Love You More (Not Less)

By: an anonymous ally.

When you and I were in school, we didn't know the word "transgender."

We might have vaguely remembered a "pronoun" from a grammar lesson (both being hardcore nerds.) 

Non-binary probably sounded like something out of chemistry to do with ions, or eons, or some other term that sounded like my brother's Pokemon. 

I remember you. Curly headed and unsure. Shrinking. Stumbling. 

The poster boy (used advisedly) for the kid that other kids picked on. And I resolved, with all of my eleven year old bravado, to make you my friend. 

I never knew a "girl" as my friend. I just knew this dorky kid with glasses on a string around his head, who had to be reminded to shut his damn legs in a Posh Uniform Skirt. All the time. Who tracked the other boys in our school - which one's voice was breaking, which one had the beginnings of facial hair, with a wistful look that masked a deep yearning. 

Who was the best friend I could've dreamed of, let alone asked for. I wouldn't have known how to ask a higher power for a gift like you. 

I wish I'd known, at the time, the word "transgender." 

I wish I could go back and tell twelve year old you, twelve year old me, that you were a boy, and that that was not only OK - but common. 

Instead, you struggled, lonely. Never alone, I hope, but lonely nonetheless. 

Because no one had a word for the feelings. 

I wasn't the best friend throughout high school. I wasn't transphobic or homophobic or anything, just…. Absent. But this story isn't about me, it's about you. 

I'm sick of hearing, as a queer person, that "people don't love me any less." 

That suggests that I've done something I deserve to be loved less for. Liking chicks isn't the same as killing someone, thanks very much. 

I'm also sick of hearing that "gender doesn't matter."

Of course it does. It matters to you so desperately. 

And because I love you, it matters to me. 

It matters who you are.

There is no literal way I could love you less. 

But I think I've found a way to love you more. 

The "you" with the shining eyes. The "you" that inhabits your body, rather than wears it like a chain. 

The "you" I see when you feel like you're male. 

The "you", lying drunk on anaesthetic in a hospital gown, telling all the nurses top surgery was the best day of your life. 

The "you" that was always inside of you.

No one will ever convince me that locking that person up, in a cage of prejudice and uncertainty, was anything short of a crime. 

No one will convince me that disinformation wasn't a special kind of darkness - a cold, cramped, dank thing. A limit. 

I watched masculinity stream like daylight into your life. A slow dawn - creeping, hesitant rays over a cold, blue-black sky. Then stronger, stronger, until the eastern sky is aflame, you're so radiant with it you could burst. 

No one will ever convince me that letting that boy, that man, out of the darkness into the world- out to taste it, to take it in, to give to it - is anything short of a miracle. 

Ten years on, god knows how many major surgeries, you're Uncle to my dog, and you're back studying law. 

Every time, every single time, I think o couldn't love you more, you grow my heart another size. 

Your friend, your brother, your comrade in arms. 

All my love.