When you grow up in Albuquerque, you think, “damn, it must be greener somewhere else.” When I graduated, I decided to go to a liberal arts college in Alabama. My dad was from there, and we had visited every summer of my life. It was definitely green, and it was familiar. Mostly, though, I just wanted to get away from my parents.
When I moved, my parents moved to Alabama, too.
My escape failed, and that was a clue.
As a secret trans woman growing up in a fundamentalist evangelical family, I survived by living two lives simultaneously, and my interior and external lives were diametrically opposed. I thought with a fresh start away from my parents, I could work towards being my authentic self. Instead, things got much worse.