My Mostly Happy Transgender Childhood, and the Price of Excavating It for Strangers

I ran through sprinklers in the summer and chased fireflies until my parents called me inside. There were sleepovers with girls who became my closest friends, and we stayed up late telling secrets. Cross country and bonfires and crushes that made my stomach flip. On weekends, my mom took me horseback riding or to figure skating lessons that cost more than they should have. When I ran for student government president, my friends and classmates and siblings and teachers believed I would win. I was voted “most likely to succeed.” These are facts. The standard trans narrative doesn’t have a place for them, and I’ve gotten tired of editing them out.

There was something else, too—maybe 10 percent of the time. An emptiness that would arrive without warning, a feeling that nothing was quite real, that I was watching myself from somewhere outside my body. It showed up at a bonfire junior year: my friends were laughing and someone handed me a drink and I took it and laughed back and the whole time I was hovering about six inches behind my own eyes. It went away when I started transitioning. But while it was there, it coexisted with everything else. I felt like I was watching myself from the outside and I won student government president. Both happened. Most of the time, the good parts won.

That ratio doesn’t serve the story, though. So I’ve learned to lead with something else: the hardship, the bullying, the substance use, the cruel moments from people who loved me. I’ve learned to make that 10 percent fill the frame.

This is what advocacy demands. To earn the right to have transitioned, you first prove you suffered. Every interview, every policy hearing, every well-meaning ally—they’re asking you to go back into the worst of it. Describe the bullying. Talk about not belonging. Perform the wound so strangers can evaluate whether your choices clear their bar.

Here’s what that costs. I’ve told the hard stories so many times that they feel more real now than the good ones. When I think about high school, the bullying surfaces before the bonfires. I’ve become someone who knows which anecdotes land, how to time the difficult parts, what level of detail makes people nod. And the memories I keep excavating don’t come back the way they were. They come back shaped like arguments. I don’t know if the girl who chased fireflies is still accessible, or if I’ve paved over her.

I’m writing this because I’d like to stop paying that price. Not stop advocating—that work isn’t finished. But I want anyone else about to enter this arena to understand what gets traded.

So here it is: my childhood was mostly good. I was loved. I belonged. I succeeded. I transitioned anyway, because the alternative was spending the rest of my life fighting something that was true.

I’m done giving away the parts of my history that don’t fit the frame. The girl who chased fireflies gets to stay.