I’m 34, came from a conservative home that was in a Christian nationalist cult. The idea of homosexuality was an ultimate taboo, I didn’t even learn what “transgender” was until well after puberty, well after I’d casually had the thought to myself that being a woman wouldn’t be so bad. Well after I’d been chastised for playing dress up with my mother’s clothes despite the fact my brother never did.

Even when I did learn of the T in LGBT, I had so many excuses as to why that didn’t apply to me. I’m just overly imaginative. I just get along with some more naturally than men. I just see women as people and feel strongly about their issues because I’m a progressive egalitarian man.

Even when those excuses failed me, I told myself I was genderfluid, or nonbinary. And in many ways those both definitely apply to me still. I do not experience dysphoria existing as a man all the time.

But today I cracked. I messed around in faceapp and touched up a photo of a time id shaven and had my wife put makeup on me and I cracked. I cried. I let myself feel that deep sense of longing I’d always instinctually suppressed.

And then I realized I was well and truly fucked. I live in Oklahoma. I have a child. And I live under some of the worst conditions to be beginning a journey that is being persecuted more than ever….