My Letter (#LoveSimon)

Jack

Dear World,

I wake up every morning to see a boy I hardly recognize. I search the previous night's dreams and I can't quite place where I've seen him, but the mirror does not reflect the Jack I know.

I wish on every star I see every night that I can just have been born a boy. I watch dandelions dissolve as I pray once, twice, three times this will go away. I follow every rule, every superstition, every single painstaking guideline so that I can maybe have a chance at restarting. I follow these rules and I still don't wake up to Jack.

I go to school, disguised as this monster with a dead name that's only to dead to me. I go home, and endure constant taunting for the masculine way I dress. I go to restaurants, to movies, and whispers follow me, stares as I enter a bathroom. I wince at pronouns and force my way through transphobic corridors I can't seem to escape from. I feel trapped in a closet, if you will, of my own creation, disgusted by my body and by my mind.

I wonder if sometimes the best thing to do is just forget that Jack ever existed. That this image of me is fake, that everything I've worked towards in secret is just a pretentious fairy tale.

Like, here is the story of a loser who thought he - she - could be something.

Here is the story of Jack the Destroyer who shut out his entire family and lied to his friends.

Here is the story of a girl who's supposed to be a boy.

Here is the story of my scars and my fears and my lonely nights hidden away in my bathroom, too afraid to cry within earshot of others.

Here is the story of Jack. And like all of our stories, it doesn't seem to have a happy ending.

Dear the transphobic community,

Dear everybody who has ever said we don't count,

Dear everybody who calls us weak,

Dear everybody who denies us from following our dreams,

Dear the destroyers of our happiness, the destroyers of our well-being, the destroyers of us,

And dear my fellow transgender people, big and small, no matter their place in their transition,

I will have a happy ending. We will. We will live beautiful lives full of happiness, sprinkled with sadness, nights with stars and sunrises with colors so vivid we can't describe and feelings we can hardly control and love and pride, pride you can't dismiss and we will eventually get to the stage where we don't have to be shunned for who we are, all of us will.

We deserve the love of billions. We deserve the love of even the most conservative, even the most religious. We deserve the love of god and the love of a partner and the love of everything in between.

Because this is who we are.

And we deserve a love story.

Love, @profcheeziteater (Jack)