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70. Sage
Sage, 29, Oklahoma, USA
I was raised in a very rural area by two extremely loving parents who were loath to admit I might have serious imperfections. With undiagnosed autism, hormonal and chronic pain issues, and, in my teens, the onset of an emotional disorder, I was a difficult but precocious child who was a fairly early adopter of nascent social media, bolstered by my interest in drawing and publishing my art. With how isolated I was and how poorly I was able to fit in and interact with peers in the real world, it was easy for the internet to become my predominant vehicle for self-expression.
When I was introduced to transgender ideology by a partner I had met online, it seemed like an obvious explanation for everything that I had gone through up to that point- nothing was wrong with me after all, I was just in the wrong body. As a lifelong tomboy who was always tall and broad for my age, as well as a budding bisexual whose attraction to men felt nothing like what peers around me described, I even felt like I had been born to walk this path all along. I always had a convenient excuse not to pursue medical transition beyond binding and voice training- something I recognise now as hesitation I’m incredibly grateful for- but this new identity gave me a way to escape an awkward, uncomfortable self I now thoroughly hated and barely “used” anyway in favour of my online identity, and introduced me to reams of strangers who claimed to love people like me.
This became a very dark path into the bowels of radicalisation that took me very far away, both physically and emotionally, from everything I knew and almost everyone I loved, swallowing my life whole for almost a decade of what should be the best years of a person’s life. I dropped out of college twice, never kept a job longer than six months, and moved approximately every year and constantly experienced devastating social blowups with the individuals, equally troubled, that my choices exposed me to. I never felt any better- it always felt like I was on a perpetual decline. With a head crammed full of nonstop bad news, information about how to be a terrorist, constant propaganda about the necessity of rejecting and rewriting myself, and an eventual substance problem, all without ever actually receiving care for my actual medical issues, I lived each day in a fugue of negativity and dissociation for longer than I’d care to recall. It took far too long to notice it wasn’t working. People around me kept dying, by their own hands or by the consequences of their actions, and slowly, as I reached my upper 20s, I realised I desperately did not want to live like this forever.
So I changed. I left the circles that had consumed my life for that pitch-black near-decade, leaving me with very little, and moved home with the same Godsent parents who never stopped loving me through it all. I rebuilt from nothing and found that, without the noise in my life, I was able to go back to school and finish my degree with a 4.0, to find and hold the exact sort of job I always wanted, to cleanly leave social environments that felt uncomfortable. I lost nearly 100lbs and found a connection with nature that I had internalised, from my rural upbringing, as being embarrassing and primitive. I got my autism diagnosed, began taking medication for my mental health, stayed offline for several years, and discovered there was both more and less wrong with me than I had ever thought. I wasn’t in the wrong body- I was in a body with unmet needs. I didn’t need fixing, I needed care and peace.
It’s always been extremely difficult for me to feel like I belong anywhere. I’m bisexual, but religious; creative, but quite moderate; highly introverted, but deeply loving. None of these contradictions have gone away or even eased, and I still routinely wrestle with them and with the additional baggage of how I spent my late teens to mid-20s. When I feel as though I’ll never be understood or loved for who and what I am, though, projects like this one remind me I am not alone. I am a creature of contradictions, and so, too, I imagine, are you. You don’t need to fit anywhere but in your skin. The world was made big enough for you, I promise, and you are never unloved, just as you are.
Sage, 29, Oklahoma, USA
I was raised in a very rural area by two extremely loving parents who were loath to admit I might have serious imperfections. With undiagnosed autism, hormonal and chronic pain issues, and, in my teens, the onset of an emotional disorder, I was a difficult but precocious child who was a fairly early adopter of nascent social media, bolstered by my interest in drawing and publishing my art. With how isolated I was and how poorly I was able to fit in and interact with peers in the real world, it was easy for the internet to become my predominant vehicle for self-expression.
When I was introduced to transgender ideology by a partner I had met online, it seemed like an obvious explanation for everything that I had gone through up to that point- nothing was wrong with me after all, I was just in the wrong body. As a lifelong tomboy who was always tall and broad for my age, as well as a budding bisexual whose attraction to men felt nothing like what peers around me described, I even felt like I had been born to walk this path all along. I always had a convenient excuse not to pursue medical transition beyond binding and voice training- something I recognise now as hesitation I’m incredibly grateful for- but this new identity gave me a way to escape an awkward, uncomfortable self I now thoroughly hated and barely “used” anyway in favour of my online identity, and introduced me to reams of strangers who claimed to love people like me.
This became a very dark path into the bowels of radicalisation that took me very far away, both physically and emotionally, from everything I knew and almost everyone I loved, swallowing my life whole for almost a decade of what should be the best years of a person’s life. I dropped out of college twice, never kept a job longer than six months, and moved approximately every year and constantly experienced devastating social blowups with the individuals, equally troubled, that my choices exposed me to. I never felt any better- it always felt like I was on a perpetual decline. With a head crammed full of nonstop bad news, information about how to be a terrorist, constant propaganda about the necessity of rejecting and rewriting myself, and an eventual substance problem, all without ever actually receiving care for my actual medical issues, I lived each day in a fugue of negativity and dissociation for longer than I’d care to recall. It took far too long to notice it wasn’t working. People around me kept dying, by their own hands or by the consequences of their actions, and slowly, as I reached my upper 20s, I realised I desperately did not want to live like this forever.
So I changed. I left the circles that had consumed my life for that pitch-black near-decade, leaving me with very little, and moved home with the same Godsent parents who never stopped loving me through it all. I rebuilt from nothing and found that, without the noise in my life, I was able to go back to school and finish my degree with a 4.0, to find and hold the exact sort of job I always wanted, to cleanly leave social environments that felt uncomfortable. I lost nearly 100lbs and found a connection with nature that I had internalised, from my rural upbringing, as being embarrassing and primitive. I got my autism diagnosed, began taking medication for my mental health, stayed offline for several years, and discovered there was both more and less wrong with me than I had ever thought. I wasn’t in the wrong body- I was in a body with unmet needs. I didn’t need fixing, I needed care and peace.
It’s always been extremely difficult for me to feel like I belong anywhere. I’m bisexual, but religious; creative, but quite moderate; highly introverted, but deeply loving. None of these contradictions have gone away or even eased, and I still routinely wrestle with them and with the additional baggage of how I spent my late teens to mid-20s. When I feel as though I’ll never be understood or loved for who and what I am, though, projects like this one remind me I am not alone. I am a creature of contradictions, and so, too, I imagine, are you. You don’t need to fit anywhere but in your skin. The world was made big enough for you, I promise, and you are never unloved, just as you are.