As I look back at my junior high school years, I found myself being thrown into some trying times, a time of my life I began to hit puberty and my body started to change. It was also the time of my life I was becoming more aware of who I was, knowing and learning that transgender was the term that described me and knew I wasn’t alone. I was in peril growing into a body I did not want, where as be before when I looked in a mirror I could see, well I could picture myself as a little girl a lot easier before puberty set in my junior year. On top of that I noticed girls as well, not like before for wanting to be one of them but also as wanting to be with one too. It was a very trying time for me, conflicted with wanting to be a girl with having suppressing who I was inside not only to fit in but to have a so call normal relationship with a girl.

I started Junior High in a new town well not really new to me because I have always visited in the summertime. It was my parent’s hometown and current town of my grandparents. My parents were in the mist of divorcing and I went to spend the entire summer at my grandparents’ house opposed to just the normal couple of weeks. The toughest for me at this time was I was living in a town that was adjacent to the Mexican border, so I was in the mist of a highly concentrated Latino and Catholic community, and to add to it I was being sent to Catechism to do my first Holy Communion. As I mentioned before, growing up in a mostly male dominate culture along with being Catholic, I felt I had no choice but to play by the rules to be so-called “normal” and now that I was attending Catechism it was appreciative for me to be “Normal”.

One day I headed to the local library and as I was browsing the books on the cart they use to put the books back after being returned, I came across a book called “Second Serve”. Like tennis a little at the time, I saw the cover with a guy on one side pictured in the tennis racket and a woman in the other with a racket too. Thinking it may be a book about pro tennis player, so I look on the back cover to read the description of the story and saw that the tale of Renee Richards was something I felt I was going through. I checked out the book and began to read it, as I’m reading the book I started learning that who I really was and why I felt the way I did. After all this time wondering why I felt this way, I finally had a term for who I was, I now knew at that time I was a Transgender.

Knowing I was a Transgender was a wonderful discovery because I finally was able to begin piecing everything together, and finally discovering who I was and that I wasn’t alone in what I felt. Discovering myself, I was finally able to now how to and what to look for in my research to learning more about myself, learning that just because I looked one way doesn’t mean that I was doomed to live my life as the character I was born into, that I can change my roll and become someone else I can become my true self. The only question was and fear was, how do I become the girl I know I am and would I be accepted from not only my friends, but also most of all my family? The questioned that followed me my whole life, sacred of being an outcast I hid that I was a Transgender. Well looking for way to hide who I was even deeper then before, I found myself even more lost in having to be who I wasn’t just to be accepted. At the time feeling that there is no other to live, and making it hard for me to be who I was I began to drift further apart from my family to not be discovered that the roll I wanted to play was never discovered, at least at the time.

As I began Junior High I started making friends, male friends and like all males at the time discovering girls and having be so call “mucho” I hated that I had to follow suit just to not be discovered. I would spend a lot of time hiding out from my friends when I could in the library, just to not have to act like a typical boy at the time. As I started becoming friend with girls as well, I found it easier being friend with them more naturally just like I did in Elementary. Only this time it was easier to be with the girls more then the boys this time, because like a boy supposedly I was spending time with the girls to get some where with them even though I knew and the girls knew I was happy being only friends. Yes I did find some of my friend attractive and even fell for some of them, but of course nothing was to come from it because I was at a crossroad of who I was and had to be. Being with my girl friends I felt comfortable and at ease even more so then I did with my male friends and for the meantime I allow to myself be who I really was even if it was just a little when with the girls. Junior High for me was a lot off up and downs of suppressing and letting go of my feminist side, which made it for a chance of being discovered at any moment I may be discovered and even though it scared me but at the same time, even though the chances was there I did it anyways, because I felt subconsciously I wanted to be found out that I was a Transgender and could be myself. I now knew this was going to be a tougher road then I thought it would be and all I could do was look at the road ahead of me but afraid, afraid to taking that first step of even daring to be who I really was inside. Knowing I was doomed without a doubt that I was to be this character I was told to play on this stage called life forever, playing a part that I was never meant play.