Some Background

While growing up, I always knew I was different, in more ways than I understood at that point. I weighed more than other kids and I was bullied because of it. Typically, I was smarter than other kids. I worked hard and only had a few close friends.

During middle school, I realized why I was so different; why I never related to the girls my age. I just wasn't a girl. It all finally started to make sense to me. After a bit of research, I found out the term I was looking for was transgender. That's what I am. That's the word I had been looking for.

Transgender: an individual whose gender identity is different than their assigned sex.

I hid it for nearly a year. Only a handful of my friends knew. My followers knew if they actually paid any attention to my bio, but that was it. To everyone else, I hid behind a facade. I was concealed in a shell of everything I hated about myself because it seemed safer than trying to explain how I felt.

Having a predominantly southern family (from Arkansas and Alabama) it seemed like a deathwish to even attempt to come out. Having lived in Florida for almost my entire life, it was better to remain disconnected from my extended family. It just seemed to make my "big secret" easier to deal with. The less people that knew, the less I had to explain, which wasn't easy for me at the time.

The longer I hid my "secret" the harder it got. I didn't want to wear dresses and skirts or have long hair or deal with makeup. It wasn't who I was and I could tell even then that my family didn't understand. I finally managed to convince my mother to let me cut all my hair off, shaving the sides and leaving only a few inches on top. It made me feel like myself.

Eventually, I came out to my mom. It was actually before I got my haircut. I was angry about my Halloween costume. She wanted me to be Hermione. Trust me, I love her as a character, but I just didn't want to dress like a girl. It made my stomach tie itself in knots. I hated it. So while we were arguing about my costume, I yelled that I was a boy. That was certainly a curveball for my mom. The argument did a complete 180 and we kept talking from there.

My mother tried to understand it, although I'm not really sure she ever will. She started looking up transgender people and wanted me to watch all these different documentaries on transgender men. I know she had good intentions, but it felt like she was smothering me with these men who were "just like me". She never understood why I didn't to see them. In my mind, I wanted to be where those men were. I wanted the surgery (at least the top surgery) and the hormones, and I knew I couldn't get those things at my age.

I had started to cut myself during that year. I took apart a razor my sister gave me and used the blades to make cuts on my thighs. I thought it would help me feel better, but it didn't. It only upset those around me. My friends, who were mostly girls, would see my thighs in the locker room during gym class. They hated what I was doing to myself, but I would deny that it was happening.

Then, a new girl transferred to my school. She was in my gym class, the only class I had all of my friends. They liked her instantly, but I could see the way she really treated people. She used slurs and told people to kill themselves. I didn't like the way she treated me and told my friends she was bad news. They didn't listen to me and ended up choosing her over me.

That wound is old, but writing about it now makes me feel the emotional pain it caused. During some of the hardest parts of my life, when I was struggling with who I was and how I was going to survive with it, all it took was one girl to tear everything away from me. It was so easy for her to take my place and have my friends cast me aside.

I had no physical friends going into high school. I did have someone, who is now my partner, but she lives across the country. It was hard to keep myself going, but I would be lying if I said she wasn't 99% of the reason I didn't kill myself during middle school. She was really my only friend during those hard times and I often confided in her. She was the only person I felt I could be honest with. I told her when I cut and when I felt like I couldn't keep going. She was always there for me, even when her data plan ran out.

I know it upset her when I harmed myself, but I felt like I couldn't help it. I thought I deserved to feel the pain, even though I knew hurting myself would in turn, hurt her. When I did stop, it would only last for about six months on average. Freshman year, I had been clean for almost a year when I relapsed that October. She hated that I relapsed. I knew it must have felt like some kind of failure on his part, that she couldn't prevent me from hurting myself. I didn't want her to feel that way because I was already hating myself for doing it, but I couldn't stop it.

Since then, I haven't cut. It's been almost two years. Unfortunately, I've been getting heavy urges. I feel like I need to feel the pain again. I have no motivation. I'm tired all the time. I want to just give up, but my brain doesn't let me. It forces me to keep going with my classes even when I want to throw it all away. In a way, it's good that I don't just give it up, because that would upset everyone, but keeping up this studious act is killing me. I feel like I'm suffocating constantly and I desperately need a breath of fresh air, but I have no way to get to it. Sleep is my only solace and every morning I'm forced to wake up. That is part of the reason I included the definition of nyctophilia on the cover of my book.

Nyctophilia: the love of darkness or night. Finding relaxation and comfort in the darkness.

I don't know how to describe all my feelings, so that's why I'm writing this book. This is my chance to explain how I feel and why I'm not able to post as much as I used to. I'm sorry for taking so long. Perhaps this book will help people understand how I feel, more than I understand how I feel.