days later I was back at college. This was when my grades dipped hard again and I hit the bottle pretty hard. Every weekend I would go to the liquor store and buy a cheap bottle of vodka and some cranberry juice. If you use cranberry juice or any other highly acidic juice as a mixer you can cover up the taste of alcohol pretty well. I would poor half the bottle of vodka in my liter water bottle then fill the rest up with cranberry juice and drink it all. I would do the same on Saturday. I smoked a lot of cigarettes then too. Switched to vaping when I noticed I was having a hard time breathing during cheer practice, but nicotine addiction is something I still struggle with to this day. Thankfully the hangovers got worse and worse for me as I got older and alcohol is kind of expensive when you drink to get drunk, so drinking isn’t a huge problem for me anymore but I still have to be careful. If I have more than a couple drinks then something switches in my brain and I go all in. 

My senior year, technically year and a half since I had to do an extra semester because of failing so many classes, was me trying to just pass my classes, make it to practice, and find nights where I could get drunk. I had a gay friend who lived about an hour away from campus and he took me to a friend’s house that was a professional drag performer and he did my makeup and I got dressed up and we went to a gay bar for a drag show. It was an incredibly happy event for me. It was the first time for me going out in public in makeup, even if it was drag makeup, and wearing female clothes. Of course I got super wasted, but I was having a good time. I even got hit on by the drunk older guy and he bought me a drink which felt extremely validating to me, but he ruined it when he kissed me and I couldn’t back away fast enough because of how drunk I was. I didn’t know what to do so I took my drink, said thanks, and ran off to find my friends for safety. At least I got the bar’s most expensive bourbon out of the deal, I guess. The next day I felt so awful. Partly from being extremely hungover, but also because my first time out in the world presenting as who I was, I had been assaulted. Not the best first time out. I went back deep into denial, hoping that if I just suppress it enough then I could just forget about it. I grew a beard again. I changed my dating profiles on the dating apps I had back to straight male. I was deeply depressed. I shaved my beard and started growing my hair out. When people asked why I said just because. I did research into how to start hormones, but was always too afraid of my dad finding out to do anything about it. I moved out to Indiana to live in a house with some friends that were going to grad school. After a year people moved out and I had to move back into my dad’s house because I had literally no money. The last of it went into renting a uhaul to get all my stuff back to Ohio. During my time in Indiana, I was living paycheck to paycheck and even sold my plasma in order to pay the bills and feed myself and my cat. After moving back to Ohio, I found a job at a local bakery relatively quickly. This was the first time I had a boss that I actually liked. It was also during this time that some symptoms I had been having started being too much to ignore anymore. They had started when I was a sophomore in college, but I thought they were just the result of being in varsity sports my entire life and competitive cheer in college. When they didn’t go away after I stopped sports and just got worse I finally went in to our family doctor to see what, if anything, was wrong. I listed all my symptoms and my doctor asked a handful of questions before telling me that she thought I had fibromyalgia, but would order a series of blood work and tests to rule out any other causes since there isn’t a test for fibro specifically. After about a month of tests she came to the conclusion that I did have fibro and I got the diagnosis. Since then I have learned how lucky I was that my doctor was female, I was presenting male, and she was a friend of the family. So many people, mostly women, don’t get the diagnosis they need because doctors don’t believe them or don’t think that fibro is a real disease. It is just another thing I have to deal with. Widespread chronic pain, chronic fatigue, and brain fog are just the most prevalent symptoms that I have. There are many others and many more that other people with fibro experience. There isn’t anything that I can do to make my symptoms better besides avoiding physical activity, and even that doesn’t stop the flares I get from time to time. Something I’ve learned is that fibro symptoms typically get worse continually once you have it. Being chronically ill has kept me from getting a full time job, and part time jobs don’t pay enough for me to live off of with the amount of hours I’m able to work without experiencing burn out. And it is only going to get worse from here. 

I’m not exactly sure when, but I’m pretty sure it was that first summer back that I was introduced to Stephanie Greene through facebook groups and Instagram. She has been a pillar of support and love that has been desperately needed in my life. She is always there when I need advice and is so fucking supportive I truly feel like I’m her child. Without her cheering my journey on I don’t know how I would have made the progress that I have. Two and a half years ago I was able to start hormones in secret and it has been a life saver. Trans health care is suicide prevention. Through Stephanie I also met Quinn. They have been a fellow spoonie and witch that has helped me through so many issues, and celebrated my triumphs. They also love Avatar the Last Airbender as much, or more, than I do which is a huge plus. I also have a friend across the street from me, Abi, that has helped me so much when it comes to applying for things like Medicaid and food stamps, never once shaming me for needing and asking for help. We planted a fruit and veggie garden this summer that has brought me a lot of joy to work in the dirt and nature again. Another friend I have is Mary from Ohio. Another friend that I have only ever talked to online, but one that is incredibly supportive and is always there when I want to vent or is someone I feel comfortable talking about sex and sexuality. As someone who grew up in purity and virginity culture, she has been incredibly helpful in my deconstruction of those harmful ideals, as had Stephanie and Abi. 

A few months ago I had had enough of living with my homophobic/transphobic dad and working at a place with an awful boss. The job was amazing. I was the youngest vineyard manager in all of Ohio and one of the youngest if not the youngest in the country. It was extremely hard work, especially with fibro, but it was incredibly rewarding to take care of the vines and then taste the wine made from the grapes you grew at the end of the year. But I wasn’t paid very much and my boss was an idiot. I had saved up a decent amount and when a perfect apartment became available in Muncie right next to my best friend and her wife, I sent in my two weeks and moved right after those two weeks were up. I lied that I had found a job at a local bar in order to have a reason that my dad and boss would accept. My boss called me and tried to guilt me into staying, but not once did he offer to pay me more or change how he did things. I wouldn’t have stayed even if he had, but it would have been nice of him to at least try that option. Ironically, about a month ago, I got a job at the bar that I had lied about getting a job at. But last week they closed and won’t reopen for a few months so I’m out of a job again. Such is life, I guess. One shit storm after the other with only glimpses of the sun in between. 

Even with all this going on, I wouldn’t change the decision to move back to Indiana. I’ve made good friends here and started healing in a way that wouldn’t have been possible back in Ohio. I’ve even started looking into getting gender reassignment surgery, but that will be a long way off. Although not as far out of reach as I once thought. So here I am. Struggling to live my life. Taking it day by day. Celebrating the victories with friends and my chosen family that loves me for me. Mourning my old life that I have burned away and molding the ashes into a better life. 

I wrote all of this in one sitting and it was helpful. Like one long journal post about my life. Some parts, who am I kidding, most parts were hard to relive. The cold and heavy cloak of depression tried to rest itself on my shoulders, but writing my story out helped me to step out of it before it could settle. I always hated going back and proof reading and editing my papers in college, so I probably won’t edit this at all. But that feels more true to my story. More real. More raw. To anyone who reads this I hope that my story helps you understand a little bit more about me and that it helped you in some way too whether that be because someone else out there has experienced similar things to you or something like that. Thanks for reading. Have a nice day.