*Note: This is a fictional response based on true stories from transgender teens, written from a transfeminine perspective. It’s based in a doctor’s waiting room, but it can translate to any institutional or organizational setting, such as schools, government services, etc.

I sit here in this waiting room, my first time at a new doctor’s office. I’m unsure how they’ll treat me, how they’ll name me, how they’ll gender me. I brace for the worst. It’s hard to show up to doctors’ visits at all, given the bad experiences I’ve had in the past. I’ve had people call me by my old name, use the wrong pronouns, and then the doctors don’t even know what to do with me. I show up asking for help and trusting them, and people look at me like I’m an alien or something, and then they say they can’t help me. They say they don’t have the “expertise” to help me, and they send me somewhere else. So now I’m here trying to face my gender transition and hoping so much that this experience will be different.

I think maybe people don’t know what it feels like when they call me by my old name, the legal one I was born with, or when they use the wrong pronouns. So maybe I can explain it to you. Every time someone calls me by my birth name or calls me “he”, a sharp pain hits me hard. It hurts in my stomach, heart, and head all at the same time. I get a punch in the stomach, a sharp knife cuts through my chest from the inside, and a headache comes on strong. I curve my back more, scrunch my shoulders forward; my body trying to block itself from the pain. I look down, away from people’s eyes, and try to disappear. Or sometimes I fight back and tell them off or break things, or do anything I can to make them feel how much pain I’m in.

Every time someone calls me by my old name or uses the wrong pronouns, it triggers a lifetime of pain associated with that name and those pronouns. All of a sudden I experience the pain from the time my dad took away my dolls and yelled at me for playing with them when I was a kid. Then the time my teacher and schoolmates laughed at me for trying to play with the little girls in kindergarten. And deeper still, the time my mom cried when she found me dressing up in her clothes in 5^th grade.

A whole mess of feelings from countless traumatic experiences floods my life so much of the time. Each day I’m trying to keep my head above water, to keep from drowning. Every forward step I take awaits new challenges I hadn’t expected. I don’t know why it’s so hard, but I do my best to face each day. I make a new pledge to go back to school after being harassed at the last two. I vow to try to talk to my mom again after our last fight. I’m determined to start medically transitioning so I can take control of my life. With all the challenges, instead of backing down, I keep showing up. I keep fighting, and I’m doing my best. Part of that is trying to keep all the emotions from past traumas at bay, but the floodgates are still vulnerably thin.

So please keep that old name and old pronouns out of this new space I’m attempting to connect with. Please give me a moment of respite so I can gain strength for the next hurdle that awaits me outside. I’m hoping so much that this time can be different, that I could actually be treated as the new young woman I am. This hope is still small and uncertain, but you can help it grow. Please help me have a fresh start by making sure to call me by my new name and pronouns every time. Thank you!