If I asked you the difference between M&Ms and Skittles, what would you say? Would you say yes, they are seen the same? Or would you say that they're clearly two completely different candies despite looking the same besides a small logo, a small part of themselves? That is the teeter-totter choice people on the transgender spectrum are forced to make every day.

Transgender is like the spectrum of colors of Skittles and M&ms. The box of Skittles is the candy. It's just candy. But within that box, there are different colors to tell apart the skittles. The red skittles is Transgender a person who wasn't born in the right body and transitions from male to female or female to male. How they transition can vary from person to person. Some people prefer to transition by Testosterone or Gender Reassignment Surgery. Others just do simple things by changing their name and pronouns. Pronouns have nothing to do with gender, it just depends on what the person prefers. Someone who identifies as female can use, She/Her but also can use He/Him or They/Them. People usually get gender confused with sex and no i don't mean the thing teenagers do when they're young, dumb, and broke. I mean the sex you were assigned at birth Female or Male. Gender is a personal identity someone can choose, and no one has the right to tell you who you are and how to live your life. Identity isn't a choice, Pronouns aren't a choice, OUR LIVES ARE NOT YOUR CHOICE! They are ours to live to the fullest and happiest we can. The ones who don't agree are the ones still dancing with the broken "saints" of the past. I'm tired of seeing schools that have not normalized the concept of Trans people and instead see us as kids who are in denial of who we are. But who are they to make us go on a cloudy version of ourselves and as a result give a cloudy representation of ourselves and our work? You wouldn't normally make a girl go into the boy's bathroom because of course not that's disgusting! Yet that unsaid rule is broken when you tell a Trans Girl to go back to the boy's locker room because they're just confused. You put your self-beliefs over the comfort of your own students, other human beings with feelings. How do you feel about making innocent children pretend there is someone there not? You put us in a label, your label of who we should be for society's expectations. You tell us to be ourselves and who we are without shame and be free but put us in a cage without a key. You're just teaching kids by letting this slide that it's not okay to be Transgender and that you must fit society's binary and definition of normal which is only doing more harm than good. According to a Research Article done by the CDC in 2017 "27% of Trans Students feel unsafe going back and forth from school, 35% are bullied and attempt to end their own life." Being a part of the Transgender Spectrum isn't some disease people should be ashamed of, especially not children who are just trying to discover themselves. I remember being 14 in middle school and discovering what the word Transgender means assuming it only meant a guy who becomes a girl or vice versa. It would only be the summer i left 8th grade i would discover the word Nonbinary and Genderfluid.

We don't learn anything other than boy and girl you must be one or the other. Girls like pink and play with barbies and boys like blue and cars. Anything else is a sin against normality. People look at us, The unknown, and see us as mistakes. As something that's broken and needs to be fixed. Growing up I didn't and still at home don't get the choice to be myself because to my parents and society I'm a girl in a locked box without a key. I've always grown up thinking I'm different and not good enough. I need to be more girly and wear dresses. I'm not pretty without makeup. I'm not who people want me to be even if it doesn't make me happy. Kids at school made it clear I wasn't like them because little did, I know they were right. I'm not unique. I was in that percentage of people who wondered if it was worth it. Going to school every day just to be bullied and feel like my life wasn't worth living. You never understand privilege until it's pointed out to you. It's like a culture shock of realizing you're lucky to be in the majority. Being outside that majority is always like a slap in the face that I don't belong here.

Being yourself at school isn't just an auto kind of thing when you're in the LGBTQ and in a minority generally. You must love yourself before you can be your most authentic self-outside of your own mind. I still personally struggle with that. My mom called me a sinner when I tried to tell her. She said i was defying God and what he made me and in light terms because i don't agree with my beliefs I'm not going to heaven. She completely changed the subject ignoring what i said reminding me that i was her little girl and changed the topic. I grew up Catholic my parents made me go to church ever since i was in First Grade until the end of middle school. Being told I was a sinner, and that God didn't love me by my own mom who said who supported the LGBTQIA+ was a giant slap in the face. No wonder I was different and weird. I was defying God. I'm the one doing something wrong. I need to change so I can love myself and God can love me again so then others can love me too. I wish I could tell you how wrong that mindset is. YOU DON'T need to change for ANYONE! I never knew that until I came out online and eventually to my dad who struggles a lot with my pronouns, but he tries. I haven't bothered to bring up the conversation with my mom again. Not everyone is lucky to have supportive parents and I learned that the hard way. Like many other kids, i hide myself from others playing a persona of who my mom wants me to be and the part i was born into. Coming out at school was what finally broke the camel's back and inspired me to tell this story.

I came to school scared of being who I am when I didn't know who I was or who I wanted to be. I knew I wasn't a girl but the years of sticks and stones breaking my bones finally hurt me. The comments, the criticism, pretending to be who I wasn't they stuck me in a box and never bothered to get a key. Schools now have rules to help us be who we are and be our most rainbow-filled selves. We aren't just skittles in a bowl of m&m's anymore even if some schools and people try to make it seem that way. Were all unique colors in the rainbow. After years of chasing a road without an end, I can stand here proudly and maybe break the silence and box Ive kept myself in. Society may not be fully accepting but I think having gender-neutral bathrooms and changing rooms and having rules to use preferred names and pronouns is a start. We all may be humans from different backgrounds and places but we're all human and people seem to forget that and put difference over equality.

In the past kids in the spectrum would be stuck there but today I stand here proudly not as someone who broke gender normality's although I definitely try I stand here as a survivor. I stand here to stand by others like me who struggle to be themselves and struggle to have the confidence to come out and just say something that to others isn't that hard. My name is Lynx and I'm Nonbinary and a part of the Transgender spectrum and i don't know about you, but I'm done pretending and staying silent. I am me and I'm not changing for anyone, and you don't either.