After I came out as transgender at age 14, things changed for me. For my entire life up to that moment, I was known to most as an intelligent, hard-working, and charming kid. My friends' parents always complimented my manners and my talents, reassuring me that I was accepted and welcome anytime. That all ended when I chose to live my life authentically. I am incredibly fortunate to have a family that accepts and loves me, and I have no doubt that I would not be where I am today without them. However, the rest of the world did not offer me the same kindness. Pretty soon, teachers, friends' parents, and other people in my life made it clear that I was not welcome or accepted in their homes and communities, nor wanted around their children. I was a "bad influence", or "the wrong crowd", or "leading them astray". Despite my consistent straight A grades and straight-edge behavior, because I was transgender, I was seen as undeserving of friendship, praise, and support. People cited their religious beliefs, my style of clothing, my dyed hair, my aspirations in theatre, really anything they could twist to make me look like a bad person. I would get cornered in bathrooms, called a "freak" on the bus. The difference was night and day. I mourned the perfect girl society seemed to love so much, but I knew I couldn't get her back. She had never really existed in the first place. I am privileged. I go to a top 30 school and have a strong network of love and support from my family and friends. I am pursuing the career of my dreams. This is why I want to give back to my community. I want to show that trans people like me can achieve anything we set our minds to, just like everybody else. With my education, I want to be a voice for the LGBTQ+ community in the entertainment industry. I want to increase representation not only on stage and on the big screen, but in the writer's room and production spaces as well. When I make the invisible visible, the world will finally be able us as we are. Not freaks, not bad influences, not sacrilegious devil-worshippers. Trans people are artists, actors, writers, producers, photographers, doctors, teachers, engineers, entrepreneurs, researchers, journalists, siblings, nieces, nephews, parents, grandparents, friends, uncles, aunts, relatives, and above all, trans people are just people.

On Holding It by Levi Chaplin-Loebell When I was a sophomore in high school, I once ended up in a situation where I had a hard choice to make. My first option was to use the men's bathroom at a Wendy's in South Philadelphia. The second option was to pee in my pants at a Wendy's in South Philadelphia. The women's bathroom, although I'm sure they had one, was not immediately obvious to me, and my friend, a cisgender male, had not thought about the implications of ushering me, a transgender man, over to the men's bathroom and leaving me there while he ordered food. It was around 4:00 PM on a weekday. I avoid the school bathrooms for the same reason I would have ideally avoided the Wendy's bathroom. I hadn't gone since 7:00 AM that morning. I really had to go. It was now or now. I entered the men's bathroom and was greeted with an angry chorus of "What the hell"s. I ran into the stall. My heart pounded. The men continued talking, still angry, but I don't remember the words they said. I had trapped myself, I knew. I tried to text my friend to come in and stand there until the men left, but there was no service. I felt truly alone. It was like I was in a horror movie, and I was the white kid who was stupid enough to enter the scary mansion with 666 written in blood on the walls and play with the baby dolls in the attic. Fortunately, like many white kids in horror movies, I made it out scared, but miraculously unharmed. (It is important to recognize that many people in similar situations, particularly when they are trans women, and particularly when they are not white, do not.) The men left after a few minutes, and I ventured out, found my friends, and told them what had happened, tears streaming down my face. We agreed not to leave me alone in a bathroom again in the future. I was very bitter for the next few weeks. I felt the weight of what living my life this way really meant. It meant I could get hurt. It meant I was not going to be automatically understood or protected. It meant that there were cis people in positions of power working very hard to ensure that I was written out of public life. If you can only safely be away from your home for a small number of hours, you can't go very far or stay very long. I was going to have to be careful. Living my life meant I was going to have to hold it. As a person pursuing a career in the theatre industry, the bitter half of me likes plays with no intermission. For two hours or less, the audience must live like me. They must either plan ahead, excuse themselves from the theater prematurely, or hold it. People complain when there's no intermission, and rightfully so. It's inconsiderate. The audience gets twitchy. It's only about two hours, though. The performance of cisnormativity has no intermission, and it is constant and suffocating. The other half of me loves intermissions. There's no reason anyone's physical needs should be put off for the sake of a performance. Instead of relishing the twisted enjoyment of seeing others go through what I go through, I want to embrace change. I want the whole world to take intermissions. Turn the lights on in the haunted mansion. Let everyone use the bathroom. When everyone's ready, we can start life again.

At age nine, my dad introduced me to the web-comic Gunnerkrigg Court by Tom Siddel. Immediately transfixed by the format, the style, and the story, I quickly devoured all of the published pages over the next couple of days on our old desktop computer, eyes glued to the screen. Gunnerkrigg Court follows the story of Antimony Carver, a strange girl who attends a mysterious industrial boarding school. She encounters many strange occurrences and unlocks many mysteries about the school, herself, and the enchanted forest across the river. This comic has inspired my writing style, identity, and worldview. Not only was it one of the first times I ever saw LGBTQ+ characters in media, it also showed me an incredible world where fantasy and sci-fi could coexist. Because of this comic, I finally felt seen. I continue to read Gunnerkrigg Court to this day, and I highly recommend it to everyone.