Special Edition: My Journey to Joy

This week was my birthday, and I'm older than I thought I'd ever be.

This week’s newsletter is going to look a little different than normal. Wednesday was my birthday, so I hope you’ll indulge me in a little storytelling, dear reader. Don’t worry: there will still be plenty of joy here.

Before anything else, I do want to share a huge queer win for the week: The governor of Kentucky, Andy Beshear, signed an executive order banning conversion therapy on minors! (Source: Kentucky.gov) Kentucky joins the growing list of states to ban the practice, including 23 states with full bans and 5 states with partial bans.

The Winding Road to Joy

Transitioning as a teenager in small town Connecticut a decade ago was challenging, as you might expect. In order to understand the joy behind my reflections today, it’s important that you know about the core of these challenges. I think the internet certainly isn’t lacking for posts about Sad Trans Teens™, so I’ll keep this short.

As a trans kid who had never seen a trans adult before, I didn’t think it was possible for me to grow up. Every moment, even the joyful ones, felt borrowed at best and doomed at worst. So why would I be particularly invested in staying alive? Don’t get me wrong: I was much happier than I was before I came out when I was decidedly not interested in staying alive, but I didn’t have the tools to genuinely envision a future after high school or college.

With my future uncertain, I turned all my focus on the present. I grabbed on to every moment I could to find reasons to smile, to play, to laugh. Even the most terrible situations I found myself in were quickly turned into a rousing stand-up comedy set for my friends the next day.

If I didn’t have many dreams for the future, that also meant that I didn’t have anything to gain by holding back. I made a practice of telling my friends how much I love them at the end of every phone call, and I knew that if I had limited time I wanted to use it to experience and share as much love as possible.

A photo shoot that a friend held for me in high school. I pulled together the handsomest outfit I could think of, snap buttons and all.

Year after year, I surprised myself by continuing to live, every year adding on to the proof that I might be able to stick around. The more of life I got to experience, the more attached I became to wanting to live. Slowly, thoughts of “I wonder if I’ll make it to next year” became thoughts of “I’m not done yet”.

I graduated and moved halfway across the country to live with my partner in Missouri, and then the anti-trans legislative panic came into full swing.

This brought many moments of doubt and fear along with it. In those moments, I had to choose to want to stay alive. And I did. Every day, I made that choice. As I got more involved with advocacy, built a stronger community, and found a fantastic therapist, I came to realize something very important:

Joy is not a destination you can arrive at, nor is it a one-time reward you can earn. Joy is a choice you have to make every day. Joy is a muscle that needs training and recovery.

The doubts didn’t go away. At least, not completely. As a trans person, I’ll always need to be aware of my safety and the threats against my community. But every day, I decide that I want stay alive, and that I want to continue to fill my world with love for the people around me. I decide to look for reasons to be joyful in my life and in my community. I still think of my time as precious, but now instead of viewing it as borrowed or stolen, I think of it as a gift.

A picture of me and my wife at our wedding last year. How much more joyful can you get?

You might be thinking: ok Ben, cool it with the homegoods block-print cliches. But can you blame me for being a little corny?

I’ve been out for ten years. For half that time, I’ve been hearing people say things like: “you’re the oldest trans person I’ve ever met”. I’ve even been called a “trans elder”. Now, I’m not going to tell you how old I am, but I know you’ve probably done enough math by now to be able to tell that I should be nobody’s elder.

Yes, I know that there have been trans people for as long as there have been people on this planet, but so many of those stories have been cut short or erased from history books and TV shows. So many of us spend years coming to grips with the possibility that there isn’t anything out there for us because we’ve never seen it before.

But staring down the barrel of that possibility, I wake up every day and choose to become the person I wished I could have seen so that others can see me and have a few more ideas for their own dreams. I'm so lucky that I’ve been able to build a life centered around being that person.

I’m still sorting out what the best form is for these newsletters, so if you’d like to see more reflections like this, please let me know!

If you know someone who could benefit from a bit more hope, I’d love it if you could share this with them. If someone forwarded this newsletter to you, I’d love it if you stuck around!