As the attacks on the very existence of trans people continue, I wanted to speak, and speak loudly, plainly, and from the heart. My words are mine, but the love I have for my trans siblings is boundless, beautiful, and true.

THE TRANNYFESTO

These words are written only six months into my transition, but with the knowledge that I have been transgender my entire life. It did not manifest in the standard narratives of dysphoria: there was no sense of a wrong body, no feeling like who I was inside didn’t match the outside, no longing to be anyone but myself. But there was a deep discomfort, an incongruence, a frustration over my inability to be happy or even minimally satisfied in my identity. What that identity entailed was a mystery, until I found the language to articulate it, and, too many years later, sing the song I had always known but refused to voice. I write this knowing that while we have all arrived at this truth differently, it is the same one: that we must admit the truth or die. We chose truth, and my heart breaks for those that couldn’t.

I am transgender. I am a woman. While the goals of my transition are not to fully occupy womanhood in the way my sisters will—and rest assured, they will, for their spirits are forged equally of steel and love—to deny my own womanhood in order to separate them from me is deny solidarity to myself and my sisters. I also speak this truth to spit in the face of my enemies. Every day that I wake up in this body, with this fully-realized self, is another day of victory over those who want me dead. And make no mistake: whatever equivocations they may make in their rhetoric, the goal will always be the same: to make us targets for murder, social or otherwise. To break our spirits, make us take our own lives. To eradicate us from the world. But I will not. I will never. I live, so that those who begin their journey after me will know that even in dire circumstances, it is worth the risk. Though times may be dark, we can be revel in the certainty that those who oppose us will lose, profoundly and utterly, and they will lose in humiliating fashion. Each and every one of them will go to the grave knowing that their crusade ended in failure, and I will continue to transform into the beautiful person I was always meant to be.

I have clarity of purpose. I have clarity of mind. I have love in my heart for my trans sisters and brothers and all of my queer siblings across every spectrum. I have necessary hate in my heart for those who choose to curtail or limit my freedoms. I am full of pride, wonder, and ecstatic joy in knowing that I am simply the latest in a lineage that has existed nearly as long as human civilization itself. My body, my conception of identity, has roots across geography, society, and history. We are as eternal as humanity itself, and it will take more than the petulant, murderous ire of a few thousand bitter reactionaries to erase us. And I am full of grief for those who have given their lives to grant me this gift. Who stepped into their truths in more dangerous worlds so that the girls who bloomed after them would be able to flourish in a world that loved them. Their memories sit underneath the surface of my skin, their sacrifices written plain upon me and the pills I take to be myself. And my grief holds those who were never given the chance, who were murdered by the strangers or their families or the state before they could join us. My tears shed for them are the heaviest.

But, most of all, I am alive. I am alive to show that it is never too late. I am alive to pour the light of my soul into the world. I am alive to be seen by my partner, my lover and best friend, to repay her gift to me: the time, space, acceptance, and love necessary to allow me to come to this place. And to stand with me, her hand in mine, as we face the darkness that would feel impossible to endure had we not found one another. We are strong. We are eternal. And we did make a choice, a simple one: we chose to stop hurting and come to life.