A Conversation

Why?

"I called myself crazy for sixteen years because I kept questioning my gender but thought it was impossible not to be a boy or a girl. Why do people think we choose these things? What gives them that assumption?"

Their voice cracks at the end, and they heave in a breath to try to continue, voice wavering, "It's not fair. It's not fair that they get to be straight and cis and then hate us for not being the same. It's not fair that we have to suffer because they don't experience the same things we do."

Tears stream down their cheeks as they start to sob. "Who decided it had to be us? Who decided that we have to suffer just for existing? They choose to hate us but for what? What have we done wrong? What did I do wrong?"

You stare at them sadly, trying to scrape up reassuring words. It's easy to tell them that they're not doing anything wrong because you don't know the weight they're carrying. You can't comprehend the fact that its present everywhere they go, that it defines everything they do. You can know it, but you'll never be able to comprehend it.

Their whole body shakes with violent sobs, caused by a hateful and ignorant society that they never should've had to endure. Their voice screams out in pain that never should've existed.

"What did I do wrong?" they ask again. "Why couldn't I have known that it's okay to be who I am when I was younger? Why couldn't I have been normalized? Why is hatred and ignorance so much more important than human life? Why doesn't the pain that they're causing matter to them at all? Why does my pain not mean anything? It means so much to me but nothing to them." They look down as tears steadily stream past their cheeks, down their chin, onto the floor. "They care so much about hating us. What makes them think we deserve that? What makes them think that we asked to be like this? That we want and choose to be different and hated? Why do they think that? Why?"

They fall silent, staring ahead as the tears continue. Not hurting anymore, not sad or angry, just defeated. Completely and utterly defeated.