The Girl in my Shadow

Realization

There were two things that made me realize that I was transgender: Two books and a YouTuber.

Even though it felt all wrong to call myself a girl, and my shadow bugged me all the time, I didn't really think that I could be anything else. I liked to do stereotypically girly things, like playing with dolls and baking. I had mostly girl friends. I didn't know any boys who knew all of the hand games I loved to play with my friends, like Concentration, Oboe Shinotten-Totten, Candy on a Stick, and so on. Plus, I'd never learned about gender identities outside of cisgender. My parents raised me Catholic, and didn't teach me anything about queer people or relationships. That was where the books came in. 

The books were a dark blue, hard cover story book called "Good-Night Stories for Rebel Girls", and it's sequel, a sea foam green book called "Good-Night Stories for Rebel Girls 2" (which wasn't a very creative title). It had stories and full-page illustrations of 100 famous women and girls with impressive accomplishments. From painters to mountain climbers to judges to scholars, there were many great role models for young girls inside that book. My mom mostly bought it for my little sister, Desi, but she insisted that I read along with them, and would read us a story out of it every night. However, I noticed that there were some pages that she'd skipped over. When I pointed this out to her, she changed the subject almost immediately.

So, one day, being a curious kid, I looked back at all the women she'd skipped over.  There were a LOT. Among them were 3 in particular: Gloria Steinem, Sappho, and the girl who made me realize. Her name was Coy, Coy Mathis. She was about my age. She was born as a little boy, but she insisted that she was a girl, and her parents would let her be that. That book was the first time that I had ever heard the term "transgender". It being a book for children, it was described like this, "Sometimes little boys want to be little girls, and little girls want to be little boys." And that stuck with me. It made me think along the lines of, "Huh. I wonder if that's... me."

The second thing that made me realize was a YouTuber. When I was 13 years old, I got my first phone. When I had an iPod, my older sister, Monica, put restrictions on it so that I couldn't have YouTube, and so I was ecstatic to have YouTube back, and I was on it all the time. Then, one day, I came across this YouTube channel called Jammidodger. He was a British guy who made LGBTQ+ content, which I was really interested in. I was really just starting to question myself in the sixth grade, and so I had wanted to find some content with which to educate myself and do some, I don't know, self-discovery?

Anyway, Jamie was a very nice person. He made me feel like his channel was a good place to explore myself, and he gave off very good and positive energy. However, about two months into watching him, I found out that he was trans. At first, I was like, "Woah, really?" Because I had never really seen any other trans content creators, and the few trans women that I had seen before had a few features that made it clear that they weren't cis, mostly just different facial structures or lower than average voices. It sounds really rude in hindsight, but that was what I thought when I was younger. But with Jamie, there was no evidence, to me at least, that he was anything but cis. It made me think, "He used to be a girl? How could he have ended up looking and sounding the way he does?" But soon after, the way that I looked at his transition changed.

I had started going through puberty at around ten, and I hated and loathed it. I wished that I could stay flat-chested, that I could keep my hips from getting wider, that I could keep the acne from my skin. I only wanted to get taller growing up, but I stopped at around 5'4". When I really thought about how Jamie had transitioned, I thought to myself, "Could I really turn into how he looks when I grow up?" That was when it had started to click.

The other thing that really made me question myself was the memes. Jamie would often go over queer subreddits on his channel, and there were quite a bit of trans memes. A good chunk of them were ones that I could immensely relate to, but I didn't think much of it. That is, until there was one specific meme. It said, "When all the trans memes are downright relatable," in big, blocky meme letters over the picture of a guy looking somewhat concerned and pouring a glass of wine. That was when it REALLY clicked.

All of that sent me into a spiral of questioning myself. About a month later, I pieced it all together in my head. Why I had hated girl clothes so much. Why I had felt so deathly uncomfortable with my female puberty. Why I could relate to all of the memes. Why it felt wrong calling myself a girl.  Why I had wanted to BE a man when I was older. It was because... I was a man. Well, not really a man, but a boy. I was a boy.

My immediate thought after realizing...

Uh-oh.

AN: Inconsistent update schedule go brrrrrrr. Anyway, I've been busy as of late, and I'm not usually on Wattpad during the day, so here's the second part about a month later and the third part on the same day (it just took longer to get the structure of this one down). I'm always open to feedback! Much love! 😘❤️