By

~

Part One of my struggles as a transgender male is in book one: .

So I prefer to go by Jay and my pronouns are he/him.

My new school year has started a while ago and a lot has changed.

Let's first start with gym...

Yep, locker rooms and all.

For a while I had been changing in the nurse's office, which has the only unisex bathroom in my school.

It's not that close to the gym, so when I'm done changing, I was usually one of the last one to get to the gym for warm ups.. so people saw me come back and go to the nurse's office. So that didn't help with my dysphoria.

Anyways, I got tired of all the looks I got when I got back from the nurse's office so I just change in the girl's locker room.

I would have just skipped gym all together with all the stares I gotten if it weren't for my friend. She help distract me from their stares, but that's all she did. Sure it helped a bit, but I didn't feel any better when I left.

Also, I bought a binder with my own money online and I don't want to take it off while in gym. I read how it is bad to exercise in a binder as it restricts your breathing, but again, I already have enough dysphoria...

A short story following up that, I did this 24 hour play (we had to write, rehearse, and perform an original play in 24 hours) that took place at our nearby college. We had to be at the college at about 9:00am and perform our plays at 7:00pm. We were put into random groups and one person in my group noticed how I was having chest pains and they told me to go take off my binder after I explained that I was transgender. I didn't realize how a basically stranger could notice something so small as me hold my chest in pain..

So anyways here's another story.

I am in my school's Allies (GSA) club and the teacher who runs it is a lesbian (and lets just call her Ms. E). We call her the queen of gays and she helped me through a lot. There is another teacher who kinda runs Allies Club (and we shall call her Ms. G)

I do a lot of drama related activities at my school and both teachers are a couple of the teachers who are in charge of that. I recently auditioned for a play that consist of multiple plays and Ms. G was in charge of casting and I had to be double casted. She knows about me being transgender and she gave me two male roles!

When I found out, I nearly cried in front of the cast list (where a lot of people were passing by XD).

Ms. E said that in the play bill, she will avoid using pronouns in my bio. It seems like a small thing to her, but a huge thing to me.

I never knew how much support I had around me. Even people who I didn't really talk to (who knew me before my transition) asked me if I preferred using my birth name or Jay because they saw teachers and others use Jay. I am really thankful for everyone I have around me, who makes up for my crappy family.

Even though I may have to wait until I'm eighteen and out of the house to take testosterone and get top surgery, I am glad for those kind of people in my life.

~Jay