My name is Jackson and I’m a twenty-one-year-old transgender male from Arkansas. My coming out story is a bit of a long one. Ever since I can remember, I felt different, like my body wasn’t my own.
I ended up thinking that everyone had this state of mind so I just brushed it off and kind of forgot about it. At the age of 15, these feelings came back. But, I didn’t have the words to describe them. I remember going on YouTube and stumbling across a video of this guy talking about the same feelings that he had.
“Everything finally made sense”
That’s when I finally had the words. “I was a transgender male and the feelings I was carrying on my shoulders was gender dysphoria.” Everything finally made sense, until I realized I could never really come out. Living in the south and having a homophobic/transphobic family forced me back into the closet until a few months shy of my nineteenth birthday.
During that dark period of my life, I was dealing with severe depression. I felt like everything was meaningless and there was no point to life, all coming to a boiling point in February 2014. Eventually, I got the help that I needed before I could make a permanent decision.
“My girlfriend had started to put the pieces together, her girlfriend was really her boyfriend”
However, I was still dealing with heavy bouts of dysphoria and I would always make offhanded comments such as; ”my jawline is masculine looking or I hate my chest,” and so forth. As much as I didn’t want the people closest to me to know that I was secretly transgender, my girlfriend had started to put the pieces together; that her girlfriend was really her boyfriend.
On February 2016, my girlfriend’s suspicions about me came to light. My girlfriend, her friend, and myself all went out to eat. Somehow we got on the topic of myself and all those previous comments that I had made. We all sat in silence as I debated whether or not to come out right then and there, but it was time for my girlfriend and I to go.
We’re in the car and I’m driving us to our next destination. When she finally asked, “Jackie, are you transgender?” That moment was scary and I was thinking, “do I come out now, or do I brush off the question?” I decided to take a leap of faith, not knowing if I was gonna like what was to come after or what. I answered, “yes.”
“Coming out has led me to finally have the heavy weight lifted off my shoulders, to be finally able to breathe”
My girlfriend and I ended up talking about many things related to me and my newfound identity. So while my girlfriend knew and was calling me her boyfriend, I was still in the closet to everyone else in my life. March, I decided to fix that, & I publicly came out on Facebook. This year, I have my appointment to medically start my transition. Coming out has led me to finally have the heavy weight lifted off my shoulders, to be finally able to breathe.
