Simon Racutt Antony Cesar Memorial Scholarship 4 - 10 - 24 Me, My Passions, and Being Transgender Hello, my name is Simon and I am a transgender man aiming to become a Library Technician. I discovered I was trans at the beginning of eighth grade and came out a couple of months later to friends and family. Subsequently, I started using he/him pronouns with a different name the next school year. Despite this being what I wanted, sharing such an intimate part of myself was incredibly hard for me. Those closest to me accepted and respected this new part of me, but I didn’t even start to fully accept myself and embrace my transness until recently. While I’ve been out as trans, I tried doing so "quietly" by not fully expressing who I am. I did this to save myself from mockery or judgment, ultimately diminishing my self-worth. There have been many times I made the realization I needed to change, for example when a friend took me to the movies in celebration of my one-year anniversary on hormones, when I saw how my trans friend would embrace himself, and when a new friend I assumed would not accept me started correcting those who misgendered me. Experiencing these moments made my heart feel warm, creating the blueprints for who I am today. I have gained inspiration to live, how to live my life, and the core values that make who I am through reading. I learned to appreciate the act of reading early on in life. It started as a punishment, my parents sending me to my room to read, but it soon backfired. In my free time, I would disappear for hours on end, being found in an odd nook of the house reading. I loved learning of other’s experiences, whether it was fiction or nonfiction, putting myself in their shoes and immersing myself in the re-telling of their lives. I believe this enabled me to acquire empathy from an early age, seeing how book characters' feelings were in certain situations, and gathering an understanding of others' feelings. Literature has offered important life lessons for me. As someone who struggles with understanding other people, different texts have perfectly spelled it out. I’ve gathered what may or may not hurt others' feelings, what’s considered insensitive, and how core values impact an individual. I’ve absorbed little bits of everything that I've read throughout my life, creating me as a person. For example, one of my favorite books is The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky. One of my favorite moments from it is when the main character is confronted with the epiphany that he can't always try to please everyone and that he hurts people more that way. That taught me not to be too conscious of others and to live my life through my actions, not others. I had a new outlook on life after reading that book, and almost every book I have ever read. This is why I’m so passionate about reading, and choosing to pursue a career centered around it. I’ve been accepted to Spokane Falls Community College to acquire an Associates degree in Library Information Services. I’m so excited to further my education, however I come from a lower-income household. My mother works two jobs, yet we still live paycheck to paycheck. She’s insisted and advocated for me to go to college, so I would love to take as much of the burden tuition brings off of her shoulders. In conclusion, reading has built me as a person in ways I never would have been without literature. I’ve gained many lifetimes' worth of experiences and grew emotionally. I still have a lot to learn and a lot of growth left, but I am proud of myself for how far I have come. I’m closer to living 100% unashamed of my transness and reconnecting with who I was before life threw me off course. To end, this is a quote that I feel resonates with my healing journey and growth, “The other day, lying in bed, I felt my heart beating for the first time in a long while. I realized how little I live in my body, how much in my mind.” - Rodger Kamenetz.