Share one of your life's stories:

When writing your story, please use correct spelling and grammar. Please use a capital I rather than a lower i, and use apostrophes correctly. Such as I'm, don't, can't.

I was not born to the privilege of wearing the kind of clothes that I believed were appropriate to my spirit

From as early as I can remember, there was a picture on the wall of my older sister holding me on her lap, with me in my baptism dress. I remember, as a small child, always wishing that I could have been allowed, like her, to still be wearing a dress.

As may be obvious, I was not born to the privilege of wearing the kind of clothes that I believed were appropriate to my spirit and soul, according to the powers that held sway over my fate. One of my favorite memories from my childhood was the day that I talked that same sister into exchanging clothes, so that I could wear her dress. I also wanted to switch underwear but she balked at that. Nonetheless, I got to feel the wonderful sensation of being dressed the way that I should be.

Circumstances forced me to abandon the idea of ever being able to achieve the right to be myself and led to me becoming someone who struggled everyday to try to be the someone I was expected to be. Under the circumstances, I guess it could have turned out worse. For example, none of my suicide attempts were successful, which could have resulted in unhappiness for those that I love and who love me.

It is now, so many years later, that even though the same problem plagues me, personally, that I find myself struggling with anger when I come across evidence of the same intolerance that forced me into a life of silence, that I ask myself whether humans will ever be capable of realizing that while we are all the same, with regard to our common need of sustenance, we are not all the same and it is highly unlikely that all of the variations we encompass could ever be contained in any philosophy.

Given that those who see their own fear of their own chosen god as a virtue to be admired, despite such blatantly masochistic obviation, still manage to exert public sway, I can’t imagine a world that could ever offer kind comfort or even recognition of those of us who had to stumble blindly through repeated restarts on the way to be something that we never could and don’t even understand, despite everything that our genitalia and outer appearance suggests.

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