I approached the stand, hands shaking as I set my phone onto the wooden podium. I had two minutes to convince them to care – two minutes to explain years of still-bleeding wounds given to me from Washington, Missouri, my Midwestern hometown.
Wearing some of my best clothes and a face mask, I looked at the school board members across from me. My stomach lurched as I removed the mask off my face and moved the microphone closer to me.
I was 16 and thinking I shouldn’t be here. But one thought echoed back, pushing out any self-deprecating talk as faces and memories began to flood my mind.
Just four years earlier, I learned what the word, “faggot,” meant from inside my middle school hallways.
We were like a pack of wildebeests, desperate to get from one place to another as around 300 students collided into one another. One wrong move meant I could be suffocated, turned into nothing more than something beneath the harsh hooves of the student body.
They turned hostility to leadership, spewing hate, while laughing and cheering with admiration for anybody who managed to tear another down. “Faggot” was one of the few they just kept coming back to, reserving even harsher words for less-surveilled spaces where they were certain no teachers could hear.
Nobody stopped them. Nobody did anything. My reports never even made it past the teacher – and I wasn’t the only one. We were silenced.
The majority of my friends begged for refuge against the barrage of attacks upon their identities. The only space we were given were the hearts of one another.
All of us were crushed by a community ready to push us away into such a spiral that we could end up separated by drugs, mental hospitals, escape and the destruction of self. They hated that we loved.
I soon gave up the fight, and the crowd consumed me. My head lowered and my body tensed as I made sure to stay on the edges of the hallway. I refused to grimace at the comments, horrified to be seen. I prayed my silence would protect me – it never did.
High school rolled around. It was still awful, but at least there was a Gay Straight Alliance (GSA). I was never able to make the meetings, caught between busy schedules and the anxiety of being an outsider of my own community.
It was safer on the sidelines.
My friends found other queer people in the school for me, introducing us in awkward gestures. I didn’t know how to talk to people, plagued with fear and using my silence for personal protection. Even the most mundane tasks turned into a battlefield.
Every move inside my classrooms became orchestrated. In the backseat of my own life, I sat stiff and rigid, my body adamant that I could not move. I counted each step between my desk and where I needed to go. I evaluated every interaction that could occur on the way. I prepared for any loud noises, any action that could make others glance my way. “It’s easy…” I repeated, trying to convince my body to exist in these spaces with no success.
But there I stood, staring down seven board members at the end of my sophomore year. Thoughts swarmed my mind, spiraling and circling: Would it be enough? What kind of difference can I make? Will it even do anything? Can I even do it?
I can. No, I must.
I’m lucky. My family doesn’t outwardly condemn me or other LGBTQ+ people. Most others I know don’t have that privilege. They can’t speak because their home would become unsafe.
I held my voice up, gripping the edge of the podium to fake confidence. I felt thousands of eyes staring at me, seeing under my skin and into my identity. The meeting was live-streamed, and every move, hesitation and break in my exterior could be shown to people I might never know.
My tongue felt glued to the bottom of my mouth, this was risky. I didn’t know if my family’s support was skin-deep, if the administration would demean me, if my peers would harass me next. But I knew the cost of doing nothing.I didn’t have a choice.
My voice trembled, pleading with desperation as I started speaking to the board.
“I’m tired of fighting battles just to survive school when I should be focusing on the high school experience … Instead, I’m here because school has hurt me and others, where we can no longer pretend that there is safety for us when we go to school.”
Roughly six other students and two community members shared stories of a climate that existed within the school: racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, antisemitism, bullying and harassment. We had enough.
Two board members spoke to me after the meeting adjourned. One said I was a good speaker. The other spoke about fighting bullies “back in the day” before encouraging me not to do so. And then they never talked to me again.
The hate persisted.
Every step forward felt like three backward. I spoke at the board meeting and got a pat on the back. We created Community Advocates, a club to address the school’s hateful climate. Every project we did with this group got shut down. Posters informing about consent were torn down. We streamlined the reporting process and within two months, the system was removed. My best friend and I created a club to inform middle school students about social issues and build a safe space that we never had. Administration canceled it after the first semester.
The adults around me kept trying to spur me on, slinging comments like, “These are the best years of your life.” Their sentiments echoed in my mind, turning to a mockery as I was left staring at the pieces.
Exhaustion surrounded me. There was no end in sight. Students shouldn’t have to fight to feel safe within their classrooms.
All the while, people were looking up to me with hope. I became GSA president and Community Advocates’ vice president two years in a row. I worked my way up to becoming a band section leader in the middle of marching season. I was editor-in-chief of my school newspaper. My peers found hope in me, knowing that if they had struggles, I would speak for them. I did for years, losing track from one talk to the next as they all blurred together.
In Washington, you weren’t ever given a voice. You had to make your own.
I couldn’t take a breath of my own until I got to Webster University.
I can vividly remember my first couple of months, waiting for the other shoe to drop as I slowly shared the struggle I went through to get here. I waited for athletes to call me names and for my teachers to ignore my trans identity, to become a bystander of my own life once more.
I am still waiting.
There has not been a day where I have been an outcast for my queer identity on this campus. My voice is no longer screaming into darkness, hoping I can somehow spark light within this cavern. It’s no longer searching for others nearby, hoping they have a flashlight. Instead, it’s a burning flame that I have the honor of taking with me, having added my own fuel and now learning how to better guide others out of this darkness.
Webster has taught me the true meaning of community and the necessity of voices within them. Nearly everybody on campus, student or otherwise, has compassion for one another.
I still carry with me the voices of those who cannot speak. I know their stories, their grief and their agony. I know the weight of them, the faces who carry the burden, trying to free themselves of the pain.
This past spring, I received a text from my best friend’s mother. Within two hours, my high schools’ administration would hold a board meeting with plans to remove a protection policy for transgender students. I was horrified. I immediately got dressed and grabbed the keys to my car to drive the 45 minutes away from campus.
I spent the car ride shaking with emotion — anger, sadness, hope and hurt all bundled into one. I was brought back to the familiarity of seeking refuge at school and having that stripped away. The shared dream of queer students, imagining escape before processing the idea of acceptance.
Who is going to die because of the school’s negligence? Who is going to become another number of a suicide statistic? I couldn’t leave that to chance.
I had two minutes to speak.
It was not enough. It’s never enough.
But this time, there was a glimmer of hope. I finally spoke my truth about being trans. Two reporters talked to me after my speech, asking about my experiences as a trans student within the school district.
I was a lone voice, but this time, I had the Webster community behind me, the one that gave me a breath of fresh air. My flame relit inside this dark cavern.
I came back and asked for help. People shared and amplified my message, giving me places to speak and explain my reality. My work was not just heard, but encouraged.
I was no longer trapped in those school hallways, wondering if I could make it to 18. Instead, I was unapologetically advocating for the treatment of myself and my loved ones. I had built myself a voice – and it was powerful.
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