“To be Transgender is a tragedy” they say to me. The voices that echo in my head tell me that I am not functioning like a normal human. I am not supposed to feel this way, as if my body is a weed, strangling the beautiful parts of my garden till nothing but torn leaves and fallen branches remain. As if my mind is a threshold of scattered feelings.
Part boy.
Part mistake.

I am Blake.
The young man who could never grow to be himself, advocating against the demons outside our doors that seek to destroy what they cannot fathom. I too was taken by the blinding fury of metal monsters on the interstate while their headlights gleamed with triumph as they took yet another weary soul.

I am Ash.
Bullied and broken despite support from many. Whose flame of freedom was extinguished by false pronouns and wrong expectations. Unacceptance so strong that I drown in the tsunami of my own thoughts. I cut my hair short and my veins shorter because there are parts of me that don’t belong.

I am Melonie.
I deserve the acceptance to be myself, in this life and in another. You tell me I am too young to know myself but my sophomore year of high school when I tried to kill myself is still flashing before my eyes and I tried to use the very knife that you used to cut my apple slices into smaller bites at 3 years old so my little throat could not choke on the skin of it. And maybe that’s what I was doing then. Cutting myself up so that I did not choke on the constant reassurance from my family that I am born with one too many X chromosomes.

I am Leelah.
I will destroy myself for the sake of others. I was raised to be a perfect child, but the kaleidoscope of my mind see things a little differently than them. I am hurt by the ones closest to me and encouraged by those I have never met. The simultaneous sparks of the city that never sleeps seems to be my only friend when I, myself, cannot sleep, afraid to close my eyes because of the haunting images of the last transgender teen that committed suicide. I want change in this cold, seemingly God-forsaken world.
I am all these souls and more.
Every echo of every forgotten life taken by the clutches of the frightened minds of many who do not understand. That judgement is more sufficient than support. I am told to just use the bathroom that matches my genitals but that’s hard when all I can see is superheroes and stick figures. And you can’t even open your mouth without spewing bigotry and hypocrisy at me. And half of all transgender teens will attempt suicide before their 20th birthday and our hands are cracked and bleeding from trying to escape the coffin you’ve already buried us in.
The school can’t do anything about it till there is evidence.
We are too scared to tell our parents, for fear we will be on the streets by sunset.
The scars cover our arms and thighs but they also cover our hearts, from every Roman Scourge flung at us from every religious mouth telling me that I am satanic, just because I don’t want a damn breast.
You refuse to use the correct pronouns because God doesn’t make mistakes. And if that is true, then I’m a mistake but I already feel like one anyway and the abyss that is my mind keeps my lungs from breathing with rhythm and my leg shakes nervously as their eyes pass over my body, trying to figure out if I am male or female.
So the next time you tell me that being transgender is a tragedy, try stepping into my skin and the skin of every transgender kid who has taken the breath from their lungs only because they are told that changing yourself is a sin.