I’d always been told I was gay, made fun of for it. I felt comfortable in environments with queer women. But something in me knew that I was transgender. It was something I had always known but didn’t have the words for, wouldn’t permit myself to embrace. “I was never a girl. I’ll never be a woman. What am I going to do?” I used to say. Have always said.
The first time I acknowledged I was trans, in the properly conscious sense, beyond speculation, was around my 30th birthday. Almost four years before I came out publicly.
“Do you think I’m trans?” I’d asked a close friend. They answered hesitantly, knowing no one can come to that conclusion for someone else, but they looked at me with a quiet recognition and said, “I could
