The Space Between

Life has a way of finding balance. 

You have heard it said that Nature abhors a vacuum.

In the space between male and female, there are those who would have us believe there is nothing; that these are only the binary ends. There are those who would have us believe there is only a vacuum in between, but, as Voyager is showing us, even where we think there is nothing, there is something. Those of us who are non-binary are living proof that there is definitely something in the space between the binary.

In fact, there are many genders that fill the space between the binary ends of the gender spectrum. We are the LGBTQ+ community, and we have been around for as long as there have been the binary poles. 

Those who do not believe we have always been here are actually part of the reason we have remained unseen - a self fulfilling prophecy if you will. The stigma placed upon being queer has made it a difficult place in which to live. So, as a matter of safety and social acceptance, many choose not to disclose their identity, making us all more invisible. 

It is no surprise, then, that in this time of growing understanding and protection of LGBTQ+ people, we are seeing more people “coming out”, because they feel safer to do so. 

This is not a trend. There are not suddenly more LGBTQ people being somehow "created". We have always been here. We have always existed. Many just chose not to see us, and many of us chose not to be seen. Now, however, we are feeling more comfortable with sharing who we really are, and so you are starting to see more of us.

Living in the space between gives those of us in the non-binary universe a unique perspective on those living at the poles; one that I believe can benefit all of humanity, helping us find balance and beauty in the entire spectrum and bridging the gap between. In fact, to silence our voices actually hurts all of us. Non-binary people have been forced to listen to the cis-normative narrative their entire lives, and many of the struggles we face are deeply rooted in the shame of not being what people think we should be. The vast range of identities in the spectrum of LGBTQ persons can actually bring balance to the views of cis-binary individuals who are deeply divided by their own gender, creating issues such like hyper radical feminism and misogyny. The narratives and views of the LGBTQ+ community can actually help us bridge the gap and ease the tension that exists between those binary poles.

By learning about, accepting and including those in the space between, we now have a means to unite humanity - and keep us united. We become less polarized and more unified because the bridge between demonstrates that we are all essentially connected. Diversity is no longer seen as diluting the whole, but rather our diversity COMPRISES the whole.

If you find yourself strongly defending the binary, take a moment to ask yourself why? What is it about making sure everyone conforms to the binary that is so important? You are perfectly happy being binary, but what about those in between? Should they be less content? Ask yourself, what can I learn from someone who is gender non-conforming?

And if you yourself are gender non-conforming, love yourself! You are important! You are special, and you have a place of honour in this world. You are the glue that can bind the binary together and make us whole again. Ask yourself, how can I contribute to a better world? How can I help others see through my eyes?

You are all special, binary and non-binary alike. You are valued and needed.

Love you all!

Cary

Meet Dyann (she/her)

What follows is a transcript from Dyann's video, which you can watch here: https://youtu.be/DemcP-5GeDM

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So my name is Diane Jackson. My father was in the military, so I’ve traveled across the world. I’ve been in Europe, all across Canada, and throughout the United States.

Pronouns: I struggle with that one.  I mean my name and my visual appearance is very feminine so I identify with the feminine. I’m not going to go upon somebody and force them to use a certain set of pronouns. I want them to be comfortable to be to work with me and be happy with working with me, so I think the idea of a social acceptance is what works best for me as opposed to going in and saying, you know, that you have to call me ze, or you have to call me zur, or whatever the case may be. I think my presentation is fairly self evident.

So I would say that prior to coming out, when I was in school, because I’m on a military base, because the military is so conservative, I was petrified to come out. I was worried about being ostracized from my family, my community, the people around me. And a lot of the Canadian military bases are not... like they're not in the middle of a big city like Toronto. They're not in a big city. Not even a hamilton-sized city like... well, okay, CFB Winnipeg was a fairly large city but I was very young at that time.

When I truly came to the point of recognizing who I am, I was in a very small town in New Brunswick the base was CFB Chatham, the town is now known as Miramichi, and I saw the way the community at large was dealing with people who came out as homosexual. And I was petrified of that. I was scared of that. So I was very low-key. I was very quiet. I didn't draw any attention to myself. I was the person that people could forget was in the room, and it was intentionally so. 

When we moved to Toronto, which was the next base my father moved to, I felt a little bit more confident because I wasn't staying on the base itself. I was associating more with people off the base, and you start to see a lot more liberated people. More the LGBT community, although back in the early 90s I wouldn't say LGBT. I don't think we used that term back then, but a lot more lesbians a lot more gays. And the terminology they did use back then was probably a bit more crude, but, for lack of better words, the "Trannies", and it gave me a little bit more confidence to at least explore who I was at least give it a shot. But again in that time frame we were a very conservative society. We weren't ready to embrace people like that. So a little bit of exploration. I was still a little bit quite conservative, not ready to move on. But probably the first time I actually went out outside my home cross-dressed, was with my second partner, Karen. And you know, we went down to the value village and got a whole bunch of things that we thought would work, and you know, they were reasonably flattering and not too overly "overt" shall we say and that started me down the path. 

In the early stages it was very traumatic. It was very hard. I knew what I was feeling at the core. I knew what I was feeling about myself. So that would probably be entering puberty at the time. I just felt a disconnect with myself and my body and my anatomy. But I was slowly exploring, you know, male attire, female attire, trying to figure out what worked best for me. 

Then I saw an episode, I think it was a Maury Povich. I saw an episode of that. And they were talking about what was... the terms they used in the 80s was transvestite and transsexual, and I watched an episode of that, and I thought, well, okay. I identify with some of those things, I get some of those features. But then I saw the way the audience was reacting to these people and that was kind of like, well I don't know if I really want to make that public that I identify that way. It was also hard and traumatic because I’m typically a very conservative person. I mean the only thing that really is flamboyant about me is my hair (and there's a little bit of psychology behind that when the hair gives that kind of a shape so it looks like there's a feminine jawline) whereas  everything about me is very conservative. I wear black cardigans, I wear beige clothing. If you met me in public you probably would just overlook me because I just look so passive and conservative. Because that's my nature. And I saw these people acting flamboyant. It was very off-putting. To me those people always appear to be the ones that are looking to draw attention to themselves. So that part of the discovery was hard. That was difficult. 

When I got to the point where I was like, you know, this is really starting to affect my life, it's starting to affect my relationships, it's started to affect my careers. Well, I was very at the time, I don't know if I’d say career, let's say just jobs. I went to my doctor and asked to see a psychologist and I explained my situation and my psychologist went nope you need to go over to the Clark Institute. So I went to the Clark Institute and went through, oh my gosh, it must been a barrage of tests over like a four day period. I was in and out of that place while they were doing all that. That part was kind of comforting because what I was going through, I wasn't unique in it. There was other people that were going through that. So I felt a little bit of comfort. But what I did find was like a proverbial punch in the butt -- gut.

When I came home and I talked to my mother about it my mother was very opposed to the situation which was perplexing to me. Just a side note, my mother has always been the passive person in the relationship and my father has always been... well he's military right? So you see your father as a stoic type of person. And my mother looked me in the eye and said I don't want any fucking part of this. I don't want to do any of this. I don't want it. And that kind of ended the relationship for about 10 years. I just stopped talking to my parents. That was that was devastating. That was heartbreaking.

And I could see person people who didn't have as much strength as me being very traumatized if not suicidal by such a comment. To me it was just a comment of okay let's double down. I’m gonna move forward with my life whether you like it or not.

My second partner when I first met her, I was head over heels for her when we first met, and I told her openly, this is who I am, this is what I want to do, this is what I want to go; the path I want to pursue. And she's like okay, I can handle that we can move forward. And ironically she found out about the surgeries being relisted in Ontario before I did. And she's like, did you hear about this? Did you? And I was like, no I didn't. Are you serious? Like the government's really paying for the surgery again? So I did the process all over again went back to my family physician who sent me to the psychologist. They already had a file on me so they sent me to what was now known as CAMH, and CAMH pulled out all the files and dusted off all the cobwebs on them and they're like okay, well, you've already gone through all this part of it. We already said that you were a candidate for this. So we want you to do two years of lived experience and we want to make sure you're on hormones for that period of time as well. And I was blessed because I was able to you now go underneath her wing, so when we were going out I was by her side and she helped me build up my confidence to be more public. And that was to me that was important because before I met Karen I was a bus driver, so I’m in the public eye all the time. And then I was scared to be in the public eye, as a woman. And then when I met Karen, was kind of like, no let's build up your confidence. Let's do this. Everything works out fine. And I went back into being a bus driver. 

And as a driver I’ve been all the way up to Winnipeg all the way down to Florida. I’ve been to Quebec more times than I can count, and you know, New Brunswick, PEI, Nova Scotia. You're very much in the public eye when you're a bus driver. Everybody wants to talk to the bus driver. That was 2012 and this is 2021 so obviously things are working out.

I definitely would say that in the very beginning, definitely family was a little bit of a challenge. My mother not being totally accepting, my younger brother being very frustrated was, about this, he couldn't understand why I wanted to do this. 

Other challenges, again, I think it's part and parcel of the journey you know when you are accepted as a woman completely and wholly and unconditionally, then you start receiving the prejudices that come along with being a woman. 

But there's a lot of psychological challenges too, like, I know I’m getting acceptance from what I would call the cisgender community. And that's to be anticipated. There will be some challenges that come along with that. But then I get a lot of pushback from the GLBT community as well. Like in my early stages, I walked into a meeting, it was supposed to be a support group, and you know, when I walked in the meeting and everybody's all eyes on me, and I sit down, and they're kind of like, okay, let's start the meeting. And I’m looking at them, I’m going, I’m not the talk, I’m not the presenter here. I’m here just like you guys. And the jaw dropping by about, I think it was like 12 of us inside this room, was like, really? Are you serious?

On my day of surgery I walked into the... we were all sitting down there, six of us. We were sitting down having dinner. And this one here, yeah I’m here for my gender reassignment surgery. And another lady over here, oh I’m here for this dude. And they went around the table and then it came back to me and they're like, so what are you doing? You're getting your breasts done or some of that. I said no, I’m here for gender reassignment surgery as well. And again, everybody just jaw dropped. So that can be a challenge because people think you know more or you are more than what you really are.

And I find myself going whoa, let's rein in, let's slow this down a little bit. Let's try and be a little bit more slow on this, because I’m on the same boat, in the same path as you guys. You know, I’m not doing anything more special. Maybe I have some innate gifts given to me, but I’m not, my path is not much different than anybody else's. So that's, to me that's a challenge. That's an issue that comes up a lot.

I think all of us struggle with, even when we've started our transition, you know, are we feminine enough, are we masculine enough? Or whatever the case may be. And I was blown away how quickly the community at large, as in society at large, was ready to accept me as a woman. I was not expecting that. And that has been a double-edged sword for me. On the one hand I’m being really accepted. I’m, you know, I’m making progress, I’m doing a job. But because... I have one employer who didn't know, didn't ask, and just saw me as a woman. But that worked against me in my job because, you know, discrimination against women. Oh you can't drive a bus. You can't drive a truck. You can't do any of those things, and then, you know, like, then you show it to them and they're kind of like, well I don't understand. I’m confused by that. And so little things like that. And to me... so you have the double-edged sword on that perspective of things, and then you have the double-edged sword on the other perspectives like, oh my god, I passed so well that you can't think... you don't see it's possible or it's not even in your mindset that this person was a male. But then you get all the other stuff that comes along with that, you know, that women can't do this, and women can't do that. And you know, it's yeah. I don't... It's hard to say. Some things are better and some things are worse. But it's part and parcel of the journey right? 

It's very fascinating because I would say since 2015, when I tell people I’m trans now, they're kind of like, oh, I wouldn't have known that. Oh well, okay. And then the conversation moves forward.

The last the last five years there's been a big shift. Like even my last employer, the one I just applied to, I said listen, you've asked for my school records and I need to give you advanced notice that my school records say David. They don't say Diane. And she's like, oh, okay, well, that makes you the third trans person at our facility and it makes you the, you know, we have three lesbians and four gay people and we're only a small team of about 60 employees. So you know, carry on. 

So like, and I guess partly because Ontario Northland is a government agency; it's a crown corporation. So I think they're already on board with stuff like that. But I’ve had the other way around, where I felt like I was being punished for it. 

I worked for a bus company called Batter and you know there was a big hoop law that happened on the bus and I had to divulge my gender identity because of the situation. And my manager openly like, I’m stunned even repeating this, I’m stunned that this actually happened, but she's like well you know you're just gonna have to deal with the male chauvinism just like the rest of the women in here. And it's kind of like, this is 2014. You're really saying that you're really behaving that way?

I’m happier. I’m smiling. I’m interacting with the community and the community is interacting with me the way that resonates with me. My soul is just happy all the time, you know, instead of being judged on a level over here, I’m being judged on the level over here. 

When you're in a work environment and someone looks at you and they say well, you know, if you can't handle it, you know, your two choices; you either man up or quit . You know, that's the only two ways of moving forward. Now in an employment situation people are so much less likely to say things like that. I’m getting a lot of, well how do I help you? How do we move forward with this? What works best for you? And that's what I was looking for before and now it just flows. It just happens in our society. And it's just I love it. It blows me away. You know, to degrade somebody because they don't have the skills and you're not willing to teach them, why don't you just say you don't want to teach that? Why do you degrade me as an individual?

The other thing that I find is exciting is that my friendships and relationships, they don't feel superficial anymore. They don't feel kind of just surface. I get to know people and people are very...  people are very supportive and polite and respectful. And people are turning to me and I love it. It's just, it has been so much better since not only just coming out, but having the surgeries and you know being accepted as the true person that I feel I am. 

I love meeting people I enjoy interacting with people. I just have fun, and it makes life so much more enjoyable. And you know, the job I just had as an instructor, I’m teaching people... Keep it in context, these are people who are coming to me who have worked at Tim Horton’s or Walmart or you know, some little minimum wage job, and I’m teaching them how to drive a vehicle where their income is going to jump from 20,000 a year to 70 grand a year, you know, that's motivating. That's exciting. And I get to go, I’m the person that did that I help that person get there. I helped them have success, you know? 

My new job, I’m going to be going back to driving a bus myself, and the areas that these companies service are usually very small towns. Like sometimes there's only one gas station. Sometimes there's not even a restaurant and they come to these bus stops and they're waiting for someone to take them to Winnipeg, to Ottawa, to Toronto, wherever it may be. And you know, like, again, I am one of 50 drivers that help these people to get to their destination. It could be for medical reasons. It could be because of changing their life. That is exciting to me. I participated in that person's life. Maybe not incredibly directly, but you know. 

When I was doing tour bus, I’m picking up people that come to from China or Hong Kong, or you know Korea, Vietnam. I’m bringing them to Canada and I get to be the ambassador for North America. When they come in the winter time, I get to bring them up to Algonquin park and you should see their eyes pop out of their head because you know the red and gold and yellow leaves and you know, as we're coming into Algonquin park you hear the cameras going tick, tick, and by the time we're not even 500 meters into the park the cameras are all ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch, and it's just, I’m the ambassador. I’m the one that gets these people to see that, and it's just awesome.

I get to have these little moments that are incredibly... it's like an adrenaline rush, it's like euphoria, it's like all these things all put into one little package. And I influence all these people. It's the endorphin rush of being the center of attention.

What I’d like to see happen in the future is more about what society can do as a whole as opposed to me as an individual. You know, I see that our we're polluting this environment, I see that we have these huge plastic garbage patches in the ocean. I see that we have the technology and the ability to make ourselves a very sustainable, a very productive society, and I really want our society to reflect on those things and try to act on those things so we can make our lives, our society, our people, live a lot longer. But there's also got to be a balance, and I worry that there is this extreme rhetoric right now. It's a balance act. We've got to find the act. Yes we need to do better with our environment, but not go to extremes. And I think that's typical of our human nature. We see something we jump on it and we want to go to an extreme. I want our society to live in a healthier balanced environment.

I’m going up north to North Bay and I’ve never lived there. I’ve visited a couple of times but this is my first move, major move, as in, you know, more than five hours away from Toronto. I’m doing it on my own. I don't have any supports around me. I don't have any friends up there. This is purely about getting the job up there. So the challenge is, you know, go up there, get the training, keep the job, make friends, meet new people, create a new community, get exposure to a much smaller town (there's only 50 000 people there as opposed to the almost 200 000 in the Kitchener-Waterloo area, as opposed to the 4 million in the Toronto area). 

Challenges are probably going to be very much like most people. I feel like life has kind of reached a level of normalcy and now I’m going to be dealing with what everybody else deals with; bills, car payments, insurance, you know, the things that everybody else complains about. Guess what? I got that too! 

I don't meet a lot of people who, what I would say have successfully transitioned, and they get frustrated, and they get upset and they get angry, and I would love to pull them under my wing and help them, show them what I’ve done and how to move forward, but they're not, a lot of them are not ready for that. And there are people who are so stuck in certain parts of their life, and they're stuck on the government support systems that they'll never appreciate or see the benefits of having such an income. You know, being able to travel to Mexico or being able to travel to the Dominican. Those people will never ever see that and I’m excited about that. I’ve fallen back on skills that I have, which is, I know how to drive a vehicle, and I do it very well. I don't know anybody in my field that can say that they've driven 22 years without an accident. 

I would like to see the trans community get a little bit of help by the average person just by being patient. Just by relaxing, giving them a chance. You know, we all have our, you know, some of us wear glasses, some of us have hearing aids, some of us have other issues, you know. And someone who's trying to find out what their gender identity is; it's not much different really. Like we're all trying to do a self-discovery of some sort. We're all trying to find out how we can best function in society and we just need a society that can be patient. Stop demonizing us. Stop making us look like we're bad. Stop making us look like we're hysterical, crazy, off the wall people. Just give us some room to breathe and be patient with us.

But I think that level of respect has to be coming from both sides, you know? If we are going to sit here and scream at the cisgender community about you know you're not giving us a chance, well we have to give them a chance to grow as individuals to learn how to be patient.

It comes together. It does work itself out. It does make a difference in the end. But having the life experience that I’ve had, I probably would have told myself to push a little bit more. Not aggressively, but to pursue it. Because I really do feel like, had I not chosen to wait, I probably could have started this path a lot sooner. And I think that leads into another kind of ideology, don't put your life on hold. Don't put your life on hold and wait 20 or 30 years, because when you do that and you put yourself on hold, you're hoping that in 20 years or five years that everything is going to be in place. And what I’ve learned is, society changes so quickly. And so that when you put yourself on hold you're just putting your whole body and your mind and your soul on hold. And you don't move forward. You stagnate. 

Don't forget about the struggles there have been a lot of things that I’ve gone through that have made me the person, made me the character that I am today. And it would be very easy to become cocky and arrogant and forget about that. It would be very easy to be cocky and arrogant to think that every single trans person had the same experience as me and why can't they do it. Yeah, I could see myself doing that and I need that little - I will need that reminder in a few years from now. 

It does get better if you're persistent and you're polite and you're respectful and you treat your community with the same level of decency that you expect for yourself it does get better. It does.

My thoughts actually stem from my historical background. My father is Blackfoot Indian also known as the Siksika Nation. And not all first nations people, but there is a large portion of first nations people that believe in something that's called two-spirited. And I believe that's part of my heritage and part of my soul as well, that you know, I was born with male anatomy, but I have the male and the female spirit within my body. And that allows me to, you know, work with people. I’m able to, you know... people who have masculine spirits and feminine spirits, sometimes they have a hard time communicating with each other and for some reason, when I look at the conversation it's just obvious; okay, this is what you're trying to say, this is how you want to say to this person, vice versa, if this is what you're trying to say, this is what you're trying to... And I’ve met people and it's the weirdest thing that they're a couple and they don't understand each other and yet when I get in the conversation the light bulbs go off, it's like, oh yeah, that's exactly what you're trying to say, that's exactly... so I think that as I said before that comes from my background. It comes from my heritage, and I believe that's part of it. I believe there is such thing as having a combined male and female spirit.

I think we as trans people get so caught up in ourselves we become very selfish. We become very self-centered. And we forget about what gifts we can bring to our society. We need to remember that and we need to participate in that, because I think it's incredibly fascinating that from a spiritual level, I think it's fascinating that at a time that we are seeing the male/female at its most divergent, even though society wants it to be at its most closest, so women's liberation, the feminist movement, stuff like that, yet it's actually causing more of a wedge between the male and the female. It's funny that at the same time that that's happening we are seeing a greater amount of trans people come out. 

In the community from a spiritual perspective, from a holistic perspective, I think it's not a coincidence. I think it's a necessity. I think it's time for us to actually get out there and speak, and bring the two sides - bridge the two sides - together. Otherwise we're just... we're gonna watch our society fall apart.

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Meet Elladan (They/Them)

What follows is a transcript from Elladan's video, which you can watch here: https://youtu.be/XRfDsCblt80

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My name is Elladon, and I use they/them pronouns.

My gender identity is complex. I don't fully understand what it is, and I don't expect other people to understand it if I don't. So, for the most part I identify as non-binary, because while non-binary is accurate it doesn't necessarily do justice to describe what's different about me from other non-binary people, because non-binary isn't just the third gender. Now, it's a little different. I don't know if I’m maybe gender fluid maybe agender. Because my relationship with gender it definitely changes day to day.

For me understanding my feelings and understanding how that related to my identity took a painfully long time. I think it was only feels painfully long because of how obvious it should have been. When I was young, I had thoughts like: transgender individuals can have gender confirming or gender affirming surgery, and I can't have that because I’m not transgender. And that was really upsetting. I n my head at maybe 13 years old, I wished I could get gender affirming surgery but knew I never could because it was only for transgender people. I didn't realize that maybe wanting that could have been a clue.

I would always present a certain way and when strangers would "misgender" me, I found it really exciting and thrilling I had a list I had a physical list every time someone "misgendered" me with the opposing gender to um my assigned one at birth. I would go home and write it in my journal because I was so thrilled about it.

And there there's a lot of other signs. I know I always wanted to shop in different sections and my moms like you can't shop there those clothes aren't for you.

Those thoughts never left. I just adjusted my presentation to fit them. But for me growing up anything related to LGBT was very taboo, very negative, Like I knew in my head, if... I was afraid. I had friends who were part of positive space and different groups at school, and while I personally didn't have anything against it, I was like afraid to openly support it because I knew I would get in trouble. Like there would be negative consequences for me and also, I could pass as just straight and not interested. So that's what I did.

At one point in high school, I had gone to my friends and said, I’m not transgender but, could we try using this new nickname I’ve picked out and these pronouns? Which they didn't do, but the fact that I was thinking hey let's switch up my pronouns and not use my birth name again could have been a good sign.

I became more and more aware that these were identities that existed, but I wouldn't connect them to myself, but I was also not "the other." I didn't feel the need to do a binary transition so I couldn't be trans, and it wasn't until quarantined, I moved out from my family home and I was living with a roommate and I started watching just YouTube videos. They were on my recommended, and a lot of them were transgender TikToks, or memes, just like relatable transgender content. So, I would start watching it thinking, this isn't supposed to be relatable to me but all of it was. So, I kind of got the idea in my head. And then I found out about non-binary.

Pretty much the moment I found out about non-binary, I went, oh! Okay. This is what I am. It makes sense. And pretty much the moment I figured that out, I started making phone calls to my doctor first, before my family. I was like I want to get this train rolling. So probably within the same week of me learning what non-binary was, and that it existed, I was making phone calls to get hooked up at the gender clinic, to get a gender therapist, so I could start getting surgery and just doing all these things I’d dreamed of since being a kid. I was like, okay this is on the table for me. It's happening, and it's happening as soon as possible. The phone calls to family came later.

Life before learning that I was non-binary and that there was something I could do about it was difficult, because I knew I was unhappy. I had not even really hit puberty yet and there were things about my body that I knew I couldn't live with. So, I remember thinking, the medical field today, they could change someone from a man into a woman, or from a woman into a man, but they can't help me. Because like I said I didn't realize there were options for people. I didn't realize people like me even existed, and that made me so mad. I would sit in my room and cry. They were angry tears, because I felt like forgotten, ignored. I felt frustrated with my family, but they didn't know... actually they did know. My family knew I wanted to do this these medical procedures and they always kind of wrote it off as just a phase. I didn't care if I wasn't allowed to dress a certain way or if I had to keep my hair a certain way. But thinking that I couldn't choose what to do with my body and that it had to stay a certain way, it was unbearable.

So, for me coming out happened pretty much the same way that calling my doctors for medical transition did which is within probably a few days of discovering what non-binary was, I was telling people about it.

So, I called my dad first and his reaction was more or less, I’m so glad you finally felt comfortable telling me. Apparently, he'd figured it out a while before. And then I told my brother. After that... He didn't understand at first, because we'd actually had some conversations in the past, like he struggled to understand transgender, but he didn't understand like, neo-pronouns, and all these other genders, because I remember growing up, I just seen a lot of genders on Tumblr, and I will say, I was one of the people who was confused by them. I thought like, there can't possibly be this many. Like why are people doing this? But when I told him I was kind of, I’ve done research now. I’ve watched YouTube videos. I got on Facebook with a more open mind. And so, I was able to talk to him about it and he came around pretty quickly. So, I remember when I first asked him to use a nickname when I was in high school, he was not on board with that. None of my friends were. None of my family was. So I thought, I'll tell him that, you know, I’m non-binary, and that I’m gonna medically transition. But he probably won't be cool with changing my name and pronouns, because that doesn't seem like him. But within a week he... well within a few days, he was making an effort and I’d say within a week, he'd probably stopped getting it wrong altogether. So, after that I told my other siblings, and well, yeah, and they were all on board. They were really supportive. They didn't screw up at all.

My mom found out last. I was really stressed. I didn't want to tell her. I was kind of hoping I could just fly under the radar and see how long it took her to notice. But I knew that if I got surgeries or started hormone therapies, she'd clue in and she had the type of personality where she felt I was deliberately hiding something from her, which I would have been. Then it would be a worse reaction than if I just came out and told her.

So the initial conversation with my mom went very poorly. We got into a big argument, and she told me I was not thinking things through and making a bad decision, and that it was very spontaneous. There was definitely a lot of painful conversations and emotions and discussions that happened between us. And there was definitely more than a few times where I thought like, this is it. She's gonna cut me off. I’m gonna cut her off. Like this relationship is not going to continue.

She got over it quickly. She called me within a few weeks and started talking about it, and then after that, she started doing her own research independent of me. And she was sending me videos by non-binary YouTubers, asking me questions like, is this you? Does this describe you? Is this your experience? And so, we started being able to have a conversation about it. From then on, it's like, every week she does something that surprises me.

I know as a kid growing up, I’d always wanted to use nicknames and it made her really upset. She felt like she put a lot of thought into my name, and I was also named after someone who had been very important to her. So, the most significant thing for me was when she started calling me a name that I preferred. And then even more shocking was when she started using my gender-neutral pronouns.

So, I didn't expect her to ever accept me but honestly within a month she was giving her best effort. And her best effort has turned into genuine support.

Things did eventually go well with everyone.

I’d say coming out to the world, like coming out publicly, has not inherently made things harder, but if anything, it's made things a little bit easier. But coming out to myself has made a lot of my dysphoria worse and it's given me a lot of regret. Which is just funny because like I said I’m pretty young and I know a lot of people take much longer to kind of discover this, but I’ve always had this feeling that I’m wasting my life. Because I took a few extra years for high school, I took a few extra years for college, and all this time, I feel this immense pressure of time, thinking I’m wasting my life, I’m running out of time to accomplish anything. I look at the accomplishments of like teenagers and kids in their young 20s and I think, look at all they've done, and I’m so much older, and I’ve done nothing. So, I have a lot of impending doom hanging over me feeling like my life is almost over.

So, I do know that I’m sitting here looking back going, this isn't a surprise, this isn't new, everyone saw it coming, all the signs were there, I should have put pieces together. Like, so I think a lot, how would my life have been different If I’d gone on hormone blockers? What if I tried to get surgery years ago? What if I’d known this about myself?

I had teachers at school pulled me aside and asked me what pronouns do you prefer, and I was like, why are you asking me that? Like, don't ask me those questions! And yeah, I had a lot of visceral pushing it away for so long, but now that I am accepting it, I’m mad that I didn't do it sooner. Which retrospectively is a bit of a privileged thing to say that, like, the most upsetting thing about coming out is that I didn't do it sooner? But it's true. The most upsetting thing about coming out is that I didn't do it sooner.

it's hard to pinpoint any one way that coming out has made things better. It's more of an overall feeling. It's like, my life has somehow changed, which it has but... it's difficult to really say how or why.

I got a legal name changed. I got my gender markers changed. And I remember thinking when I got my name changed, I didn't think it would be a big deal, because I’ve been going by, you know, a different name my whole life. And when I got the paperwork, I got so scared. I was like did they say no? Did I spend weeks stressing? I was like, how long's it supposed to take to get it back? What are they gonna say? And when I sat down on my bed and opened it, I just started crying.

There were hard parts where I know after coming out to myself, I somehow felt that I see myself this way now. It's so obvious. Of course, the rest of the world will. It didn't occur to me that the entire world wouldn't be on the same page. So, I remember, I got a new job at one point, and I went in there like, fully presenting as non-binary. I had a pronoun pin. I used my new name on my application. And I just immediately got misgendered the whole time. And I did not have the confidence to tell them. I just sat there, and I was like oh... oh... the world doesn't know? Why did I think they would know? So that was kind of a wake-up call.

It's like, just because you and your family know, the world's not going to see you differently right away. Like they don't care how you feel. They just care how you look, and that's what they're going to go off of. So that was hard.

One thing that changed is how I look. I used to present very firmly the opposite gender of what I was, because I did not like being gendered and I thought, well, if people are going to do it anyway, I want them to do it this way. And now that I kind of understand myself better, I don't feel the need to do that. I’m happy to just wear whatever I want to. Do what makes me happy. To look how I want to look.

So, growing up, like as a teenager, a lot of everything I did was to put on a front and to look a certain way to the rest of the world. And it's like all of that is gone now. I’m so comfortable just being me.

I’ve stopped taking medication for anxiety and depression and I felt better than I ever have. I heard all these anecdotes about people who suffered from anxiety and depression their whole life, and then they started transitioning and it got a lot better. Because a lot of that unacknowledged feelings was what was causing... that was the root of the anxiety and the depression. And I remember thinking, well, that won't happen to me because this isn't why... I mean I’ve been anxious and depressed since I was a tiny kid. Like I don't like my gender, but I don't think it's killing me. Turns out it kind of was killing me.

And since coming out and starting to do all these social and physical changes, I feel better. I feel healthier even. My family says I smile more. There are days where I wake up and I think, I’m happy! I’m doing well. One day I was cleaning my kitchen and I stopped and in my head, I thought, I’m thriving! And I’ve never thought that before in my life. But almost every day I can sit there and go, I’m thriving. So.

I grew up very afraid of taking risks and very afraid of changes. So I had very little confidence in myself. I had a lot of body image issues, which led to other confidence issues. But overall, I was not a confident little child. And ever since making this one major decision, it's like, everything about myself has opened up. I have made a lot of decisions I would have never made in the past. I feel like my life has just begun. I feel like, before, I was waiting for my life to end, which is literally true. I had no plans to end it myself, but every day I woke up and thought, if, you know, if I get hit by a car today, there's nothing that I'll regret about it. Whereas now I realize... I had a severe depressive episode just a few days or weeks back, and even in the midst of it, I thought to myself, I have to get out of this because I have things to look forward to!

I’m getting my driver's license, which... I did my written test at 16 and let it expire because I was afraid to set foot inside a car, and now I plan on living in a van and traveling all over North and South America, because I’ve always wanted to see the world. So.

One of the most important things I think people can do, is, not just let people experiment but encourage it. When I was a kid um one of my biggest regrets is that I didn't know this about myself sooner. And as a kid, all the signs were there. But I didn't recognize them. And the people around me didn't recognize them. And the people around me were very invested in the community, but it feels like when I was amongst them, I got overlooked. And I think it's so important that we just normalize these things, because even if something is just a phase or if something is just someone experimenting, there's no harm in that. If I’d had this information sooner, if I’d known about these possibilities, they don't teach it in school, most parents don't talk about it unless you have a friend or a family member who's openly part of the LGBTQ community, it's generally swept under the rug, and you grow up not knowing what options exist.

I think this information should just be available for people. Because having the information doesn't make you a certain way, it just gives you possibilities to pursue if that's what you want to do. I’m really excited about my future which I never thought I would say.

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