Taking place in his elementary, middle and high school years, Trent Swanson has battled with the internal and external struggle of coming out and living as a transgender boy. "Through The Window" is an autobiography about the turning points in not...
There's a lot of fear that comes with discovering your identity, and one of my biggest fears was how my parents would react if they knew what I was truly thinking and feeling. Of course when I was ten, I had no definitive explanation for what was going through my head. I only knew that whatever I was thinking was not normal, so I hid the fact that I thought about girls and wanted to dress like a man. I figured it was wrong and punishable. Although I felt as if I had to keep it all a secret, I wanted more than anything to tell at least one person what was on my mind. Fortunately, that person was right at my side growing up, and at the time was just as naive as me.
My cousin Jake is two years younger than me and we've always lived nearby. When I was ten and he was eight, we'd frequently go to our grandma's - a beautiful house on Main Street with a white picket fence, a treehouse and a long concrete driveway. It was the hub for our family and neighborhood kids, and was picture perfect for a childhood, in my opinion. Underneath the Summer sun, Jake and I fantasized that we were sports champions, playing baseball in the grass that was mowed so perfectly it resembled the lines on a diamond. Or we'd pretend we were daredevils and set up traffic cones in the driveway, attempting to build some sort of obstacle course for us to maneuver with our scooters and bikes. I never thought about it at the time, but looking back I recognize that he was like a brother. Always scheming another stupid plan that would result in a lecture from our grandma. What I did know at the time was that he was the one person I felt understood me, even though as I write this he still has no idea what I experience on a daily basis.
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One warm day that I assume was in the Spring, Jake and I were riding scooters around the driveway just talking to one another. I remember teasing him with a family inside joke that his sisters came up with about him having a crush on a girl in his class. Jake was annoyed since we'd been teasing him about it recently, despite our lack of knowledge of whether or not he actually liked this girl at all. After I dropped the joke, a silence pursued for a couple moments as we continued riding our scooters in circles. I eventually broke the silence.
"Jake, I wanna tell you something," I said abruptly. He kept riding and I followed.
"Okay."
"You can't tell anyone though, you gotta promise."
"Yeah I promise," he said, this time glancing back at me.
"So like, there's a girl in my class," I began hesitantly, "and I think I might like her. Like the crush way." Jake paused for a moment but kept riding. I could tell he was thinking about what I'd said.
"Does that mean you like girls?" he asked.
"Yeah, I think so."
"Are you a boy now? 'Cause you cut your hair too." He was young at the time and wasn't yet familiar with the term "gay" so he assumed boys were the only one to like girls. I was glad his mindset was still so simple.
"I think so," I told him, "I feel better in boy clothes, and I feel like one on the inside."
"That's cool," was all he said. And it's all I needed at the moment.
I have no idea what he thought about me after that, or if he even wondered at all about what I'd said, but I do know that he was the first person I told. And to this day he's still the only person that has responded with something so utterly simple to something so complex and confusing. After that day, whenever I hung out with Jake, I felt like I fit right in as the boy I was inside. In a period of time when I felt so isolated and misunderstood, he was my relief. In a strange way, he taught me to appreciate the moments when life gives you a break from your worries. Whether that be for months on end, or just one minute. The thought of having to use the girls locker room the next day at school would make me sick, but sitting in the playroom with Jake, racing against him in my motocross video game, I was just me. I didn't have to worry about any specific identity that fit into the world's standards. I was just his cousin and he was mine.
