(Art by JuneauPaws)
To everyone,
This announcement is one of the most important I’ve ever made in my entire life. It’s deeply personal, and one that I am deeply nervous about making. But deep down, I know I must make it.
For as long as I can remember, I have been questioning my own gender. Things have always felt wrong to me in a way I couldn’t fully understand. These feelings would intensify over time until they became absolutely impossible to ignore. So, over the last several years, I have been on an extremely intense journey of self-discovery.
I have asked myself many difficult questions, enduring intense inner turmoil to answer them. It has been extremely difficult, uncomfortable, and anxiety inducing. I have also been clouded by endless onslaughts of doubts, doubts about each and every part of my identity, doubts about each and every part of my questioning, and doubts about every single part of my future.
But, bit by bit, I have made progress. I have reached answers on these questions, eased my doubts, and cleared away many of my inner conflicts. Everything, all of the endless amounts of time, turmoil, and effort, to answer one singular question: Who am I, really? After everything, after all this time, I now know the answer to this. I now have absolute clarity.
I am transgender. I am a woman. Going forward, my pronouns are she/her, and the new name that I have decided for myself is Cara.
I do not make this statement lightly. All of this effort that I have mentioned, all of this soul searching, have taken me to this conclusion. My mind is clear on this, and I no longer have any doubts about this. This is who I am.
For as long as I am able to remember, things have felt wrong to me in a way I couldn’t fully understand. I was a boy because others said that I was. But it didn’t feel right. I had a disinterest in “manly” or “boyish” things, even if I went along with them when others brought me in. I had a sort of curiosity of what it would be like to be a girl. I couldn’t explain it, but these feelings were there, cropping up from time to time.
As I got older, the feelings evolved and intensified. When my puberty occurred, I wasn’t thrilled by the changes that were occurring to my body. They felt weird. I didn’t really want them. But they happened nonetheless. There was also not only a dislike of the changes occurring in my body as they brought changes and features that brought me discomfort, but there was a desire for a different type of body. Deep down, I wished that puberty had brought my body different changes, different features, that it made me someone else. I had felt like I was someone that I was not. This feeling is often described as being “born in the wrong body.” Over time, I began fantasizing about turning into a girl. It brought me a sense of excitement that I was not able to explain. These fantasies eventually evolved into outright desires. I constantly wished that one day, I would turn into a girl.
These feelings would intensify even further. Feelings of consternation due to me living as a guy, as I wanted to be a woman, and I was not. It felt more and more wrong to the point that it started to be actively painful. Why was I not a woman? Why did I have to be born this way? The feelings were extremely difficult if not impossible to push down by this point. It began getting to the point that things became more difficult for me in every day life. When I would go shopping, walking by the Women’s clothing sections was difficult as I felt sometimes-intense emotional pain from desires of wanting to wear those things, but being unable to due to my birth gender. I would sometimes look at women with a mix of finding them attractive but also a distressing feeling of wishing I could have what she had, a body like hers, hair like hers, being able to wear the things that she does, being regarded as pretty, being regarded as a woman. I didn’t want to be her but I wanted what she had, and would subsequently look at my own situation, my own body and my own life, with great consternation.
I began seriously questioning my gender. I wanted to be a woman. The idea of being a woman felt right, felt comfortable, felt like me. But I was worried. Was I just confused? Am I really right about this? Would I succeed? Would it fall apart? How would others think? Would they accept me? Would they hate me? Would my family accept me?
I wouldn’t dare tell anyone about these feelings. I was so afraid. Afraid of not being taken seriously. Afraid of being dismissed. Afraid of being told that my feelings aren’t real. Afraid of being told that my feelings were wrong. Afraid of being misunderstood. Afraid of being told that I was wrong for having those feelings. Afraid of repercussions.
It took me many years to tell even a single soul. Even still, I have been deeply closeted, only my therapist and a few friends knowing the truth. It has been significantly more difficult than coming out as bisexual due to the immense gravity of it all. But coming out as bisexual set off a snowball effect. It paved the way for more overt questioning of my gender, for more directly asking myself "who do I want to be?"
I have at times struggled with this publicly, deliberately testing the waters. So to some of you, this may not be a terribly big surprise. Two of the videos on my YouTube channel, the “Him or Her” and “Trapped” episodes in my “Inner Thoughts” series, were about this very topic. I became a master of discussing this vaguely, gesturing and hinting at it while not directly saying anything. Sometimes I would go even further, making a tweet and then deleting it, making vague statements online, etc. For example, I have in the past stated that I did not want to be referred to as male, that I do not consider myself cis, and that my gender was, at the time, unlabeled or a question mark.
My therapist and my friends have been instrumental in working through these feelings. For the last 3 years, I have been slowly working, bit by bit, through everything. Through all of the conflicts in my mind, all of the fears, all of the doubts. But I have now absolute clarity on this. I know who I am, and I do not have a shred of doubt on my identity now.
It brings me great relief that I can finally discuss this publicly. I have a long road ahead of me, and even now, there is uncertainty on what the path forward for me exactly looks like, due to circumstances in my life. However, I am glad at the very least that I can finally cross this important milestone of being able to tell you all my truth. To be able to say, publicly, that I am trans, that I am a woman.
Thank you all for everything. I love you all.
-Retroity