It all began in sixth grade. I was a little boy fresh out of fifth grade ready for the exciting world of middle school. However, I soon realized that it really wasn't that cool, and I was an idiot for thinking it would be.
I had started watching YouTube hard core by sneaking my electronics behind my parents' backs. I watched a lot of gay YouTubers like Shane and Jeffree, and I realized that I saw myself being pretty close to what they were. Feminine but born a boy. I didn't know then what transgender was or meant or even that it existed. I just thought that since I was feminine I was automatically gay. So I did what any sane intelligent person would do, I came out at school without telling my parents. Honestly, I don't know how I went so long without being found out.
All of my friends knew I was gay, so I mostly made friends with girls because boys were not about to be friends with me. Back then, I related to my girl friends easily. Sometimes I even forgot I was boy because it was so easy to lose myself in girl world. That is until one of my friends got their period, and I lost it. I went home that night and cried because I would never know what that felt like. Why couldn't I have been born a woman and experience what they did too? Why couldn't I feel comfortable being a boy? Why was I cursed?
That was probably my first clue that I was trans but remember I didn't even know what that was. I believe a lot of the pain I experienced would've been easier if I had known there were people like me. Alas, I was all alone so instead of worry about it, I just bottled it right up. It wouldn't be until seventh grade until I would really think about it again.
It was the spring of my seventh grade year that one of my cousins had graduated, so I had gone back to my hometown to go celebrate. During his graduation, I had learned that one of my cousins' old friends had transitioned. I didn't know that someone could transition, and it was the first time I had related to someone so closely. Here was this woman just like me proving that I wasn't really alone. That was probably the first moment when I finally knew what I was, that I was trans. It was really liberating to me to know that one day I could be what I wanted.
Until I remembered that my family would not be so accepting. That was the whole reason I hid my gayness in the first place, to keep myself from their judgement. A lot of people have said, "It won't be that bad", but what they don't know is that I come from a devout Latin Catholic family where the LGBT have never been supported. My abuela wouldn't even let me watch Ellen because my tía told her she was gay. And if things couldn't get any worse, when we got back home that day my grandma went on and on about how unnatural it was that that woman had transitioned.
Now, I had two choices: come out, or stay in the closet. I bet you can guess which one I chose. I stayed in the closet. I stayed in that closet for a goddamn eternity.
