Hello. My name is Kim. This is my story.
It’s currently 6:19am on a midsummer’s Thursday morning. Three days ago, surrounded by anxiety and self doubt, I posed the internet my one question; a question that had been stewing in my brain for countless weeks: What am I?
No one could give me a definitive answer (though, of course, no one but me was in a position to). Throughout the hails of useless answers telling me that I was just what I felt I was (I wouldn’t be asking if I knew!) to those telling me that I shouldn’t need to know and to just stop worrying about it all (That’s not going to make me feel any better…) I did get one shining piece of advice: To persue value. In masculinity I saw the place I was, a place already experienced, disregarded, and often despised. In femininity I saw hope, I saw respite, and I saw a much greater potential for happiness.
As a result, two days ago I came out to a select few circles in the weakest way possible. It would be another day before I even uttered the phrase “I’m transgender” to anyone. Doing so made me giddy; like the hushed gossiping of a schoolgirl admitting something utterly taboo.
Another day and I can happily pipe those two little words up with confidence, at least to myself. They still make me giddy—not now out of taboo—but from glee. Two words to set me free, two words to break the chains that bind me. It’s almost as if from a dream.
And yet, it’s reality. More importantly, it’s my reality. It’s the first little baby step leading to the rest of my life, and boy how I wish I could run.