Trans Experiences Part 5

by Nicolaj Arroyo

Co-Managing Editor

May 2022

Hello. My name is θ-Nicolaj Xilitla Axayaca Arroyo.

I am a transgender man, I am 17 years old, and I am graduating in under a week.

These articles on trans experiences have highlighted the lives and stories of real trans students and alumni, and I feel honored for being able to write this series. This is the finale, so I feel it’s fitting to write about my own trans experience.

When I was young, I went through what many AFAB people go through, all the lovely, grizzly, and violent bits of socialization. At around the age of six, I realized I was not a girl.

I had these thoughts in my head. The kid my parents were trying to make me was not who I truly was. I didn’t have the words to describe it until I was about eight. I discovered the words I was looking for on the internet after many nervous google searches. I remember sitting on the floor of the bathroom with my mother. I had said, “Mom, I don’t think I’m a girl or a boy.”

I was met with confusion and rejection, told I had no idea what I was talking about, that I was too young to know. I retreated into myself and accepted I was simply the weird one, I was being a girl the wrong way. Outwardly, I tried to fit in, for my parents and classmates. I came out as a lesbian soon after. I was attracted to girls, then, and I considered myself a girl. I entered a relationship with another girl, and I was honest with her about my gender identity.

On the internet, I explored my gender and sexuality. It was instrumental in my survival as a questioning person. I made many friends on the internet, and I had a close friend group. A person in the group was transmasculine, and taught me about their experience. I found many parallels between us, and eventually I began identifying as a demi-girl* around age 10, and I began finding what made me feel the most comfortable. I identified as agender*, then as a demi-boy* around age 11. I found I felt—and continue to feel—the most comfortable and happy being a demi-guy.

I experimented online with different names and pronouns for a while before trying the same at school. After years of confusion, frustration and horrible dysphoria, I had found my answer. It’s as if I had finally become conscious after years of being in a zombified, auto-pilot state. I was joy incarnate.

I came out as a trans boy at school in seventh grade, with a confidence and force I have yet to find within myself since. My peers caught on very quickly and were pretty laissez-faire, as middle schoolers had bigger things to worry about than a classmate who found out he was a boy.

The adults in my life, however, were much less warm to say the least. On December 26, 2016 I came out to my mother as a trans boy. A one-sided argument then lasted two hours, in which I was told some of the most hurtful things I have ever heard to this day, and ended with me crying alone in my room with a bottle of stolen pills clutched in my 12-year-old hands. My true self had no place in my home. School and the internet were the only places I had where I could be myself.

There were still obstacles, though. Staff members at my middle school either welcomed me as I truly was, or singled me out and turned their noses up at me. I remember times I got into near-shouting matches with my teachers over my name and pronouns that year. I remember getting into the “boys only” line to come into school in the morning, coming to the door and being pushed back by a staff member who told me, “You’re not a boy.”

“Yes, I am.”

He shook his head at me. He held his hand against my chest. I tried to move past him, but he was much stronger than me. All my classmates walked past me, saying nothing. He didn’t let me come in until all the other students had gone in.

There I stood for a silent moment, outside the door. I had failed to blend in with the other boys, with the student body. All the other kids, no matter how eccentric, fit into their gender roles enough to have passed through the literal and metaphorical door, but I was the odd one out again.

I realized, then, that I would not ever be like the other boys, that society saw me as a confused little girl. I would be seen as a facsimile of a man, a freak show that people pitied, unless I changed myself to be more acceptable. It was a cruel experience many trans people are faced with. I had no one but myself for support. What would I do ?

I had to decide: would I change my mannerisms, style of dress, interests, personality to try and fit in as a boy ? Or would I embrace my exile from the warm embrace of the status quo ?

My choir teacher cemented my decision during an argument we had. It was the second time I had refused to respond to my deadname, insisting my real name be used, insisting my correct pronouns be used. I was told I would not be called anything but what was listed on my student profile. It was a silent argument, in that no one else said anything. No one stuck up for me. I knew back home no one would stick up for me, either. I decided I would double down on my identity. I’ll be myself as loud as I can, against all opposition.

I was transferred to a charter school for eighth grade, because my mother thought my friend group was “making me trans” and hoped uprooting me would “fix” me. The school did quite the opposite. It was a very trans-friendly school, if absolutely nothing else. I had recently come to terms with my sexuality and how my gender plays into it. I broke up with my girlfriend after realizing I only found men attractive. I confessed my love to the boy that had truly made me realize I was gay. He rejected me over Snapchat, with the dog filter on, with text reading: “sorry, i don't swing that way”.

You can laugh, I laugh about it, too. A certain insecurity made its home in my mind, though. Would he have loved me back if I just pretended to be a girl? Would I be alone until I pretended to be a girl?

I eventually moved on. I entered a long distance relationship for the first time as a gay man, which was incredibly gender-affirming. I thankfully broke up with that partner.

At this new school, there were only about six eighth graders, and two of the boys decided to use me as an experiment. We would become close, exchange chaste hand-holdings, nail-paintings, and listen to music together. I would ask what we were, and as they thought, I would watch their gay panic set in. We would go back to being friends.

The cycle repeated. My largest love struggle lied ahead. An upperclassman boy came into my life, and I fell in love with him. Our relationship was an incredibly manipulative, predatory (on his part) and unhealthy one. I loved him, but he was fetishitic and sometimes disrespectful about my gender identity. Was I going to keep dealing with this pain for someone I wasn’t even dating? Who considered me a man only sometimes?

I decided to not look for love for a while. I transferred to BMHS in ninth grade. Going from an extremely laissez-faire learning environment to public school was culture shock, to say the least. I knew I wouldn’t be able to handle the potential harassment if I didn’t try my hardest to pass as male. I wore mostly black, loose-fitting clothing and kept a sullen expression about me as a shield.

During this time, I tried using the men’s restroom. I had a friend from my old school escort me. Around the third time I used the men’s room, two security officers came into the bathroom and knocked on my stall. Once I was done in the bathroom, they grilled my friend and me, saying I needed to “stop switching bathrooms” and that I was “making boys uncomfortable”.

I was insulted, but I knew the drill. I was already Black. I couldn’t afford to be angry in this situation as well, for my own safety. So I “Yes, sir”-ed my way to the end of the conversation. The officers followed us for the next half-hour following lunch.

I was given a pass to use the nurse’s office bathroom for the foreseeable future. It was better than being ogled or having the cops called on me for using the bathroom, but it felt like exile again. I was just as much of a boy as the ones using the bathroom, and I wasn’t hurting anyone, so why was I being sent away ? There was not much I could do without my parents to back me up, so I just took it.

Before my 16th birthday, and after years of slow, agonizing progress, my mother offered to try to get me on testosterone. It was everything I wanted. I would finally be me, inside and out. But in November of that year, I had to leave home and my family behind me. I was a runaway, fresh from an unbearably abusive household. I landed at my other parent’s house, which would prove to be better in some regards, worse in others. He told me he had to “deprogram” me, undo all the “indoctrination from the liberal agenda.” Though I was literally and mentally battered, I did not waver. How I managed, I still have no clue. Tried as he may have to get me to detransition, he did not succeed.

We have reached an impasse now, in the two years I have been living here. I will never stop being myself, and he will never see me as his son.

It is tragic, and I have allowed myself to grieve a life I could have had with a blood family, but I accept that it cannot exist. It is okay.

I am off to college very soon. The future that eight, 10, 12, 16-year-old me dreamt of is inching its way closer. I’m almost there. Just a little longer.

I thank all those who have given these articles a read. I am so happy I got to bring attention to the incredible transgender people in the community.

To all closeted, questioning, stealth, out, binary, nonbinary, any-shape-or-form trans people: Keep going. It can be difficult, but you have to keep going. For you. For the person you know you are. The people worth listening to will support you. The people worth keeping close are the ones that want the real you, not someone you pretend to be. We’re in this together. Lift each other up.