Arriving, Finally, As My Chosen Name
I had recently cut my hair short for the first time. At school, a male friend saw me and said, “You look like a boy,” and it felt validating, especially coming from a boy. Then, it started to click that maybe I wasn’t the girl I thought I was. A few nights later, I sat […]
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Gaming While Female
Names have been changed. The first video game I played, when I was nine, was Call Of Duty: Black Ops III, a first-person shooter game. The player experiences the action through the eyes of the protagonist in a three-dimensional space. I loved the adrenaline rush that it and other games gave me. They provided an […]
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Breaking Free of My Mom to Be My Real Self
I first realized that my mom’s violence wasn’t normal one day when I was 7. My mom got drunk, which I’d seen before. I’d seen her physically attack people too, but this time was worse. She pulled me out from underneath the couch by my ponytails. She also dragged my aunt by her hair, hit […]
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Betrayed and Exposed
Names have been changed Two years ago, when I was a junior in high school, a beautiful girl approached me on a messaging app. I texted her back, and we talked for hours. We figured out that we lived near each other. I was 17 and she was 20. She told me that her name […]
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