Being trans isn’t easy.

People claiming it’s a trend. A fashion.

An unhealthy sub-culture.

It’s tiring.

People don’t realise what it means to be trans.

To experience gender differently to how society portrays it to be.

The truth is, so many more of us experience our gender differently to how it’s portrayed. Just as so many people experience their sexuality differently.

Countless men are attracted to trans and femme women. We log onto Grindr and our messages are swamped with straight and bi men trying to get laid. Message after message.

Yet blank profile after blank profile.

Never showing their face.

Or sharing their photos only after you’ve spoken.

Because their afraid. They live in fear.

They fear the stigma society puts on them. The rejection.

The outcasting.

So they make a choice to be in the closet. To not be open about their sexual preference.

It’s a choice, and they choose it.

But as trans, we don’t have that choice.

We cannot choose to hide ourselves from the world.

We all try.

We all try so bad,

But the truth is we can’t. Because the pain we experience inside by internalising our true selves is breaking.

It breaks us.

It doesn’t just break us a little bit.

It breaks over and over again.

And it doesn’t stop breaking us, even when we’re out.

Society is systematically designed to operate against us.

Media isn’t our friend.

We live in fear every time we leave our houses.

And yet we continue to be belittled.

Berated.

Bastardised.

Sometimes by the very men who sit on grinder messaging us.

We’re just humans trying to live our lives.

Why does it need to be so difficult?