I grew up in the 1980s and early 1990s as part of Generation X. Looking back, high school was one of the most confusing periods of my life, and the effects of that confusion still influence my relationships today.
I was transgender, although I didn't have a word for it back then. The vocabulary simply wasn't part of my world. I didn't know there were other people who felt the way I did, and I certainly didn't know that what I was experiencing had a name. All I knew was that I desperately wanted to be a girl, yet every mirror reminded me that everyone else saw me as a boy.
Then puberty arrived.
As I started developing romantic and sexual feelings toward girls, I thought I had finally found proof that I was normal. For a brief moment, it seemed like one piece of my life made sense. Boys were supposed to like girls, and I liked girls, so maybe everything else I had been feeling was just something I would eventually grow out of.
Instead, puberty created the greatest conflict I had ever known.
I wanted to be with girls, but I also wanted to be a girl. Those weren't separate desires in my mind—they existed together, constantly pulling against one another. Every crush came with confusion. Was I attracted to her? Was I jealous of her? Did I want to date her, or did I want to wake up looking like her? Most of the time, the answer was all of the above.
Trying to sort through those emotions without any framework was exhausting. I couldn't separate admiration from attraction or envy from affection because no one had ever explained that those feelings could coexist. I simply assumed there was something deeply wrong with me.
As the years went on, I tried to suppress every thought about wanting to be a woman. By then, I had already prayed countless times. I had begged God to fix me, to make the thoughts go away, or somehow make the impossible possible. Eventually, I stopped asking. I reached the painful conclusion that God wasn't going to help me.
I didn't know what being transgender was. I didn't know transition existed. I didn't know there were adults who had successfully built happy lives after confronting these feelings. All I saw was an impossible dream. Becoming a woman wasn't merely difficult—it seemed completely unattainable. If something is impossible, eventually you stop hoping for it.
Because of that, I couldn't tell anyone.
Who could I even talk to? How do you explain something you don't have words for? How do you tell someone you want to be a girl when you barely understand it yourself? I was terrified people would think I was crazy. So I stayed silent.
I knew the word lesbian, but in the culture I grew up in, it wasn't discussed with understanding or respect. It was often used as an insult or a punchline. Among teenage boys, it was something they called girls who rejected them. It certainly wasn't something I could use to explain what I was feeling, because what I felt wasn't that simple. I wasn't a boy who wanted to date lesbians. I wasn't even sure I wanted to date anyone. I simply knew that somehow I felt closer to girls than boys, while simultaneously being attracted to girls. It was a contradiction I couldn't untangle.
So I created a story.
I convinced myself—and everyone else—that I simply wasn't interested in dating during high school because it would only last four years. We'd all graduate, go to different colleges, and break up anyway. Why bother starting a relationship that had an expiration date?
I repeated that explanation so often that I eventually believed it myself. It sounded logical. Mature, even.
Now I realize it wasn't the real reason.
The truth is that I never allowed anyone to get close enough to discover who I really was. I built walls around myself long before I understood why I needed them. I wasn't protecting a secret that I understood—I was protecting a secret I couldn't even explain.
Not even my parents knew.
By that point, I was already living with depression, although it hadn't been diagnosed. Years of bullying had already convinced me that I didn't belong. The isolation fed the depression, and the depression fed the isolation. It became a cycle that I couldn't recognize because I had never known anything different.
I kept telling myself that things would improve once I got to college.
College would be different.
College would be a fresh start.
Except it wasn't.
Changing locations doesn't magically change who you are. I carried all of my fears, insecurities, and emotional baggage with me. I had spent my entire adolescence hiding from meaningful relationships, so when I finally reached adulthood, I had never actually learned how to build them. I didn't know how to trust people. I didn't know how to let someone know the real me because I wasn't even sure there was a real me anymore beneath all the layers of pretending.
Academically, I struggled throughout high school—not because I lacked intelligence, but because I lacked hope.
People often assume students who don't apply themselves simply don't care. That wasn't true for me. I cared about many things. I simply couldn't see a future where any effort mattered. Every assignment, every test, every goal felt disconnected from a life I couldn't imagine wanting to live.
What difference would good grades make if I couldn't picture myself ever being happy?
I drifted through life doing the bare minimum required to survive. I had talents. Looking back, I know I had abilities that could have taken me in many different directions. But when depression convinces you that there is no future worth striving toward, talent becomes meaningless. It's difficult to invest in tomorrow when you can't imagine wanting to be there.
The one dream that truly mattered to me was the one I believed could never happen.
I wanted to be a woman.
Not someday in fantasy. Not in a game. Not in a dream. In real life.
And I believed, with absolute certainty, that it was impossible.
Or at least, I thought it was.
I searched for answers in every way I knew how as a young person. I prayed. I tried to ignore the feelings. I tried to reason them away. I tried to convince myself they were just a phase or a strange fantasy that would disappear if I worked hard enough to suppress it.
Nothing worked.
Eventually, I lost not only hope for that dream but also faith itself. It wasn't a single dramatic moment when everything collapsed. It happened slowly, over years of unanswered questions and silent suffering. Piece by piece, I stopped believing that God was listening. Piece by piece, I stopped believing happiness was meant for me.
I didn't expect my future to be joyful anymore. I simply expected to endure it.
That, more than anything, is what living as a closeted transgender teenager in the 1990s felt like. It wasn't only the absence of information or representation. It was the absence of hope. When you don't know that people like you exist, you don't know that a future like yours can exist either.