One of the hardest things about growing up Trans was the fact that I could not look at my own body. When I did it was not with the eye that said I was good looking, hansom, or even normal. I never saw that in the mirror. What I saw was an image of someone looking back at me but it was not right it just did not add up. In fact, I did not even have the words for what I was feeling inside as I did not have the vocabulary much less the support to understand.

It was a feeling of disconnection with what I saw. That disconnection grew to hate in time. Then apathy even an unwillingness to look in the mirror. As puberty started and progressed it became unbearable. I started to think that if I had just been born as a normal woman, my life would have felt connected to my body. I recall times where I would sit in my room and pray that I would wake up in the correct body. It was not an easy part in my life. There was also a lot of trauma that resulted in those feelings and having no one to talk with about it. Half of it was I was scared to death of more anger from my mother. I read a quote that say the child does not stop loving the abusive parent, they stop loving themselves. I would take it one step further that even the abused person with try and try to fix the broken to find approval of said abuser. It does not matter the age of the victim. We all want to be loved by a person we feel close to. Sadly when that abuse is there it is only one sided affection. That will still result in the same abuse that has always been.

Freedom comes at a cost and we must ask ourselves are we willing to pay that cost. Sometimes that cost is to high such is the case of a person that over looks the abuse. That cost could be anything that they link to the abuser. It does not even have to be factual. But someday that cost will have to be paid. I have had to pay that cost twice and I will never pay it again.

I know I said it was about growing up as Trans. But to be honest it is not always growing up as a child. Sometimes we have to grow up as an adult.