Arielle Rebekah’s Coming Out Story

For years, I longed to go back and do it all over again. Had I known in advance how quickly I’d lose control of my own trans narrative, perhaps I would have done it all differently. I guess that just wasn’t how my story was meant to go.

From the time I was but a wee tyke, I understood on at least a conceptual level that I wasn’t a little cis boy. Sure, I didn’t have the words to describe it back then, but I knew. I distinctly remember being four years old, sitting on the toilet with my penis tucked way back between my butt-cheeks, wondering what would happen if I were to just… chop it off. I figured that probably wouldn’t end well. 

But, then, what else could I do? I surely couldn’t tell anybody how I was feeling, they wouldn’t understand. It never even crossed my mind that this might be an experience shared by so many other kids, many of whom – like myself – felt deeply ashamed to talk about it.

“I would never muster up the strength to be myself”

So, when I was 13 years old, and first heard the word “transgender,” I was overwhelmed with emotion. Ecstatic that there were others like me. Sad and angry about how many people seemed to loathe us for no reason at all. Scared that I would never muster up the strength to be myself. Petrified that if I did come out, I would be met with distrust, disgust, and perhaps even violence.

When I was 18 and sat down in front of 130 students and staff at my therapeutic boarding school, finally poised to share my truth with the world, I surprised even myself. 

“Hi, friends,” I started. “Today is National Coming Out Day, and I’m sitting here right now to tell you…” 

I paused to take stock of what I was about to do. 

“To tell you that I am transgender. This is something I’ve known about myself for a long time, and I finally feel like I’m ready to share it with the world.”

I stared out into my captive audience. Some faces were sympathetic, some seemingly bored. Others beamed up at me with looks of stunned admiration. 

“I ask that you all start calling me Arielle and using she/her pronouns. I don’t know what my transition timeline will look like, but I’m hoping to start hormones before graduation, and maybe even have bottom surgery right after.”

I glanced finally at my therapist, who seemed unable to conceal his look of concern. Strange, I thought. He’d seemed supportive when I mentioned this to him earlier. 

Within days, an explanation for his painfully apparent trepidation presented itself. While I’d been lulled into a false sense of security that this school was a safe space to explore queer and trans identity, the administration quickly proved to be overtly hostile towards the idea of students transitioning while enrolled.

A week later, I reeled with anguish and anger as my therapist admitted to me that he had robbed me of the right to come out to my parents myself. He told me, quite nonchalantly, that he had outed me to my parents as transgender, assuring them that my coming out had simply been a ploy for attention.

“I began to doubt my own perception of my identity”

Over the following months, I was systematically and repeatedly denied the right to live my truth. By the time I graduated two years later, I had been so routinely gaslighted about my transness that I began to doubt my own perception of my identity. My parents’ minds had also been infected by the school’s anti-trans agenda, and I felt compelled to re-closet myself until I left for college the following August. 

So that’s what I did. For 9 months, I shoved those supposedly shameful parts of myself as deep as I could and pleaded with the universe that I could just be “normal.”

This plan, of course, failed miserably. As anyone who’s ever tried to “pray the gay away” will tell you, dismissing your truth only serves to make life infinitely more painful.

By August 31, 2015, when I stepped onto Ramapo College campus for my very first day as a student, it truly felt like now or never. For the first time, I felt like my life was truly my own – like I was finally in the drivers’ seat, guiding my own decisions, without anybody there to stop or question me.

After twenty years of pain, uncertainty, and the perpetual fear that I would never know the joy of feeling at home in my own body, my whole world suddenly snapped into focus in one cathartic moment of stunning clarity.

After my family left campus that evening, I headed up to my dorm room to put on a full face of makeup and straighten my then shoulder-length hair. I burst into the dining hall, and in a singular moment of immeasurable euphoria, exploded into my new life as an out, proud trans feminine person.

Finally, I could wear makeup without anybody questioning it. Finally, I could ask others to call me Arielle and “she” without anybody telling me no. Finally, I could be myself; no limitations, no fears, no judgments, no excuses, no need to prove anything to anyone. Just me – Arielle Rebekah – in the euphoric pursuit of my truth.

Coming out stories