Qelothrillar
Disciple of Prayer
‘Please give me a miracle. Turn me into a girl overnight.’ I kept it a secret. I was on a train headed for a dead end.’: Transgender teen embraces identity after life-long battle, ‘I am finally me’ “I never understood what it meant to be transgender. Nobody ever explained it to me. The only impressions I had growing up were of insulting caricatures in entertainment. There was one instance where I saw a trans person on TV who was a real person when I was in middle school and probably 12 years old. I felt empathy for them, but I knew to say that about myself would be risky, so I never did. I didn’t learn what it really meant for that person to be trans, and I wouldn’t learn for another 7 years. Living in ignorance of my own identity was confusing to say the least, and left me feeling shame and guilt whenever I addressed the way I felt. I felt forced to repress my feelings for most of my life. It began early on when I was confronted with the concept of boys and girls. I accepted at the time I was a boy and would live as a boy. There wasn’t another option available to me, but I did wish I could be a girl. I remember hoping for a miracle to happen overnight while I fell asleep. I would secretly play Runescape on my alternate account with a female character. It seems like a small thing, and kind of funny to think about, but simply playing as a girl in a video game felt more normal and was the only way I ever could ‘be a girl.’ Courtesy of Aria At the age of 8 or so, I felt guilty and ashamed to feel the way I did, so I kept it a secret. My memories are clouded from this early period of our lives, but it was something very clear to me, and I remember how things changed as I got older. The differences between girls and boys became more and more apparent and it affected every aspect of my life. I went on to mainly have friends who were boys and realized what would get you made fun of and what would bring you respect. I tried rationalizing the feelings I had when I was forced to confront them; it was confusing and would always result in shoving the entire issue into the back of my mind and trying to forget about it. I did so pretty successfully, but there were periods when I just couldn’t ignore it. I lived in a state of mind where I couldn’t even consider accepting bisexuality, let alone the feelings I had about my gender. One was much easier to grasp, although I still felt intense shame about it. The other was something so overwhelming I didn’t have the slightest clue what was ‘wrong’ with me, and I didn’t really want to. Aside from having inherent issues with my gender I didn’t quite understand or want to confront, I also had many other problems in my life as a child. My family life began deteriorating when I was 10 years old, with my parents separating and having issues financially as a result of the 2008 recession. I witnessed how quickly a person can change when my mom, who was the most caring and amazing person I ever knew, went from a healthy and loving parent to an alcoholic who couldn’t care for herself. She was always there for me, always a loving parent, and then it was as if she disappeared. I didn’t see her often. My dad took care of our family on his own and did what he could to keep us afloat. We lost our house and moved several times before I graduated high school. It all ended tragically when she passed in February 2011 from the flu. I was 14. I feel like I am always going to be missing a part of myself because of the way she disappeared, temporarily, and then forever. Having grown up with her there, always smiling and taking care of us, to not being there at all, felt like a part of me was also taken. Sometimes I find myself wondering how it would be if I could have had her there during my teenage years and also while I’ve been transitioning. She was a smart and loving person and loved the LGBT community, so I feel assured she would have supported me all of the way. It makes me feel a bit better, but is also sad because I know this would have been easier if I had her with me. ADVERTISEMENT Courtesy of Aria I remember those years growing up through a haze that seems to be full of pain and confusion. I did have some good memories, but after she passed I felt alone and lost for a while. All of the combined problems I was dealing with left me with a deep feeling of emptiness. I didn’t give up, though. I didn’t want it to break me down. I learned we can only move forward, we don’t have any other choice unless we let our struggles break us. I’m not perfect by any means and there have been times where I did feel broken, but I feel like I’m a stronger person because of what I’ve gone through. I learned a lot from my mom during the short time I had with her. She taught me how to be caring and how to love life. She would always put others before herself and her smile was radiant and contagious. I know I’m a better person because of her. Courtesy of Aria Accepting my identity was a matter of knowing what it means to be transgender. I saw one trans woman on TV when I was young, but never heard her actually talk about the way she felt. When I was 19, I read an article which featured a trans woman who did explain the way she felt, and I immediately connected with her and realized I felt the same way. It was a sudden click, like the opening of my own universe and reality that I never saw or knew existed. It was a wave of relief, curiosity and purpose in my life. It connected all the confusion I had ever had growing up and never could grasp. Living in a world where your own identity doesn’t exist is a thought prison. Without being educated on the subject, or being around people who were trans, I could never connect my feelings to something tangible and real. They were only dreams and desires of another life and I didn’t know I had the possibility of living that way now. Being out of high school finally gave me a higher sense of confidence in accepting myself, and coming across the article at the time was when I was first able to acknowledge my feelings in a healthy way. It was a time where I was thinking of my future and how I wanted it to be, and I knew I wanted to live my life as authentically and real as I could. The next several months were intense. It felt like I was in a constant waterfall which was revealing who I am. I had to think about everything that happened in my life and how this had impacted it. Everything just sort of made sense, like puzzle pieces being connected through a new understanding of why I grew up the way I did. I felt like I was always sort of playing a part, like there was something missing. Looking back with this new perspective and understanding, it wasn’t an authentic version of me. During those periods of confronting my identity growing up, it would come out in bursts of discomfort, pain, confusion, and frustration. Those periods would last a day or a week but I couldn’t bear to let them stay. And beneath that was the envy of other girls and feeling ashamed for feeling that way. It made so much sense now. I understood why I had those feelings growing up, and it was sad to know all it took was reading a single thing about how trans people feel to open up this new world. Read More Courtesy of Aria There is really no feeling like finally understanding who you are after living in fear, shame, and ignorance for so long. Beginning the process of becoming ‘me’ was just another batch of mixed feelings. It was mostly an exciting time, but it was also full of more fear, and the fact I now knew the first 19 years of my life could have gone differently gave me a feeling of emptiness. It felt like a lost childhood. Not to say I don’t have positive memories from growing up, but knowing how different it should have been is a hard thing to accept. Luckily, I still have room for hope and a future where I can live a happy life. It feels like I was on a train headed for a dead end and thankfully I hopped off early enough. I went through puberty already, but I knew my bone structure and my body type could still do well on hormone replacement therapy (HRT). There was still fear, though. I was afraid of being ridiculed if my body wouldn’t look the way I wanted after HRT. It’s impossible to know how it will really affect you. Ultimately, transitioning is the best thing you can do to help yourself if you’re trans and living closeted, but it can uproot your life for worse, too. Society can be cruel. There has to be consideration for your own safety, as trans people face higher rates of unemployment and homelessness. ADVERTISEMENT Before transitioning, there’s oftentimes a hope to live as your real gender without worrying about other people knowing your past. If you can’t do this, you can face harassment and frequent rude encounters while in public. For me, this lasted for the first year or so of transitioning. Going out in public was always something that took a lot of courage because of how deeply uncomfortable it is to walk into an establishment and get rude stares from people, and maybe even someone who wants to take a photo of you to laugh at with their friends. And even more so, the possibility of someone being angry at your existence. Thankfully, the most I experienced was people being blatantly rude and sometimes acting as if I didn’t exist when speaking to them. All in all, these constant experiences when I was in public made me a bit jaded. It’s exhausting having people constantly misgender you and act like you’re an alien. Courtesy of Aria The changes from HRT (hormone replacement therapy) were an immediate relief to me. My skin became softer very quickly, and simply knowing my body wasn’t being altered by testosterone any longer was also such a relief. I felt ‘right’ mentally, and finally had feelings of being at ease. But it still took a very long time for me to let go of the trauma I had from growing up in fear and ignorance about who I am. Looking back on my former self feels strange, like it’s a fragment of me living through a different identity. There were lots of things I had to unlearn, and accepting I am Aria was hard because the feelings of shame and inadequacy still lingered. It was difficult to accept I really could live as a woman. It went against what I understood about gender for the first 19 years of my life. But at the same time, I knew it to be true in my heart. The way it could be so easy and simple and blatantly obvious, yet so hard to accept, made it feel like there was a battle raging within my mind. I learned meditation during this time and it helped me to let go of the past and the problems within me and accept my present self. I’ve come so far because of this, because of therapy, and along with HRT, I feel so much happier and more content than I ever have. My life isn’t perfect, and I am still going through the late stages of transitioning, but I feel peace within myself now. Every day I feel myself growing more and more, and I still feel myself becoming the real version of me, and it feels amazing! Courtesy of Aria Finally being able to live as myself in public without other people being aware of my past and ‘clocking’ me was a huge change. Clocking is when someone notices something about you which makes them realize you’re transgender. I have lived the past 2 – 3 years of my life not having to worry about this. I’m simply treated as any other woman and me being trans doesn’t cross people’s minds anymore. It was really crazy when I entered this stage of my life; it was a complete change from what I was previously describing about how people were so abrasive to my presence. Now, I am being treated with more kindness than I ever have. People smile and strike conversations with me in public. I don’t have to be worried about people being rude and giving me anxiety anymore. It’s a strange thing to be an undercover member of a marginalized group in America. I know some of the people being kind to me now were the same people who would treat me with utter disdain and disrespect prior. I am very thankful I can live in peace this way, and my heart goes out to the trans people who have to face daily discrimination and all of the problems we encounter. No one deserves to live in fear and to have to deal with being ostracized by our society. ADVERTISEMENT Courtesy of Aria Being able to live as a woman has disadvantages. People often treat you with less respect than they would give a man. There’s also a lot of unwanted attention from people who can’t seem to get the message. Having to be on guard more is a big consideration, and encounters with strangers who you meet online or elsewhere can be riskier. These are only a few of the immediate changes in my social life; the way I interact with people fundamentally changed in so many ways. I’ve come a long way since I started transitioning 4 years ago. I’m comfortable with myself and my identity, I feel great, and I’m happy with who I am. It’s scary to think about where I would be right now if I had decided to take my life along a different path. It’s been a hard road, but I learned a lot about myself and about life too. I would never have expected my life to go this route, but I can only look to the future now and at the very least I feel like I’ve pointed myself in the right direction. After living the way I did for so long, I can’t help but feel a piece of contentment with simply, and finally, being me.” Courtesy of Aria This story was submitted to Love What Matters by Aria of Columbus, OH. You can follow her journey on Instagram. Submit your own story here, and be sure to subscribe to our free email newsletter for our best stories and YouTube for our best videos. Read more inspiring stories of transitioning here: ‘Just give her time. She’ll come around.’ My mom has yet to use my correct pronouns. To her, I’ll always be her first ‘daughter.’: Trans man finds courage to live his truth, ‘Transitioning was the biggest act of self-love’ ‘I was told to ‘man up’ after being thrown into a dumpster. I believed I was an abomination.’: Trans woman believed she’d ‘go to hell’ for transitioning, now feels ‘worthy of happiness’ When Abby Stein came out as trans, she sent shock waves through the ultra-Orthodox Hasidic community. A direct descendant of Hasidic Judaism’s founder, The Baal Shem Tov, Abby’s parents considered her their first-born son and a future rabbi – but she was adamant that she was a girl. My dad is a rabbi, and having a son was a big deal. He would always tell me that after five girls he had almost given up on having a boy, and how much it meant to him. I almost felt bad for him throughout my childhood – a feeling of: “I’m so sorry, but I can’t give you what you want.” I didn’t know there were other people like me, but I knew what I felt – I just saw myself as a girl. I sometimes wish that I’d had a teacher who was transphobic, because that would have meant I knew trans people existed. In the Hasidic community they simply never spoke about it. What kept me sane during my childhood was my imagination. When I was six I started collecting newspaper clippings about organ transplants – lung, kidney, heart and so on. In my mind, the plan was simple: one day, I would go to a doctor, show them my impressive collection of newspaper clippings, and they would perform a full body transplant, turning me into a girl. When I got a bit older, I realised that wasn’t realistic, so I came up with my next idea, which was to ask God. I grew up in a very religious family, and we were told God could do anything. So, aged nine, I wrote this prayer that I said every night: “Holy creator, I’m going to sleep now and I look like a boy. I am begging you, when I wake up in the morning I want to be a girl. I know that you can do anything and nothing is too hard for you… “If you do that, I promise that I will be a good girl. I will dress in the most modest clothes. I will keep all the commandments girls have to keep. “When I get older, I will be the best wife. I will help my husband study the Torah all day and all night. I will cook the best foods for him and my kids. Oh God, help me.” The Hasidic community is the most gender-segregated society I’ve ever known or heard about – and I have researched gender-segregated communities quite a bit. There are even some Hasidic communities in upstate New York where men and women are told to walk on separate sides of the streets – it’s the closest thing that exists now to a 19th Century Eastern European Jewish shtetl (village). Find out more Listen to Abby Stein speaking to Outlook, on the BBC World Service Download the Outlook podcast From the second you start preschool, the sexes are totally separated. Boys and girls are told not to play together. Even though in Jewish law there is no prohibition against hugging or holding hands with your sister or mom, when I was growing up it was still considered something Hasidic boys shouldn’t do. I never saw anyone naked. I did not know that my sisters and I had different body parts down under. It was never discussed. Even so, when I was four years old I had this intense feeling of anger towards my own private parts. They didn’t feel like part of me. It was an extremely strong feeling that I cannot explain to this day. At that time, my mom would prepare the bath and let me play with the toys in the bathtub. She used to keep a small tray of safety pins in the cabinet by the sink, so I would sneak out and take these safety pins and prick this one very specific part of my body. It’s not something that I encourage anyone to do, but I wanted to make it feel pain, almost like punishing it. One time my mom walked in on me as I was doing this and she freaked out. I don’t remember what she said exactly, but it was a very clear message that: “You are a boy and you’re supposed to act like one, and don’t ever say anything that might challenge that.” At the age of three, Hasidic boys have their first haircut, called the upsherin, which is when you get the side curls, or payos. That’s the first kind of physical manifestation that indicates to the world – and to yourself – that you are a boy. I did not want to have that haircut. I was throwing a temper tantrum for hours. “I want to have long hair! Why can my sisters have long hair and I can’t?” At 13, I had my bar mitzvah, which is when a boy becomes a man – so that was very tough. I have some positive memories of it, like having a party and getting lots of gifts, but the concept of: “You are now a man,” was really challenging. It was a celebration I felt I shouldn’t be having. If you want to get a sense of how isolated the Hasidic community is, until I was 12 I thought that the majority of people in the world were Jewish and that the majority of Jews were ultra-Orthodox – neither of which is correct. Take any aspect of pop culture of the 90s – Britney Spears, or Seinfeld – I didn’t even know it existed. I didn’t speak English until I was 20, just Yiddish and Hebrew. At school we just learned the ABCs and how to write our names and addresses, and that only lasted from fourth to eighth grade, for an hour a day – and even that hour was split between English and maths. Maths only went up to the level of long division, and we never touched any science or history, outside of some Jewish history. The expectation, growing up, was that I would work as a teacher or rabbinical judge. If you lead a synagogue or teach at a school in the Hasidic community, you’re also called a rabbi, regardless of whether you have been ordained or not – but I actually wanted to be ordained. There were several reasons why. Part of it was that I wanted to know exactly what I was rebelling against – my struggle with my identity as a woman meant I questioned everything I was being told about religion and God. At school, they called me the “kosher rebel”. At the same time, another part of me was hoping that if I really gave my entire self to it, all these feelings about who I was were just magically going to go away. When I was 16, I immersed myself in Jewish mysticism, called Kabbalah. That was where I first came across a religious text that justified my existence. In a 16th Century study of human souls called The Door of Reincarnation, I read: “At times, a male will reincarnate in the body of a female, and a female will be in a male body.” It gave me hope that maybe I wasn’t crazy. Even though I knew I was really a woman, I had an arranged marriage like everyone in the Hasidic community. You’re born, you eat, you breathe, you get married at age 18. My parents set it up. My bride had to come from a rabbinical dynasty and adhere to the same dress codes, which in my family are extremely unusual – so much so that there were probably only 20 to 50 girls in the entire world that were acceptable matches. Fraidy and I met for about 15 to 20 minutes, and then we were engaged. We didn’t meet again until our wedding, a year later. At first, things went well. I liked her, she’s an amazing woman, really smart and loving. We had great conversations, we never fought. As far as arranged marriages go, it was perfect. It was the first time I had lived with a woman, which felt good. She was quite fashionable, and when we went shopping it was a way of putting myself in her shoes and thinking: “Oh, what would I get?” Hasidic men wear black and white clothes with almost no choices whatsoever. Women get to explore a bit more, although it has to be modest, and certain colours, like red and pink, are off-limits. But when Fraidy got pregnant, I really struggled. It was as if everything – gender, religion, my family, my son – was collapsing in on me and punching me. It was like gender was hitting me in the face, it was just so present – what kind of clothes we were going to buy for the baby, whether we were going to do a circumcision on the eighth day – it was impossible not to face it every second. My son’s birth was the final, knock-out punch. I wanted to give my child the best life possible, but how could I, if, by the age of 20, I didn’t even know what “a good life” was? So I went online. I knew that there was a place called the internet where you could connect with people and find information. There was such a strong focus on telling us how not to connect to the internet by mistake that I had learned about Wi-Fi and Google. I borrowed a friend’s tablet and hid in a toilet cubicle at a shopping centre that had public Wi-Fi. My first search was whether a boy could turn into a girl – in Hebrew, I didn’t speak English at the time – and on the first or second page of the results, there was the Wikipedia page about transgender people. That was the first time I learned the term and realised there were other people who felt like me. Imagine struggling with something, whether it’s physical or emotional, and you go to a doctor or therapist who for the first time in your life tells you: “Oh, what you are feeling is called XYZ, and here is what you can do to feel better, to find your place in the world.” Another amazing discovery was that there was a community of people online who had left ultra-Orthodox and Hasidic communities and had not just survived, but thrived. A few weeks later I stopped being religious. I don’t think it was obvious to many people because I was still living a religious life outwardly, but I stopped observing – for example, I started using my phone on Shabbat… anything that people wouldn’t see. My wife was the first person in the community that I spoke to about it, about six months after our son’s circumcision. I didn’t leave my marriage. For a year, we tried to save it, but my ex was forced to leave me by her family. They took her away, quite literally. I lived in our apartment for the next few weeks, hoping that she and my son would come back. Then, for a while, I moved back in with my parents. When I came out to my dad as an atheist, he said, “No matter what happens, you are still my child.” Once I realised that there was no way for me to live with my son full-time, I decided there was nothing left in the community for me. Leaving is like emigrating – not just to a new country, but a new continent. It’s a new century. It’s time travel! Suddenly, I was in a world where there were unlimited options for food and clothing. I bought my first pair of jeans and a red-and-white checked shirt. I always sucked at male fashion. Language was the biggest obstacle to overcome, because when you grow up in New York, people expect you to speak English. For three years I didn’t speak to anyone in my family about my gender. I came out to my dad on 11 November 2015, a few months after starting hormone therapy. It took my dad about an hour to even grasp what I was telling him, and that was thanks to certain religious texts that I showed him – one of which was the passage about male and female souls that I had discovered when I was studying Kabbalah, Jewish mysticism. Image copyright Netflix Image caption Abby has a small part in the Netflix drama, Unorthodox My dad admitted that trans people exist, which was quite impressive, because a lot of fundamentalist religious communities don’t. Then he told me: “You need to have a person who has Holy Spirit, in order to be able to tell you if you are really trans.” My reaction was: “I think two therapists and a doctor are good enough.” But he obviously disagreed, and a few minutes after that he pretty much told me that he would never talk to me again. At that moment, it really hurt. But the reality was that by the time I came out, it was already three years after I had left the Hasidic community. I had enrolled in college, and was a member of some extremely progressive and amazing Jewish and queer communities – so I didn’t lose any friends and my life wasn’t upended by the rift with my family. I still text my parents every week – my dad, my mom doesn’t even have text messages – and the day that they are ready to talk to me, I will talk with them. My ex-wife was not allowed to speak to me from the second we got divorced. My son is the love of my life. I like to focus on the silver lining: instead of thinking about the 10 siblings who don’t speak to me, I focus on the two who do. Anyway, most people I know nowadays outside the Hasidic community only have two siblings, if that. Life is actually better than I could have ever imagined. I used to struggle with depression almost non-stop. Since I came out, I haven’t had a day of waking up and feeling that there’s no reason for me to wake up. Before I transitioned, there were days that I felt like that. Being out as ourselves, being trans, being LGBTQ, is something that creates a life worthy of celebration, not just worthy of living. It’s beautiful. I was the first person in the Hasidic community to come out as trans, but there have been quite a few people since, and obviously, I’m being blamed for that. I definitely think I can take some credit for it – the Hasidic community is never going to be the same again.
Hello everyone! Let's lift up these requests in Jesus' name:
needs us to intercede for Kenya. Let's pray for joy and peace.
**Prayer Group Updates** 
Please lift up **
Let's pray for **
Pray for Kenya, as requested by **@Londichon**, who's going through a tough time.
Pray for Anonymous's son suffering from PTSD and needs healing and comfort.
Let's pray for the safe return of Sabria, Anonymous's beloved cat who hasn't come home.
Pray for **
Urgent prayers needed for **Nengjalhing**, Anonymous's wife who is in critical condition after surgery.
Pray for **
Let's come together and pray for these needs in Jesus' name!
Let's lift up 
**Anonymous** needs prayers for good health and a clear PAP smear result.
**Tannigu**'s family lost their home to a fire. Let's pray for their restoration and a financial miracle.
**Sabria** the cat is missing. Pray for her safe return home!
Share your prayers & encouragement below!
Let's lift up 
Let's lift up @AlexanderYondel's request for protection over his family. May the Lord watch over their sleep tonight.
