I’ve been holding onto this for two years, roughly. Never really sure if I was gonna post it. Edited to hell and back, but never, never posted it. I kind of feel like I have to, now. No one else can speak these words, even if they don’t reach anyone.
I grew up in Texas with lawyers as parents, so in 2015 when they made a medical decision for me that resulted in my eventual PTSD diagnosis and major depression, I knew that it wasn’t my call, that my only way out was to convince them it wasn’t a good decision— something I failed to do. I knew that I wasn’t allowed to object, because I was eleven, and that meant my opinion on my life and mental health didn’t matter. My parents were, somehow, as naive as I was to the consequences of this particular decision in the beginning, but now, with all of the litigation surrounding trans people and youth, I find myself remembering things I had forgotten and becoming more and more agitated about how truly terrifying it is and was to be a child without a say in things.
I am twenty-two years old. When I was half that age, decisions were made for me that continue to haunt my life to this day. When I was sixteen, those mistakes were repeated, the reasoning doubled down upon out of sheer desperation to reclaim a child’s innocence that did not exist, to quell a rage that would not quiet. When I was nineteen, I left my parents behind with no plan, no prospects, and a desperate kind of knowledge that if I stayed in a place where, even as an adult, it was assumed that my body and mind and identity would eventually come to serve that of my family, I would become more bitter, more angry, more cruel. I could’ve died. If I was a little less lucky, if people had been a little less kind, I would have. And I was no longer a child, so it was not running away— they could not chase me in any way that mattered.
I left. I transitioned. I changed my name, and my mother wept but told me she’d never seen me so happy in the court Zoom call.
I have since reconciled with my parents, but I know that I can never truly depend on them again. They’ve acknowledged some mistakes; others will take longer to work through. My entire childhood was defined by a lack of agency, an inability to refuse what was pushed upon me.
In 2026, as we watch children’s already limited rights be further diminished, I think of my charges, the toddlers I teach, and I wonder when they’ll have to face it too— the idea that who they are is less important than their parents’ expectations and demands, legally. I think of an old friend, whose biological parents had her so she could donate bone marrow to her sister, and when her sister died, left her with her aunt. I think of the trans children in the USA and UK alike, struggling with the strain of identity and scorn of the public while being told that they are too stupid to know who they truly are.
I’m going to tell you a secret, my friends. It’s not a well hidden one. When those in power say that they are taking action to protect children, that the restriction of rights is only fair, only safe, only natural— they are lying. And you should be far angrier about it.
If I had had rights, I could’ve said no. If I had had rights, I might not have. But I would’ve had a choice.
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