Q: As a child, did an adult tell you something you KNEW in the moment couldn’t be true? Were you right or wrong?

As a child, did an adult tell you something you KNEW in the moment couldn’t be true? Were you right or wrong?

I was two or three years old and in the nursery at church during a service, playing with a girl. She suddenly stopped playing with me and proclaimed “we can’t play with each other because I’m a girl and you’re a boy, and boys and girls don’t play with each other!”

I protested, “but I’m a girl!”

One of the adults in the nursery saw us and came over.

“She said she can’t play with me because I’m a boy, but I’m not. I’m a girl!”

The adult laughed and told me “don’t be silly, you are a boy.”

My cheeks were red with a mixture of confusion, anger, and shame. I thought to myself “how does she know I’m a boy? Nobody asked me!”

Turns out I was right. While I was born in a male body, I was born a girl. Thanks to that adult’s well-meaning but incorrect assumptions, that was the day I first stepped into the closet where I would live (miserably) for the rest of my childhood and adolescence, and for a good portion of my adult life.

I no longer live in that closet and am happily living the rest of my life as the girl I always knew I was, but was told I couldn’t be.