Life is unpredictable, so we all have things that we look back on and wish we had known what was ahead. Here are five disheartening things I wish I had known as a young LGBTQ+ member.
1. Real Friends Are Hard To Come By
I made the mistake of assuming that all of the people I was friends with cared about me and would support me when I came out, but that sadly was not what happened. Instead, the same people I thought were my friends either instantly cut ties with me or would do their best not to interact with me after I came out. It really hurt and I wish I had been better prepared for their reactions before I came out.
2. Being Trans Is Expensive
I had expected surgeries to be way out of a reasonable price range, but I never thought that binders and packers, especially stand-to-pee ones, would be as expensive as they are. Many STPs are over $100 and the ones that are a bit cheaper can't be used to pack, so you'd have to buy a packer on top of it. Trans women also have to go through a similar wallet purge and many trans people, in general, have a very hard time paying for everything.
3. Support Groups Can Be Hard To Come By
During one of my last years in high school, we finally created an LGBTQ+ club and we were so excited about it. The community, however, was not; the townspeople actively complained about how our school allowed such a thing and the club actually ended up being disbanded. I felt alienated by my town and was frustrated that they could not see the importance of an LGBTQ+ club for high school aged children, especially when LGBTQ+ centers are mostly found in larger cities and some colleges.
4. Trump Supporters Exist
The day after the election was terrible. Trump supporters were harassing anyone they could find; they were yelling at women about their vaginas, telling foreign students to go back to their home countries, and kept trying to get in my college's LGBTQ+ center to harass us. Sadly, a lot of us had experienced harassment from his supporters even before his victory through the outdated and heavily gerrymandered Electoral College just made it worse.
5. It's Hard To Come 100% Out Of The Closet
There are people who still think I'm a butch lesbian because I feel like it doesn't feel safe to come out to them as trans. There are also people who think I'm a straight girl for some reason. Despite me being fully out, very few people actually know me as me and it is hard not to feel like I'm still stuck in that same old, dark closet I was stuck in years ago.
