*This is the sixth and final story of our Trans Visibility Series, which centers the lived experiences of trans and gender-expansive young people while connecting those stories to relevant research and data. Read the previous story in our series here!
The minute those words came out of her mouth, sparkles appeared in the shape of wings, and took material form. Wings, made up of parts of my heart and deep repressed parts of my psyche, were now made manifest. Now… everyone can see… me.
What a beautifully strange feeling.
When I came out for the first time, I swear I had felt fairy wings grow out of my back. I first came out to my best friend, who, at the time, was also transgender. They were openly transgender in our extremely conservative Catholic middle school–where they had been relentlessly bullied. Even though they were trans themselves, this feeling–this… vulnerability… was foreign. Terrifying even.
And it was everything my parents had hated. As deep as the sin went–that sharp knife that twists in an open wound, them introducing me by my correct name and pronouns, gave me morphine. I had lived my entire life up to this point under the expectations and thumb of everyone else around me. I was too afraid to be who I was, in fear of not being loved. I preferred to be loved for someone I wasn’t to keep the illusion of community around me. But this—this had awakened a part of myself that years of escapism couldn’t even touch. I felt genuine joy and presence in my body for the first time in my life. My spirit finally fell into my body, when my entire life it floated above me while I watched. I yearned for it to just visit me, even once.
And I couldn’t believe it had returned.
I touched it.
And I knew I needed more of this.
And I never stopped.
Currently, I am the happiest I’ve ever been. I, in my time in high school, became the most openly transgender person in my conservative Catholic school. I was bullied with hateful religious platitudes cooed in kind speech—but I always stayed true to me. Always. I was out for three years of high school, and I had even inspired underclassmen to feel safe enough to grow wings- just like I did. To quote research from The Trevor Project‘s 2019 National Survey on LGBTQ Youth Mental Health, “54% of transgender and non-binary youth reported seriously considering suicide in the last year, and 29% made a suicide attempt.”
Additionally, to cite a Hopelab research testimonial from a white transgender man, “[Online communities] were extremely important to me back in high school when I was first exploring my gender and identity in a very religious household. In a time when I could not yet access fundamental support in person, I was able to befriend people like me online.”
To be able to fly is a human right. People have magic inside of them that needs to be protected. According to Born This Way Foundation’s guide for supporting LGBTQIA youth, it states, “28% of LGBTQ+ young people with access to in-person spaces that supported their identity had lower rates of depressive symptoms compared to those without access to supportive in-person spaces (28% vs. 53%).”
Everyone should be able to grow wings. That’s a human right.
