Project LGBTeen: A Collection of Short Stories

Part 1: Maddie

This is me. Madeline Faith Wilson.

While I was growing up, I always felt different from the other kids. My family criticized me for being so gender neutral with the things I liked to do, and my grandpa used to poke fun and call me a girl. Around the time I was 7 I realized that I really was a girl, I loved the color pink, I played baby dolls with my little sister, I play house with my cousins, and I usually never touched all my Matchbox cars and stuff like that. I knew that people would make fun of me if I tried to tell anyone that I felt like I was a girl, so I kept it to myself, never told a soul, convinced myself that it had never happened. Years passed and I started to have dreams at night of me as a girl, I was happier in those dreams than I had ever been in my entire life. I didn't quite understand what this meant, but I at this point I knew there was no point in asking my parents, because up to this point the only things they ever did to help me with things like this were telling me to try everything I had already done, or in this case they would tell me it was just a dream and that it meant nothing at all. Oh by the way, at this time I'm 13. So I went to my friends as always to see if they could help me. They kinda just looked at me and asked me if I felt like I wanted to be a girl, because of the dreams having me be so happy I didn't know anymore who I really was.

I searched the internet looking for answers and stumbled across a definition for Gender Identity Disorder, now known as Gender Dysphoria, and this definition seemed to fit me exactly. It brought back the memories of when I was little and hid everything away. I went to school and told my friends about it and about how that was exactly how I felt, and they supported me 100%. I always liked the name Lulu, so for the next year my friends called me Lulu at school and that was me.

A year later I started to get a little depressed because I couldn't really do anything about these thoughts on who I really am. I started to cut and attempt suicide. A lot. My older sister found my arm covered in cuts the one day and called my mom immediately. When my mom came home from work that day, she locked me with her in her room for an hour until I explained to her what this was all about. I lied. When I was done, I mentioned to my friend in a text that I had lied and my mom took my phone and saw that, so once again, I was locked in her room with her for 3 hours this time, threatened with no dinner until I told her the truth. I had to write it on a sticky note because I didn't know how to put words together to verbally tell her, it's always been awkward verbally communicating personal issues with my family since they never helped me in the past. After reading the sticky note she told me that she wasn't going to take me to therapy, because I thought she would flip out and do that, and that instead she was going to try to help me. The very next day I get pulled out of school early for an intervention about who I am. My mom, brother, sister, and grandma were all waiting in the living room for me. They all talked about how the suicide thing is bad and so is the cutting and blah blah blah. Then in the end my grandma tells me that my mom had already made an appointment to take me to therapy after the previous day.

To this day, I still believe that the therapy was intended to brainwash me into believing I'm not trans because as soon as it started to help me with my depression my mom stopped taking because it was helping me figure out who I really am.

After she stopped taking me I started leaving little notes asking my mom to actually support me and help me. She told me that I could go by a more feminine name, but yelled at me for wanting to go by Lulu because "it's disrespectful to want to change your name to be something that different than the name we gave you at birth." That's where Maddie came from; my birth name is Matthew. She also told me that day that I was never going to get any help for hormones or anything more than the name from them. The name lasted a good 10 minutes. It was that day that I knew my family was truly against me, aside from the obvious there, back when I was all suicidal, they gave me knives and still give me knives for presents as though they're telling me to kill myself. To top it all off, my grandpa, who used to call me a girl all the time sort of as a joke, now bitches at me for being too feminine because I cross my legs when I sit, and my grandma told me to my face that she feels sorry for my mom for having a son that wants to be a girl, she might as well have just told me that I'm a disgrace to the family, because that's essentially what she was saying. Not to mention the 15 minute lecture I got from my mom about how I'm wrong, and that "God doesn't make mistakes."

From that day on I kept everything away from them. All they know right now is that I have a couple shirts, a dress, I go by Maddie with my friends, and that they all see me for me, as a girl. What they don't know is that I have a whole dresser drawer full of clothes but only ever wear them at night, and that I have help from my teachers at school to be who I am, and that my friends are looking to find a therapist for me for free online since I don't have any way to pay for therapy myself.

Now I have so many friends online around the world as well, as right here to hang out with, that help me deal with my dysphoria. I have an amazing boyfriend who supports me and, while it may have taken time to get past it being a little awkward, he's super sweet and protective and he's just amazing. My friends are the greatest and without them, I honestly might not be here right now. The days aren't really looking up too much, but when they do look up, we take those as personal wins. It's really just a game of waiting, stepping stones in the water to get across the lake. I'm 17 so I only have one more year before I can leave this hellhole and every day is just another inch, closer and closer to the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.

I know this sounds very cliche but it's the truth, the only thing I have to be thankful for in my life right now are the friends I have, hell, who am I kidding, those guys and girls are my real family and I love them all to death and if it weren't for them, there would be no me.

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