I wish I knew how much power I had as a young trans person

Luc Grey has contributed to a book called Letter to My Little Trans Self, in which several writers share the words they wish they could say to their past selves.

Hello, me, it’s you!

I’m so full of love for you. I’ve had to start this letter about ten times because I’m split between telling you everything and telling you nothing at all. It would be an easy kindness to tell it all – all the experiences and the secrets I’m keeping from you – but I respect you more than to go for the easy route.

You deserve to figure things out at your own pace, and to enjoy the process without spoilers. You always enjoyed a good story, anyway. It would be a disservice to let you skip half the pages in the book.

So I’ll just say this:

In about 10 years time, you’re going to be asked to write a letter to your past self. Start planning it now.

Think about the days that stick out to you. Notice the times that you know will become memories and savour them like the last slice of birthday cake. Prepare all you can, because this letter means a lot of different things to all the yous that are going to read it, in time.

I already said I don’t want to spoil it for you, but there are a lot of things you don’t know about yourself yet. Congratulations! That’s one of the best gifts you could be given. The process of learning about yourself is never ending. You’re like a 4D matryoshka of identities and complexities. You love a good puzzle. Enjoy this one.

I know, I know it would be easier to just tell you, and sometimes I think about who I’d be if you’d worked it out much earlier. But I think that discounts a lot about our identity. So much of us is found in the making, the telling of our story.

There’s not a goal you have to reach, some endpoint where you’re going to be happy with what we are. You’re always learning new things about yourself, finding new ways to be yourself.

Sometimes the old ways you wear yourself will cease to serve you. Put them safely in the closet for a rainy day. You might find, a few years down the line, that you bring them back out, and blow off the dust, and wear them again – perhaps with a pinch of irony, or maybe even more earnestly than ever before.

If (when) you do this, know that it isn’t a regression. Your past selves are still within you, informing this choice, helping you to understand the you that you want to be in that moment.

Isn’t that wonderful? The ‘you’ I’m writing to is helping me write this. The ‘me’ that’s writing this will read it in a few years from now, and hear exactly the thing they need to hear.

But you don’t know them yet, and neither do I. Let’s get back to us, shall we?

A handful of years before you write this letter, you’ll speak in a creative writing class about your experiences with exploring your gender. A few weeks later, someone you don’t know will catch your arm on the train and thank you for speaking up. They’ll say that you gave them some things to think about, and then they’ll run off into the commuting crowd.

You’ll think about that day for the rest of your life. You never even learned their name. You don’t think you ever saw them again. But it was fundamental, in a way, to the person you’d become. You care about that moment, when you see something light in someone’s eyes, when you know you’ve set them on a thought project, when you know you’ve given them a chance to explore something they’d never even considered before your words reached their ears.

The things you say have power. You know that, already, but you don’t realise how much power. Keep speaking, keep writing, singing, shouting, sharing your heart with as many people as you can.

The world needs it. If you keep on sharing your stories, so will others, and you will move forward together.

Right. I’m done with the vague part. There are a few things I can and should tell you for certain. You deserve to hear them from someone.

You’re going to be okay.

Everything is going to be okay, in the end. More ‘okay’ than you can even imagine. The worst-case scenario is rarely ever true. Allow yourself to hope for the best. The more you dream of a better world, the more likely it is that you’ll bring yourself into it.

You are a million beginnings.

You’re full of the potential to be and do absolutely anything. You’ll fail, but you’ll always succeed more. You’ll make mistakes, but you’ll learn from them. You’ll try, and fall, and you’ll get back up again with teeth gritted in an unapologetic grin.

You’re going to live in a world where people love you, and where you love so much that it feels like it’s bubbling out of you, onto the pages of your notebooks.

You’re going to be brilliant.

You’re going to nurture the creativity you’re kindling right now, until it’s a roaring fire that you have no option but to share. You’ll set alight the heads of others, and add your mark to the blaze of art and love that keeps the world spinning.

Be kind to yourself.

You’re a kid, and that’s one of the best things you can be. Fuck anyone who makes you feel bad for it. Enjoy your life, sink your fingers into the world, solve yourself and tell me about it one day, in a letter.

I love you.
Thanks for sticking around.

Yours fondly, Me

Do you have a story you’d like to share? Get in touch by emailing jess.austin@metro.co.uk. 

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