The kids are not mutilated. We never have been. We never will be.
 
I wish I could tell the kids that. Because I know what it is to be a trans child staring down a mental health provider who says you’re mixed up and wrong. I know what it is to lose trust in your body. I know what it is to feel like an animal trapped in a corpse and have the whole world tell you to “just be normal.”
 
I see you and I know.
 
I was sixteen when I came out as a man. Eleven years later, I sit in a chair giving blood and reading about the bans on gender affirming care. I read the articles about mutilation. I hear the president scream about the end of women and girls.
 
Guilt oozes in my sternum and drips past my top surgery scars through my testosterone fueled muscles and into my abdomen where there is no longer a womb. This body I fought for as a minor, this home I have carved for myself, feels like a cheat.
 
I’m an adult who started T at age seventeen. I’m looking back at the way crumbling behind me.
 
And I don’t know what to do. I’m giving blood because I have to feel like I’m doing something for someone or I’ll lose it.
 
I’m thinking about Frankenstein’s monster as I’m giving blood. I think about how he was forced into existence by an uncaring creator. I think of his stitched and monstrous body. I think of the rage and the hurt of being cast away by the people who are supposed to love and care for you.
 
To tell the truth, some days when I read what people think of us trans folks, I feel a little monstrous myself.
 
And maybe there is something monstrous in a crafted body. But then, even the monstrous can be divine.  
 
This body is home. My voice is mine. My face is mine.
 
I want that for the kids. To step outside and breathe with their transgender lungs. I want them to know peace.
 
If the kids are reading this, you now know at least one trans adult who came out as a minor. I’m now almost 27, I’ve been on HRT for 10 years, and has never regretted transitioning.  Life is worth living as a transgender adult.
 
And my trans blood can help save someone’s life.
 
My blood bag finishes. The phlebotomist tells me a joke that I wont remember and offers me a v8.
 
I didn’t ask for this body. But I did ask for surgeries and hormones so that for one divine lifetime, I can be at home in a body bound in joy. A body made with love.
 
Our existence is essential. Our bodies are divine.
 
Nature is nothing if not change.
 
God wants me to have this body. They want us to exist.
 
I can feel it in my blood.