Pretty like a boy and Handsome like a girl

a personal essay from a late bloomer

I’m twenty nine years old and I’m a late bloomer. I didn’t get a very good grasp on gender identity or queerness growing up and am only now getting to know who I am and what I want. Sometimes I wish I could rip open my chest and give people the anatomically correct answer so they could understand better. I wish it was as simple as pointing to a bone and saying “here it is, this is what makes me different. This is why they want me dead”.

When I was sixteen I thought it wouldn’t be a big deal if I casually came out to my mom at a Flea Market in Fort Lauderdale.

“Who is that necklace for?” she asked me indifferently. Without letting more than a second pass I smiled and said “for my girlfriend”. I had started dating this really pretty girl named Steff and I liked her a lot. She was kind to me and patient. It was my first time being with a girl and it felt more right than being with a boy. My mom froze in her place while I continued to shop. I remember looking up expecting her to be maybe shocked or surprised but instead she was angry.

She dragged me out of the flea market and stuffed me into the car angrily. She cussed and she screamed and then she called my entire family and outted me on speaker. On the drive back home I got lectured by my abuela, my father, his girlfriend and anybody else she thought it was appropriate to tell. After that she had me cut off all ties with Steff. There was a time where she caught me and her texting on the phone and I was smacked. Shortly after, my mom tried and failed to enroll me in a christian academy. I was so confused.

My entire life, up to that moment, people always had joked about me being gay. It was like the most obvious thing in the room. The sky is blue. Roses are red. Zero is a faggot. I thought the writing was on the wall. I mean some of my earliest memories are of me asking my mom if she’d kiss a girl and her saying “no but I would love you if you did”. I thought it would be safe but it wasn’t. I spent two, almost three years trying to get out of the closet I had been shoved in. Eventually I was a story she would tell worrying christians with gay kids.

“There’s always hope my daughter had a phase and grew right out of it.”

I didn’t. I would spend years trying to figure out what I am.

Growing up I was really bad at being a girl. It was something everybody always made a point of acknowledging. My uncle would make fun of my deep voice, my mother and her friends would talk about how I sat, ate, and talked like man as well. I always got along with boys better too and I hated it. I love women but they’ve always had a secret language I could never touch. They moved in the world differently than me and it just wasn’t something I could fake.

Leaving for the military was freeing. I didn’t have to worry about being a girl because I was in a baggy uniform 5/6 days out of the week. Every man that I dated thought I was too much of a boy but to be fair most of them were bi and weren’t ready to accept they enjoyed my masculinity. Every woman I dated said the same thing. I chalked it up to being a woman in the military and not knowing how to code switch.

When I got married I was constantly put down for how bad I was at being a wife. I didn’t know how to clean correctly. I didn’t know how to make a man feel loved and in charge. One time my ex husband looked at me and said “I wouldn’t want to have a daughter with you because you don’t know how to be a girl” and he meant it. I thought because my mother was a tomboy and I had been in the military that was my problem. Never once did I think that maybe I just wasn’t a woman.

I leaned heavily into femininity and hated that I was good at pretending. I just didn’t understand why I was so bad at making it stick. I loved getting ready and getting dress but it was because it was all make believe. A girls night out, for me, felt like the only time I could wear drag. It took me forever to realize that womanhood was just make believe for me. It was a show i put on every time I saw my family, or wanted a drink at the bar, or wanted to make a good impression.

I still remember the day something clicked for me. My ex husband clocked me in one of our last fights. I was annoyed because he was burping (something that makes me gag if I can smell it) and I said “but you hate when I make a fart joke” and he turned to me and screamed “BECAUSE YOU’RE NOT A BOY”.

And right there a seed had been planted. A new question arose.

What if I am?

I think that night was the hardest I had cried during the marriage and that’s saying something considered I was unmedicated and a puddle all the time.

When I left him I started dressing more masculine. I thought being a masc girl would fix my problems. I cut my hair because I wanted to enjoy it without a loser in my ear telling me he wished it would grow faster. No matter how much I worked on being a masculine woman nothing was itching the scratch I no longer could ignore.

When I was introduced to the idea of being nonbinary my chest got tight. I always stayed away from they/them pronouns and people because I felt like it was a lot of work. I didn’t understand that being something else, something outside the options that I was given, was even possible.

New things started to bubble inside of me. Things I couldn’t ignore. I wanted to be with men like gay men were with each other. This helped me be less ashamed of my attraction to men. I want a mustache but only sometimes because I like to fluctuate between handsome and beautiful. I would love to be pretty like a boy and handsome like a girl. Though I don’t owe anybody androgyny I do enjoy it. I would love to be perceived as fluid and never feel pressured to conform to one thing or the other. I want to transcend the binary. I want my chest gone. I don’t even know if I want to keep my nipples if I didn’t I’d just finish tattooing that piece of my chest.

I love the idea of Hormone therapy in theory. I’ll be using my top surgery as a vibe check to see if i’d like to continue with hormones. One of the coolest things about figuring all of this out was feeling like I had obtainable goals for the first time. There’s this weight off of my shoulders that I never really knew was there until it was lifted. I know i’m on the right path to living the rest of my life the way I want to but fuck am I scared.

While I am excited about the big queer life ahead of me, trans people around me are dying. I have stumbled around my whole life trying to figure out what was wrong with me and the second I get a clue I got put on this list of people that aren’t considered human.

Two weeks ago a trans vet named Elisha Rae Shupe killed themselves at a Veterans Affairs parking lot in Syracuse. I found out through a friend who knew someone who worked in the building. Someone saw me post a bit about it and decided I would be safe to share Elisa’s suicide letter with. Elisa had sent it out the day they killed themself to several news media outlets and nobody went forward with her story. Heart broken I shared their story the way they asked others to.

The comments and messages that I have received about Elisa and other trans people have been disheartening. I am no stranger to online hate but this is different. This is backed up by law makers that are working tirelessly to ensure we are eradicated.

They took the T out of LGBTQ on government official websites. There would be no pride nor progress if it weren’t for the transgender women at stonewall and yet they’ve removed the word transgender from the stonewall monument. They are kicking out trans people from the military even though they are likely to have more than 12 years in the service and dedicated their lives to this country. In the executive order that pushes trans people out they call us selfish and men playing dresses. They are trying to pass laws that make it so trans people are forced to detransition in jail. They will not let people acknowledge trans people exist in public settings.

Sam Nordquist a 24 year old black trans man was found tortured to death after trying to meet his girlfriend for the first time in New York. He had bought plane tickets to visit her, spend a couple of days, and fly back home to Minessota. That was in December of 2024. They found his body in February of 2025. It was suppose to be a simple trip and 5 white people took his life and now the news are removing “transgender” out of the articles that correctly identified him. None of this is fair. I am so fucking angry.

I have more in common with Elisa and Sam than I ever will with most people. This world is cruel to those who refused to be beaten into submission. All of the trans and nonbinary people I know are such amazing, wonderful, resilient people. I wish I could download empathy and understanding into everybody.

One day I will look how I’ve always felt and that means I might meet a violent end. If I do just know I think it’ll be worth it. I cannot live in this world continuing as a shell. I will know what it’s like to lay on the sand without a top on. I will one day feel a little stubble underneath my chin. I will have a slice of heaven in a world that denied me personhood and if it kills me- celebrate. Don’t let them deadname me. Speak life into my name. Make sure everybody knows that I loved pineapple pizza and when my son falls asleep on the couch with his little lips pursed. If they drag me away make sure to tell everybody I adore singing loud and off key and encourage it on every road trip. When I am gone I want everybody to get high and talk about how special and cool I was. Plant me as a tree and tell everybody about how much I thought others deserved kindness and respect. Tell the kids who play in the gardens about the quack who dared to be different.

One day I will look how i’ve always felt and that means I might live a long life filled with love. If I live long I ask that you join me in fighting for trans people and our right to exist. I demand you humanize every trans and gay person they tell you doesn’t matter. Let’s dance and sing and fight for the children who have us as a generation of mentors- an opportunity we were robbed of thanks to the aids crisis in the 80s. If I am not carried away or shoved in an unmarked car and I die of old age I hope it is surrounded by my queer friends who have fought and won the battle so they too could lead happy lives.

I, nor any trans person, owe anybody an explanation but I do like humanizing the trans experience. It’s never too late to live as your true self. I don’t know what I am. I just know what i’m not. I will not lay down and die. I will not let people like me be eradicated silently. My name is Zero, my pronouns are they/he and I exist like the trans people before and after me have and will continue to exist. If I meet a violent end dance for me. If I live a long life fight with me.