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What Would the World Look Like if We Truly Started Seeing?
On being seen as a trans woman
The first time I noticed someone staring at me, really staring, was back in Colombia. I was walking through a crowded Plaza.
I could smell the scent of orange blossom and fried churros, a setting much too picturesque to accommodate the sharp blade of reality I had been avoiding for so long but had struck like lightning.
A group of teenagers. Young. Carefree. Naive. Were whispering and smirking. One girl cupped her hand over her mouth, but her eyes, those innocent eyes, betrayed her amusement.
I froze. I was overcome by a mix of fire and ice spreading through me. Was it my jawline? My shoulders? Something in the way I walked? Whatever it was, I knew. I had been clocked. Rumbled. Seen in all the wrong ways.
I wanted nothing more than to disappear. I wanted to melt into the pavement.
But living in this world where you’re constantly under scrutiny means that fading away is never an option. If you want to fade away and live in the shadows, you must betray a part of your soul that will be gone forever.
You will never be the same again.
You can’t do that. Not when you are a trans woman who walks the thin red line of…
