Around this time every year I feel drawn to write about my experience of existing in a deeply gendered and sexist society. The first year I experienced liberation from a cage. The second year accompanied a boiling rage. I think I am finally ready to share some clarity around my journey.

My mid teen years was when I began developing senses of consciousness and courage enough to begin experimenting with my gender expression. Before then, all I felt was a deep fear of rejection, and the internal retreat to safety. I lost my self in online worlds.

I remember this one moment clearly in high school, a random, fleeting moment where I, walking behind some two people, heard them loudly deride me as “girly” and how uncomfortable it made them.

Visible. Recognized. That euphoric delight. I carry that warm feeling in my heart to this day. It’s a little weird, but that was one of the first times I felt illuminated.

When I first moved to the city, my dream was to disappear to a new life, a life re-gendered. How naive I was to not account for life getting in the way.

There was no momentum. My golden years were lost. Lost to weakness and fear. Lost in distractions of my own making. Lost to virtual worlds. Lost to the lower rungs of the capitalist mind grinder. An opportunity made and lost.

I can never get this time back. I can never undo the effects those years had on my body. All anyone can do is move forward.

Despite all that, my life today is luxurious compared to that of some of my brothers and sisters.

I’m white, with a voice and appearance that conforms to expectations. I’ve never been verbally or physically harassed by strangers on the street.

I’m never mis-gendered, never suffering psychic assault from a society hostile to life outside its parameters.

I earn a top-quintile salary as a professional, and my documents are in order. If I so choose, I could continue a life of success and gendered stealth.

But those oppressed brothers and sisters have more courage in one strand of hair than I do in my entire body.

The isolation of a life in comfortable stealth is not something I can bear for much longer. A tragic irony, to turn the mask of your early life inside out. It’s impossible to connect to the world authentically while wearing a mask.

Now, I have successfully transitioned between genders. Within my deepest self, and with a select few, I feel I have transcended gender. Despite that, living a more visibly queer life in a society that does not recognize that as possibility is something I approach with caution. The potential consequences for my career and social status are dire.

And yet, it’s my responsibility to use this privilege granted to me by accident of life to fight for a future where no innocent child, no questioning teenager, no jaded adult is immobilized by fear and unable to live their authentic self.

My only challenge is breaking down my own barriers, again and again. To resist my own fear and trepidation is to resist and redraw the boundaries of society. I hope to meet that challenge and succeed.