HERE WE ARE.

Standing in a room full of awkward, lanky, super rad middle schoolers. It brings me right back to my own middle school experience. Grade 7 and 8 were two of the best years of my entire life. I think I liked middle school so much mostly because EVERYONE felt shitty in their own skin for this one window of time.

EVERY FRIDAY

I plunge this badboy into some muscle on my body. Except that mostly I forget. BRAINS ARE FUNNY, RIGHT? When I first started taking testosterone I counted down the hours until my next weekly shot. I painstakingly obsessed that not a drop was wasted. And now... now I kinda dread it.

“TICKLEY TICKLEY ROUND YOUR TUMMY,”

She would whisper in a sing song tone as she traced her fingers across my stomach. The two of us snuggled up on her couch. “We Yike, jeopardy, don’t we Gamma.” the 6 year old version of me would look up at her and smile. “We sure do!” she smiled back, returning to her tickling song. “Tickley, tickley round your tummy, if you laugh you’ll be a mummy.” her long fingers making loop da loops on my belly.

Katherine is the love of my life. 

No doubt about it. .

But not that long ago she was my far away best friend who I was secretly so very in love with.

I knew that telling my kids my truth, about who I am was the only option! That showing the world that it really isn’t that complicated. That when someone tells you their truth you believe them and love them, because their truth has always been there, now you just get to know it.

"You've lived a very full life,"  he says to me, while looking down at my chart and simultaneously peering up over his glasses the way doctors do.  

"I'm very interested," he carries on.

I deflect the awkwardness of the fact that until the age of 31 I've lived my life as a woman by making a joke: "What, not all transmen have birthed 4 kids?"  

Once upon a time there was a little boy full of curiosity and questions, like all little boys. He loved roly-poly bugs and grasshoppers and skateboards and GI Joes. 

He wanted Ninja Turtle underwear more than anything. 

But there was a terrible misunderstanding. 

The grownups made him wear pink underwear. And dresses. They made him grow his hair long. All the adults told the little boy that he wasn’t a boy, he was a GIRL.