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Hello, my name is Kermit Crowley. I am a 19 year old, disabled transman.
My identity hasn't changed too much over the years. I've always identified as masculine in some way. Early days, I need more towards gender fluid and then I was non-binary masculine for a while and now I'm just straight binary trans man. Discovering it was a process. The world has always felt off to me in some way. It was very tricky to put my finger on what was wrong and what was going on.
I didn't really understand it. And then puberty hit and things started spiraling and getting a lot worse and harder to deal with and I didn't know why I felt the way I did but I did and it was so strong and then I started discovering characters in the media that were similar to me. Characters who were endogenous, they didn't particularly care what people read them as gender-wise and were often mistaken for, or intentionally dressed as masculine in some way shape or form, or were read as masculine in some way shape or form. And I thought that's what I want to be, that's who I can identify with, this makes sense to me, this is what's most comfortable for me this is what I want out of my life experience.
And I didn't really understand it, and then I just by chance started stumbling upon labels like transgendered non-binary things like that and it didn't quite click at first. I spent a good amount of time just sitting there like I want to be that so badly. I want it more than anything else but I'm not that and I don't understand what's wrong and what's going on and I just want to be this. And then finally one day, I was just sitting there and it just kind of clicked and place, like if I want it so bad that probably means that I am in it. There's not really any other qualifiers, that's just what it is is basically. And from there everything clicked into place, everything maybe sense, everything just kind of snapped and all of a sudden I just had this understanding of myself that I had never had before and it felt amazing.
Before I came out was - it was an odd time. I wasn't really present in the world and in my life. I was just kind of floating by doing whatever I was told basically. I just wasn't really there or connected with life, the world around me. Then when puberty hit I started going down a really bad depression spiral. I was so stressed all the time and I didn't understand what was happening to me or why, even though I knew some of the science behind it. I still couldn't wrap my head around why it was happening to me specifically and why it felt so wrong.
Coming out has been one hell of a journey, I came out very, very soon after I figured it out myself, and it was very sudden for the people around me. Nobody really fully wanted to accept it or understand it at first except for my oldest sibling who has been amazing throughout all of these years and is now out of the closet and this non-binary themselves, but everybody else was very confused and they thought I was confused and I had a lot of people who straight up thought that I was out of my mind insane. They didn't want to listen to me. They didn't want to take me seriously in any way. There were some people I had to come out to at least five times to get any modicum of respect or just anything other than being misgendered by the pronouns that were assigned at birth.
Coming out has given me an understanding of myself but is completely invaluable to me. I struggle a lot with something called alexithymia where you struggle to know what your own emotions are and how to communicate them with other people.
But coming out has really given me a connection to my own emotions, my own psychology that I never would have had otherwise. I just wasn't present enough to be there to figure it out. And it's given me names for problems that I never would have been able to pinpoint before, like dysphoria, things like that. And if it's given me an understanding of what medical treatment I need in order to actually combat my depression and anxiety issues and live my life the best that I can.
My life has a lot of ups and downs and I still have a lot of struggles today especially transition wise, trying to get the medical care I need. People don't really talk about it here, but the medical transphobia and ableism here is absolutely insane sometimes. I have had actual psychiatrists who were - their beliefs and ideologies were that I should not exist basically. And, Having dealt with those people they have basically made things completely inaccessible to me in devastating ways. But it's also - I have a community now and I have people who care about me and people who understand I have friends who know what it's like, I have family members who love me. I have so many people now and I'm able to be myself and I'm able to live my life and be present.
Before I came out. I didn't really know what my life was going to be like but I had a very hard time picturing myself being able to live past a certain age. Whether it was because my life circumstances didn't seem like I would make it there or because I didn't want to make it there. But now I am hopeful. I'm really hopeful for my future. I've always been a little bit of a pessimist in some ways, but I think nowadays I have possibly the brightest outlook on what my future can be I've ever had in my entire life.
I think my biggest dreams are of course transitioning but other than that I would say I want to go to acting school. I want to learn to be an actor and I want to be able to act on stage and possibly in front of the screen and I want to - I want to live with, I want to move in with the people who mean the most to me.
I face quite a few issues. I still struggle with depression related to dysphoria and accessing the transition care that I need is very very difficult for me. I have to find people who will overwrite what previous medical professionals have said so that I am able to access transitional care that I may need. And I have some disability issues that also affect exactly what kind of transitional care that I am able to receive.
I have a kind of a few comorbid ones. The biggest one is that I am autistic and with that means I have sensory issues. I have difficulty reading social cues and communicating in general but I also struggle with alexithymia, which makes figuring myself out and communicating that to the world very difficult paths. I also have some physical issues specifically with my skeleton. I have some skeletal issues. My bones don't like to stay in the right place. Specifically my hips and I have some issues with my skull that make it hard for, first of all everything to stay connected the way it's supposed to, but also for things like oxygen and blood circulation to get wherever they're supposed to be.
One of the biggest issues that I've struggled with is my hypersensitivities. I am hypersensitive to pain and that means that certain medical treatments are not as accessible to me as they would be for other people such as injections, needles; I cannot do those at all. So I rely on alternatives to those that are often a lot more expensive and harder to get a hold of.
Buckle up, there's a lot coming. Those 10 years are going to be rough as hell and you're going to lose a lot and you're going to have to fight in order to keep a lot but you're also going to gain the most precious things in the entire world to you and that's going to be worth every single thing in the world.
I would remind myself. How much and how hard we have fought for everything in our life, even if people don't think we have, we have fought and we have fought hard and long for everything in our life. And don't forget that. Don't forget that other people are still fighting and don't forget to be kind to those people as much as you can, still being healthy to yourself, but also just celebrate. Celebrate your life how far you've come. Celebrate all the victories in your life.
Well what kind of guides me in life is; one, the people that I love and that I am closest to who offer me support and love and care and just happiness, fun. Those people mean the world to me, but also just, the world is imperfect and it will never be perfect. Perfect is a myth. It's unattainable by anybody and a lot of people forget that, and forget that perfection is non-existent and it never will exist but that doesn't mean that everything is bad or that life isn't worth living or things like that.
Some of the most beautiful things in the entire universe are beautiful because of their imperfection. And it's worth it just to see what those are and what life brings.
People can help by listening when people talk about this stuff. Don't shy away from it, even if it's uncomfortable, even if it doesn't make sense to you. Just listen and take people seriously and respect them above all else. If you cannot offer anything, offer respect as a bare minimum.
Make sure that you are learning as much as you can about the issues that people like myself and people in the trans community and other minority communities face. Learn about those issues and fight for us. Even if you don't belong to a minority group yourself, fight for us. We are vulnerable and we need the support. People all over the world are suffering and struggling because people don't understand and don't take the time to understand properly. There's a lot of lies and misinformation out there of this kind of thing and a lot of people are just trying to make other people angry and scared and afraid but we are not scary we just want to live.
Don't be afraid of weirdness, don't be afraid of things out of the ordinary, embrace the uniqueness of the world around you and all that it offers you in return, embrace it and learn about it curiosity is one of humanity's greatest strengths.
You don't have to be scared of what that might bring and what that might reveal.
