As I graduated Junior High, I moved out of my grandparent’s house and in with my father in San Diego. It wasn’t easy for me to move in with my dad, but after I was abandoned from my mother and wanted to get back at my mother knowing her dislike for my father, I told my mother I want to live with my father and in doing so I thought my mother might cave in and allow me to come home, but to no avail it did not happen and there I was in San Diego living in another household I did not want to be in nor felt I belonged there what so ever.

So I started school feeling nervous having to start all over in a school I knew no one so therefore knowing that making friends was going to be tough for me wondering who to let in and who to keep out, well at the same time not wanting to be an outcast but wanting to appear to fit in. What made it tougher even more so was being an introvert person I was never really good at making friends, my friends from the past were always because we all played sports together playing football and baseball, so my friends were my teammates, and met other friends through them. My friends I had were through mostly through forced interaction. So here I was in high school and I skipped playing football as I did my last year of junior high, in fact I stopped being in any kind of sports all together then. So unsure how I would make friends, knew that maybe it was a mistake making this move to San Diego. I slowly started making friends but I was still quiet and reserved, trying, my hardest not to stand out but at the same time trying to not feel like an outcast which was a hard balance to maintain. I then met a friend that changed me forever, met a friend in Math class and we hit it off, from that day until now we still maintain a strong friendship that descents into more then friends, more like family to me, more then my family has ever been and is to me. It was him that had me go out for the track team and that is when my love to be part of something I loved once before and that was being part of a team, being back in sports I found joy once. Where I even found myself playing football again, but more on that down the road of my life.

Beyond my friends and getting involved in sports, my school year academically was off to a very shaky start as I was barely passing my classes, because as you see my last year in junior high I have given up trying all together not just sports but school as well. I figured no one else cared if I failed or passed so what’s the point, which brings me back to my best friend who I had the pleasure of meeting his parents and welcomed me with open arms and made me feel like I mattered. So not only join track but I also started doing better in school academically because the motivation and the life lesson talks I would have with my proxy parents as they became, finally feeling like I mattered so I started caring where I ended up in life. Along with my best friend and his parents, I found my teachers being caring teachers that cared about their students. I had one teacher, my English teacher who took an interest and recommended that maybe in the next year to join Drama class, to trust him and that it will change me and I did the following year, but more on that down the road of my life.

You may ask what this has to do with me as a transgender, not much but that it sets up how things started to change, where I started to care what road I was taking and to finding accepts not only from people I loved that had entered my life. I finally had the love and support I have never received but seen given to my siblings and other in my own family and here I was receiving what I always wanted and finally feeling like I belong but with one piece missing and of course hiding the girl within. Of course as you must know and understand before you can be free and be you, is when you accept and love yourself, and all that starts with the people around you that show you that you matter and when you see that, you see and know in your heart that you matter and begin to learn to love yourself. Until I meet the people in my life when I started over in my life in a new city and a new school, I didn’t know how to love myself even though I had one person in my own family that saw me differently then my whole family did, my grandmother and even then it was in those rare times prior when I was in elementary. Having the constant love and support from those around me made a difference that would change my life and how I saw myself, seeing that I matter but at times and even now I lose site of that because sometimes you can’t shake that deep rooted feelings that were planted in the past.

“She lacks confidence, she craves admiration insatiably. She lives on the reflections of herself in the eyes of others. She does not dare to be herself.”

-Anais Nin-

My first year may have been uneventful on the surface, but so much had happen to me that changed how I saw things in me and in the world itself. I finally knew what it meant not to and outsider, looking in what I always wanted that I cared about myself and was ready to take on the world on a journey that will lead me to self growth and accepts. Although it would be a long time before I broke out to be brave enough to be whole I always was be reflected on the outside, this was the start of finding that strength to me. For so long I held on to the thought of feeling unworthy of exists, unworthy of being loved, but what I achieved that first year by the love and caring people I finally surrounded myself with people that thought me to slowing let go of that feeling of unworthiness, and knowing that I deserve to be happy.