Lev’s Story

Lev (he/him)

It took until high school for me to figure out I was a guy. I vividly remember standing in the lunch line during the first semester of freshman year, gawking at all the tall boys and stunning girls. But the weird part was, I felt envious of the guys' haircuts, sharp facial features, body types, and everything, really. I told myself it was just a feeling, and I believed that for a while. But it just kept happening. A few months passed and I was listening to Troye Sivan, which gave me a flashback to the first time I watched one of his more explicit music videos. I remembered the feeling of wanting to look like one of those guys in the video, and how it freaked me out enough for me to bury the memory deep within my brain. That was when I started to piece things together. They weren't just fleeting thoughts, but real, powerful feelings of my identity and gender. Meanwhile, I continued to get misgendered by my closest friends and family members, just because I kept these feelings to myself. I wanted to wait until I was sure, but the longer I hid it, the more unhappy I was with my life. A pit of hatred grew inside of me; whether it was towards myself or everyone else, I don't know. I had to tell someone, yet at the time my only friends were cisgender, and I was worried they wouldn't understand or support me. Eventually, I called my best friend and, after an hour of talking, I quietly said, "I think I'm a guy." Hearing the words out loud made me so much more confident in it, so I spent the next few days finding a name while telling the other people who were close to me about my realization. When the next school year started, I told my teachers and new people I met about my preferred name, and it made me so happy to hear people use not only my name but also my pronouns. Telling my mom was a natural next step in the process, and my anxiety had eased a lot by the time I did it. I met more trans people at my school, which really showed me that even in the state of Texas I could find a supportive community. The truth is, trans people are everywhere. And we welcome each other with open arms. I couldn't have gotten anywhere without seeing the support of the trans community both online and in person, reminding me that it was okay to express myself differently than the people around me. I can't wait to live the rest of my life as a man :)