Bundaberg, QLD, July 2023
I think the biggest sacrifice I’ve ever personally made was coming out as trans. During most of my life, I just had that picture perfect look, I was good at school, did sports, was decent enough at arts.
After coming out, a lot of things change: You give up that look of normalcy and those people’s picturesque ideals of you in favour of going out in public to side-eyed glances, to hearing people talk behind your back, to knowing the threats of violence, to not knowing if people will ever truly accept you.
But for me, it’s worth it to give up normalcy in favour of being someone that’s closer to who I feel I am, and to hopefully one day look down at a body that doesn’t feel like someone else’s and not my own; a body that frankly disgusts me a lot of the time.
I’ve given up a lot of people, I’ve given up a lot of things, I’ve given up a lot of abilities to do things. I used to love doing sports but it’s nearly impossible to get into any events with how gendered everything is. I always have that fear of not being recognised as who I am, or being mistreated for it. But again, if I went back and was given the choice to come out or not, I would come out every time out of a thousand.