Jordan’s Story

From a very young age I knew I was different, but I could never put my finger on it. I was never truly happy with people seeing me as female, and I tried everything I could to hide it. My parents used to buy me skirts and dresses, they forced me to wear them. I’d break down every single morning before I went to school, because the dysphoria I experienced when putting on these outfits was just through the roof. I was never happy… until I got my first shorts. From then on I wore those shorts everyday, covering my hair with a hat and wearing a hoodie to cover my chest. I smiled when people would call me buddy and use he/him pronouns to address me, but I never knew why. Growing up, I was not “normal,” my family, my classmates, even strangers would stare at me, trying to figure out what… rather who I was. I never felt normal either, I was raised in an environment expected to wear dresses, to like boys, and like getting my nails painted. I was raised to be cisgender and straight, never being exposed to different possibilities, not even understanding what the lgbtq+ community was, until middle school. I went to a school with a strict dress code, the girls were either expected to wear a skirt with a polo shirt or a dress. I never followed that, I wore a polo shirt with shorts and on cold days I wore pants. From then on I’d get dress coded frequently, spending the day in the dean’s office rather than in class where I could learn. I was told on a daily basis to follow the dress code…but I was…so what was the problem? Was it because a girl was wearing boy’s clothes? Why is that a problem? It still falls under the rules. My classmates and even some of my teachers would call me slurs… to my face. I was given a label before I even knew who I was. My family would make jokes about me, calling me a lesbian, so much so to the point now where the word feels like a slur. I didn’t discover myself until the beginning of 8th grade. I had realized that I had a crush on my female best-friend. It made me feel dirty. I felt gross, I felt wrong, I felt this way because I wasn’t raised in an environment where these feelings were okay. I was supposed to like boys, I was supposed to wear feminine clothing, I was supposed to be the vision my parents had when they found out they were having twin girls. Only I wasn’t what they pictured in the slightest. Later that year I decided I was going to come out to my best-friend, and that exact day I did while she played a prank on me. She told me that she liked me… I was THRILLED! I decided this was my chance, my moment to tell her, and that’s what I did. Her smile faded…and then it hit me… it was a prank. That was the last day before quarantine started, and I lost touch with the person who had broken me. During quarantine I discovered so much about me, and I was able to research more about who I was. I came to the understanding that I am trans masc and queer. During June of that year, I told my sister first, she cried… That's when I knew I made a mistake. I made the decision to hold off on telling my parents, clearly I was not ready. However, I now had to worry about my sister, for months she blackmailed me, making me do things for her to ensure she’d keep my secret. Until one night she told me she couldn’t keep my secret anymore, the weight of it was just “too much for her '' and she said that If I didn’t tell my parents that day…. She would. That night I told my mom and she, like my sister, started crying. Days on end, she’d ask me “Are you sure?” “How do you know?” “How long have you known?” I decided to hold off on telling my dad, he scared me the most. If my sister and mother reacted in the ways they did, how was he going to react? Little did I know, the night I came out to my sister was the night she told both my mom and dad. My dad told me that he always knew… that surprised me. He was the first person to use my new name and pronouns, my mom and sister, instead, would call me slurs. I was outed to the rest of my family a few months later, I’m not sure who told them, but it hurt to find out they found out through someone else. Coming out was one thing I thought I had control over in my life, it's the most personal thing about me… it's who I am, and all that power was taken away from me with a few simple words. However, despite these events, I am still me. Homophobia, transphobia, no matter what I face, won’t take away from who I am and who I will become.