My legal name is Bryce Lowell Jenkins. I am eighteen-years-old. I have never felt like Bryce, and I don’t think that I ever will.
Since the age of eight, I felt like I’d been snatched away from a loving place and put into a body designed to make me hate myself. My body lies to people, telling them I am someone I am not. On the outside, I look like a boy. On the inside, I know that I am a girl, trapped in this fleshy prison.
My first memories are of playing with dolls. But even before that, everyone in my family tells me that, since I could speak, I would proclaim confidently that I was a girl.
This seemed cute at first and amusing to them. It was only throughout the years that they started to become worried. My parents took me to many doctors, all of which had no idea what was going on with me.
They told my parents that I was merely confused. They said that, as I got older, things would even themselves out.
But I’m eighteen now, and not a goddamn thing has changed.
I know I’ll never be what they want, but that doesn’t matter to me. All I want is to live my life doing what feels right to me.
When I was fourteen, my mother caught me in her room trying on her dresses and shoes. She pulled me from the clothes and questioned me. The look on her face was not one of confusion or surprise, but of dread.
After all these years, her and my dad just prayed and prayed that I’d wake up different. Changed. Normal.
My parents were exhausted from the socially awkward situations—which I never felt uncomfortable in, just saying. They felt as though they couldn’t tell their friends or loved ones about this ordeal because of embarrassment.
I feel for them, I really do! But I ask them to think of the shame and anger I feel when simply ‘being myself’ is the very thing they’re embarrassed about. I do not want to disappoint them… They have cared for me throughout my life. They’ve loved me. I love them right back!
But I know that if I continue to live a lie, I will die. At my lowest times, I have thought about suicide. I have thought that the world would be a much better place without me.
After my mom found me wearing her clothes, she signed me up for counseling. I saw my counselor for three months before he concluded that, “Your son is just confused. Try signing him up for sports.”
Taking his advice, my parents forced me to join my school’s football team.
For three years, I was the most unhappy I have ever been. Nothing felt right about being forced into a jockstrap, putting on thick padding, and acting like I wanted to be a part of the mob mentality. I know that kind of thing appeals to many boys, but it just felt every kind of wrong to me.
It didn’t make me feel better. It just reinforced that I did not belong.
During this time, I had many girlfriends. This fact reassured my mom and dad. They’d thought that, because I ‘wanted to be a girl’, I might like boys. Which makes me laugh! Would having a gay child really be that bad for them? I just felt like if I wasn’t a heterosexual male they would never be happy.
Anyway, I have always felt attracted to girls. My parents would smile and encourage me to date because it made them assume my feminine tendencies were going away. It was all a phase, right?
I don’t think they ever once thought it was possible I wanted to be a girl and also date girls. I think girls were also more attracted to me because they could relate to and trust me. We had similar interests and concerns.
At one point in high school, I decided enough was enough. I just couldn’t keep playing football. I couldn’t keep watching sports with my dad and pretending that I cared. I couldn’t join in with locker room talk because every second that I did, I became even more upset with myself.
I had tried everything to be who my parents wanted me to be. The cost was to find myself teetering on the brink of suicide.
Every night, I’d pray that I wouldn’t wake up. I’d run into the bathroom and stare into the medicine cabinet, wondering which prescriptions I should force down to make it all end. The only thing that stopped me was my love for my parents and the desire to keep living. The hope that things would somehow, magically, in any way at all get better.
And… they did. Things did get better.
I was at school one day when I saw a poster hanging on a classroom door. It was an advertisement for a club that met every Thursday. This club called itself the LGBT Club.
Reading the text, I learned that LGBT stood for “Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender.”
Before that day, I hadn’t even heard about it. I had a vague idea of what the word “transgender” meant but only ever in a negative context. I thought it was the same as a drag queen. I didn’t know that it referred to people who felt that they’d been born the wrong gender.
I was nervous at the thought of going to these meetings, but I was so desperate. I had to try something.
It turns out that meeting with the LGBT Club every Thursday saved my life. I met the most amazing people there. Everyone was so different and so understanding.
We gathered to hear each other’s stories. At first I couldn’t tell mine. No one really had any idea why I was there.
After a month of attending and getting closer with my peers in the club, I finally told them. I braced myself for laughter, scorn, and every other terrible reaction that could possibly happen.
You know how they responded? They clapped. Some of them had tears in their eyes because they felt my pain. No one made fun of me.
Spending time with these wonderful individuals, especially the leader of the club, Ms. Wright, really helped me out. Through her guidance, I was able to confront my parents. I asked to have a talk with them one Saturday night after I’d been in the club for nearly eight months.
I told them I no longer wanted to play football anymore. Then I told them everything.
I explained that I had never felt like a boy. I said that the years of trying to act one wore me out to the verge of wanting to kill myself.
My parents cried, and I don’t blame them. They had always wanted a son, and I had destroyed that dream. They cared about me, but they couldn’t completely understand the words I was saying. I mean, how could they? They felt perfectly fine in their bodies.
My mom was, by far, more understanding than my dad. She agreed that I shouldn’t have to play football anymore if it upset me so much. She even asked me how she could help. I discussed the option of Hormone Replacement Therapy (HRT) with her and what Ms. Wright had told me about it.
She said that she would call someone on Monday to see about getting it.
My dad looked very upset for the entire conversation and later left without saying a word. It really broke my heart.
The following months were a serious struggle. My mom was loving, but did not understand what was going on with me. The whole ordeal confused her.
She helped me see a therapist about the HRT but she couldn’t help with much more than that.
My dad would not budge on the issue. He still felt I was going through a phase. He couldn’t deal with the fact that the boy he raised would never be a man or was never even a boy to begin with.
When I decided to come out into the open about who I was, I took on the name Brianna. My dad refused to call me anything but Bryce. Each time he called me by that name, it was like a knife in my gut. It dawned on me that I would probably never have my dad’s approval. Which, of course, twisted that knife even more.
After a year of being in this limbo with my dad, I decided it didn’t matter. The rest of my family doesn’t come around much so they don’t know the truth yet. I had the support of my mom and of my new girlfriend, Crystal.
Crystal is bisexual. Gender doesn’t matter much to her, as she loves people for who they are and not what genitalia they have. We have been together for over half a year now. She has helped me with a lot of the teasing I’ve dealt with at school.
Even without my dad’s approval, I feel so much better. I’ve been honest with myself and with him.
Living a lie was tearing me up inside, tearing me up more than any jerk’s negative comments at school could do. I love myself, and I have a mom and a girlfriend who love me, too. Someday, I hope my dad can love me again as much as I love him.
I’m a transgendered lesbian girl. And I am proud of myself for all that I have been through and all that I am.