The Boy Who Lived in the Shadows

LGBTQ+ and Transgender?

  That night when I got home from school after my dad dropped me off, I immediately rushed upstairs to my room and shut the door tightly.I threw my backpack on my bed, while I got my laptop out and opened it up. My parents were currently out shopping for a little bit, so it was a great time to figure myself out. I opened up a new tab on my computer. 

 Girls who want to be boys, was what I typed in the search bar. I hit enter and there was stuff about tomboys, which was basically just kind of like a girl acting and dressing like a boy, but they still identified as a girl, which I didn't feel that way about myself, but then I saw another thing, another word perhaps you could say, that I had no clue what it was or what it meant. 

  Transgender.

   What was that?  I thought to myself. I decided to do more research, and typed in the word Transgender. I ended up getting a lot of results for it, including once somewhat identifying females becoming now identifying males by taking hormones that made them have facial hair and deep voices. They were boys, actual boys, but like ...how? It's interesting and cool, I thought greatly to myself. Some even went to the extent of getting their breasts removed, which was something called"top surgery" and some wore these things that looked like a sports bra or an undershirt, but it was called a "binder", which gave you the appearance of a flat chest, to appear more masculine. Link after link, article after article, and YouTube video after YouTube video, I spent most of my night researching what Transgender actually was and I've taken multiple quizzes to see if I matched up to identifying as Transgender. All the results were positive. 

  Am I really Transgender?  I asked myself  as I heard my parents get back home from the store. I quickly bookmarked the links I was on and closed the tabs out of my laptop and shut it as my dad knocked on my door. 

  "Hey honey, you in there?" My dad asked from outside of my door. 

  " Um yeah. I'm here." I said as I quickly hid my laptop near my bed and as he opened up my door to my room. He looked at me and smiled. 

   "How was your first day of school? I didn't get to ask you really when I was driving you home. I was in such a hurry to get to the store with your mother." My dad asked me.

  "It was okay, pretty boring, but okay." I answered him, somewhat nervously. 

 "Did you make any friends? " My dad asked me curiously. 

  "Um...yeah...I think so anyways. His name is Jude." I answered kind of shyly and unsure of what my dad would think of me and Jude. 

  My dad smiled and nodded. "That's good! I'm proud of you! Maybe you can hang out sometime with him. Or invite him over sometime. Maybe you two can do something fun over here!" My dad said proudly. He looked at me and smiled. I gave him a small smile as he looked downstairs for a moment, then back at me. "Well....I should probably go help your mother with some things.." he said, sighing somewhat angrily at the thought of it. 

  I nodded as he flashed a small smile at me and said "Well, I'll let you get back to whatever you were doing. I won't bug ya, and I'll make sure your mother does the same." as he waved goodbye to me and went downstairs. 

  After he left, I immediately went back onto my laptop and continued lots and lots of research about being Transgender and I found out this thing called  the LGBTQ+ community. It was a community full of unique people and allies. The acronym, LGBTQ+, basically stood for, Lesbian (girls who like girls), Gay (boys who like boys), Bisexual (a person who is attracted to 2 sexes), Transgender (obviously I knew what that was), Queer (anyone who kind of questions who they are-their identity, or they don't really know who they are) and the plus, well, there was a lot more things, but they just added the plus because the acronym was pretty long. The more I read about it, the more invested I became about trying to really figure out who I was. After many hours of research, I fell asleep on my laptop, unaware that the tabs were still open, and slipped into a dreamworld......

  I was walking around school, but I felt different. I went to the bathroom, the one in the health office, since that was the closest one near me, and I closed the door tightly. I took a quick glance at myself and noticed that something was off, different...but in a good way. I suddenly realized that...I was a boy. I looked in the mirror at myself and noticed that I had some facial hair, a flat chest, and a bulge. This couldn't possibly be real, I thought to myself. I got slightly overexcited about everything that was happening and squealed a little bit, but immediately shut and covered my mouth. My voice was deeper. Oh shit, I thought, I'm a guy. I quickly splashed my face with cold water, trying to wake myself up, and then left the bathroom. I found Jude waiting for me next to the health office door. "Hey dude, ready to go?" he asked me. I nodded and found myself walking with him. Jude suddenly stopped and gave me a piece of paper with a name on it. It said, Miles. 

   Miles. The name. Miles. It stood out to me. I have no reason why it did, but it apparently stuck in my head. Jude spoke. "This was supposed to be for you, I just forgot to give it to you. It's from Grayson." 

   Grayson...who is Grayson? I thought to myself as the world began to fade away into blackness....

  I woke up with a jump. What happened??  I asked myself as I moved the laptop off my lap and onto my bed. I could hear my parents cooking dinner downstairs as I got up and yawned. I rubbed my eyes and blinked and looked at myself in the mirror. That all seemed too real to be a dream, I thought to myself as I slowly opened my door and walked downstairs towards the smell of the food that they were cooking in the kitchen. 

  I walked into the kitchen and smiled at my dad. He looked at me and smiled. "Hey, kiddo. How are ya?" He asked me. 

  I yawned and smiled. "Pretty good, but very tired." I responded very sleepily. My mother gave me a really disgusting look and shook her head. 

  "Why do you always stay up so late? You're always pulling some shit with you hiding in your room all the time. Seems like you're always up to something in there." My mom wondered aloud curiously. 

  My dad sighed in frustration. "Why would she be up to anything, Mary? It's not like she's doing anything wrong. She just likes to be in her room-" My dad started, but was cut off by my mom, and soon enough, they were arguing and shouting back and forth to each other, so I ended up going back into my room and shutting the door again. I was fine with that, because I kept one thing on my mind that I couldn't get off my mind: Was I Transgender? Did I really want to be a boy? Or was I just going through a phase?  I asked myself. 

 The answer? 

 The answer was yes. 

 I just didn't want to be a boy....

 I was one already and I didn't know until now. 

I was a boy. 

And I was ready to show everyone who I really was.