July 31, 2024
Today marks two full years that I’ve been doing HRT (Hormone Replacement Therapy), which basically means I’ve reached a point where my “second puberty” is coming to an end. I’ll continue to take my hormones, and they’ll continue to do what they do, but for the most part, the bulk of the changes I expected to occur…have occurred.
To commemorate this occasion, I decided to do a brief transition history of Avery…
In my last post (linked here👇🏻 in case you missed it),
…take a stroll down Memory Lane
I talked about my childhood, so I’m going to kinda fold this into that. I’m also going to preface everything I say here by saying that I’m only talking about my own trans experience, and while many trans people may have similar experiences in life, overall everyone’s journey is theirs as an individual.
My belief is that I’ve pretty much always known I was trans, without really knowing what being trans was, as I knew at a very early age I didn’t feel like the gender I was assigned at birth.
From what my mom has told me about my early days, some of the initial signs included always wanting to wear my younger aunt’s dresses and shoes, as well as generally gravitating towards stereotypically feminine things such as an interest in hair and makeup, dolls, etc., while veering away from any stereotypically masculine things. Now this all seems pretty generic and innocent, but I attribute that to being 3 years old when this behavior started presenting itself. And maybe it was because my mom had some guilt because she wasn’t around all that much, or maybe she genuinely didn’t care, but she just went along with all of it.
By the time I was ready to start school (Sept. 1989), I had acquired quite the little Barbie collection, and a dollhouse that I wanted to live in myself. I was living my best life and was so ready to start kindergarten…which is when the first big battle with my mom occurred. She had gotten me new clothes for school that she picked out herself, and she wouldn’t let me wear what I wanted. Looking back, I can see that she understood things that I didn’t, but would learn pretty quickly….kids can be real assholes. So, I was not very popular at school, because everyone thought I was weird.
I tried everything within my power to just stop going to school, but my mom wouldn’t allow that, so instead, I started masking. I used the boys in my class as a template and started dressing like them. This helped some, but I couldn’t get myself to be interested in things I wasn’t really interested in, so the boys all continued to make fun of me anyway. This is basically how all of elementary school went for me, however I did make a couple female friends along the way, so the whole experience wasn’t totally unbearable.
The flip side of this time period was that I was going to my older aunt’s house everyday after school, and hanging out with my cousins (2 male and 1 female), who let me just be me. Whatever imaginary games we played, I was able to be the character I wanted to be without judgement, as it was always female. This acceptance was especially important to me later in life, because when I came out as trans to my family, my cousins were the only ones that weren’t thrown by the news in the slightest. They were more surprised that it didn’t happen sooner.
Starting junior high, I knew some people from elementary school, but there were also new people. People who didn’t know who I was, and hadn’t picked on me for the past seven years. So I continued to hide who I was and put on a “normal” happy face, only now I was more determined to fit in somewhere. Turns out the easiest people for me to fit in with were the other people who felt they didn’t fit in either. So I started using them as a template for what I should look like, how I should act and dress. And really, aside from faking the outward aesthetic, I was able to genuinely connect with them about feeling like an outcast, and developed actual friendships, which helped me get through this time period, which was probably the hardest time for me growing up. During junior high is when my aunt moved, so I stopped seeing her and my cousins everyday. On top of that, I was going through my first puberty, adding the confusion of sexual attraction to the mix. Of course, not being able to act on my true feelings, which were towards the boys in my class, I would have little relationships with girls that all lasted a few weeks and never amounted to anything. This is also around the time that I would start wishing and hoping that maybe some sorta magic would happen and I’d just wake up female, and suddenly my life would be normal, because everything I was feeling would finally make sense. I made that wish everyday for a very long time.
For the most part, high school was a better time for me. I made a group of friends I felt genuinely comfortable with, and I wasn’t getting picked on as much. I was participating in activities I enjoyed. I wasn’t ready to talk about everything that was going on inside my head, but I was ready to take steps, and I was tired of not being able to express any romantic/sexual feelings I was having, so in 11th grade, I came out for the first time as gay. It felt like the wrong label, but it was at least a step towards something I wanted in my life. And my family felt like it finally explained all my “strange” behavior.
I started 12th grade feeling better than I had in so long. I thought I had finally figured myself out, and that all the pain and loneliness I had endured my entire life would finally end. But I was so wrong…
This was when I learned about transgender people. I finally had a name to put to how I felt inside, and suddenly I wasn’t just broken and alone, there were actually other people like me in the world. Now you’d think this would make me feel better, but it didn’t. Instead, I suddenly felt like I had made all of the wrong choices in my life. Labeling myself publicly, when I knew it wasn’t totally right. Plus, doing research, just to find negative stigma everywhere. Basically everything was telling me, as hard as I thought my life already was, being transgender was going to make it harder and lonelier. And everything was expensive, and growing up without money, I immediately felt defeated and that there was nothing I could do….so I had a breakdown, and ended up in a hospital for almost a month, which was the amount of time covered by my mom’s health insurance. Once that ran out, they wanted me out. And as much time as I spent there, doing group therapy, one-on-one therapy, trying medication…none of it helped. They couldn’t solve what I was feeling.
Finishing my senior year was a struggle since I had missed so much time, but it at least gave me something to focus on, a goal to achieve.
I finished high school, and almost immediately moved out on my own. I had made the decision that since there was nothing I could do about being trans, I would just have live with that knowledge, and get over it. I tried not to think about it, and really lean in to just being queer, hoping that would be enough. It never was though.
My late teens/early 20s were a whirlwind of bad decisions and hard times. There was a bout of homelessness, a little bit of jail time, and a ton of burned bridges. But by my mid-20s, I had started going to college, and was doing really well. I often revisited the idea of transitioning, but whenever I did, I’d evaluate my life, and it always still felt like an unstable mess. I was bartending/serving tables full-time, and going to school full-time. I had no health insurance or savings, and was barely scraping by on a regular basis. I didn’t want to risk trying and failing, along with the fear of coming out a second time.
After college though, things started to change…it took a little time, but I eventually had a stable job, I had insurance, I had a small support system.
It was time.
The morning of July 31, 2022, I took my first dose of hormones. It was the best, most exciting day of my entire life up to that point. Such a small thing has made my whole life better. I finally felt like I was on my way to being complete.
Two years later, I’ve continued to change my life for the better throughout this process. Moving to Albany was the best move to make for myself at this time, I only wish I had done it sooner. Of course, I also wish I had learned things sooner, and started transitioning sooner, but unfortunately, I can’t turn back time.
I apologize, this wasn’t the happiest story to read, but it’s definitely not over yet, and I believe it will have the happiest ending.
Averybody Walks 
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