Member-only story
I DIDN’T KNOW HER. BUT I KNEW HER PAIN
One Question From a Trans Teen Made Me Question Everything I Knew
I was 21, unprepared, and this story found me when I was still finding myself
“Why is it a sin to want to feel real in your body? Is it really my fault for being this way? Have I not tried hard enough to suppress it?”
She asked it like she’d already tried a thousand times. Like her very existence was an inconvenience, she’d been apologising about her desires for a long time.
Her voice trembled. But it wasn’t fear I heard — it was fatigue. Like, she was silently screaming, What’s the point anymore?
Through her words, I could feel she was tired of waking up and fighting society, fighting herself.
I still remember the moment. The hum of the fan above me, the flickering screen of my old phone lighting up a dark room. I was 21, barely grown myself, gripping the phone with cold fingers, trying to talk a stranger out of ending their life.
Someone I barely knew. And yet, somehow, I felt everything she wasn’t saying, too. Even her silence was screaming pain.
