Running away saved my young life
If you were to ask my mother, I was a very difficult teenager to raise. And to a degree I can see that. Lots of teenagers act out, act up, hang with the wrong crowd, get into destructive behavior, and generally test every boundary that exists. But that’s not the kind of kid I really was.
I was incredibly normal.
Let’s take that last sentence with a grain of salt. Things I will admit:
I was suicidal at the age of twelve. Puberty triggered a very deep kind of gender dysphoria in me that I didn’t know how to handle.
I was labelled “gay” in my early teens by my peers. Since I had no concept of gender identity or what it meant to be transgender, the options to express my identity were limited. Gay teens in 1990s America were still not well accepted in most areas. I was the only out, gay teen in that particular public high school in Seattle.1
As the child of one extrovert and one introvert, I inherited some of both. That meant explosive arguments in one moment and hiding in my bedroom cave afterwards.2
Forgiveness did not come naturally to me. When I was harmed by my parents, they would ask me to forgive them, and I would often refuse. This came from the knowledge that they would harm me again in exactly the same way and ask for my forgiveness all over again.
All of that said, there are so many ways I did NOT act out as a kid. The Don’t Do Drugs campaign of the 80s and 90s really worked on me, so well in fact that I didn’t try even the most harmless drugs. My first taste of alcohol wasn’t until I was 19, I never drove illegally, I didn’t get arrested, and I skipped almost every other “bad behavior” item you could list. In fact, I graduated with honors, top ten in my high school. I probably could’ve chosen any college to attend. The world should have been my oyster.
When a parent is faced with something about their child that they don’t like or don’t understand, there’s this natural response to clamp down and restrict everything. Don’t act that way. Don’t say those things out loud. Don’t BE LIKE THAT. And those were many of the words I heard as a sixteen-year-old kid. I did not get supportive words.
Why is this important?
Right now this country is in a pretty ugly phase of debating whether or not transgender people *should* exist and whether or not transgender children *should* be allowed to access gender affirming care. For trans people this is a scary thing to witness. When trans and queer kids don’t get the love and support they need at home, they often don’t have anywhere else to turn. My story is important to show what happens to a queer kid who faces violence and intolerance in the one place where they need to find love. I share this to demonstrate how damaging this absence of love is to kids who are like me.
For me, the intolerance of who I was went far beyond those harsh words. While the violence wasn’t physical, it was still damaging. At the age of sixteen, I knew that my home was not a safe place for me to live. And so I decided to leave.
Kids are not that bright.
No matter how smart a teenager is, there are plenty of things about the world they do NOT know.
I packed up my bags the first time I ran away from home, and I took heavy stuff. My memory of that night is still so vivid. The dryer had broken, and my clothes were in the washing machine, wet and heavy. I loaded them up in my duffel bag anyway, stuffing in jeans and sweatshirts, pounds and pounds of damp clothes. This wasn’t the sort of thing that could wait another night or two for the dryer to get fixed and the laundry to be more liftable. I think I also packed a few books. There was a guitar in a case. There were mementos of my childhood. I was leaving *forever* with no intention to return, and so anything I felt I needed went into my backpack or duffel.
All of my possessions went out the window of my bedroom to be collected once I was outside. I crept through the house and said my goodbyes to anything else that felt like home, everything but my own parents. They were asleep, oblivious.
Once outside, I picked up my things and started walking for the nearest bus stop, but I had to pause every other block to rest. That duffel alone was probably fifty pounds, and I was not a strong kid. Time was ticking away as I made my way uphill, and I realized with dread that I had already missed the first bus I needed. I turned north and started to walk toward the connecting route. And then I missed that bus. There wasn’t another one until morning. And so I did the next logical thing.
I hitchhiked.
If you have never hitchhiked, don’t. There is not way to guarantee that you’ll be safe. Anything could happen once you’re inside a vehicle with someone you don’t know. There’s a reason this is a theme in scary movies. It’s just a bad idea all around.
At sixteen I was still small, probably 120 pounds at the most, and I’ve never been tall. I was not muscular, I was not coordinated, and there’s no way I could have protected myself from someone who wanted to hurt me.
I stood outside the grocery store at the intersection where the last bus had left without me, and I must have looked obvious and pathetic to the kind man who walked up and offered me a ride in his pickup truck. Yes, I knew it was an awful idea, but my only other options were to wait until morning for a bus or admit defeat and go home.
I deliberated for quite some time until I found myself on the bench seat of an old pickup truck, my belongings tossed in the bed, by body wedged between the nice driver and a companion I didn’t know existed until I was inside the truck. The companion was a younger white man, clean shaven, and utterly quiet. He didn’t say a word for the entire ride. Something deep in my digestive tract told me that I’d gambled away my last vestige of safety when I sat down next to him, and to this day I have no idea how I lived through that ride. The driver spoke to me over the whole distance, polite questions about what I was doing out so late and if I really had a safe place to go where he was taking me. I assured him, lying the entire time, that I would be fine once I got out of the truck (which wasn’t so much a lie as a prayer for myself).
That kind driver dropped me off in the darkest hours of the night on a quiet residential street a few blocks from where I was headed, and he patted me gently on the shoulder with just one last thing to say. “Kid? You really shouldn’t hitchhike. This shoulda scared the crap outta you.” And then he was gone.
In shock, I stumbled with heavy bags and a tired body the last few turns to a friend’s house. Had I not shared my plan to run away with them, I’m not sure where I would have gone that night. And that was when things were still going well for me.
I slept on couches.
Sometimes I slept on the floor depending on whose house or apartment I was in. Every night felt like a trespass. These were homes where I had been snuck in or grudgingly allowed to stay for a while. Taking showers and eating their food felt like invading their privacy and stealing, even when it was made clear that I was welcome by at least some of the household. Most of the adults in those scenarios thought I was in the wrong for leaving my home.
Late at night I would hear the others in those living situations talk about me, argue about whether it was okay for me to be there, wonder if they should call the police and turn me in. So that wasn’t a safe place to go either. I made a habit of sleeping with my things packed and ready to go at a moment’s notice, and that came in handy more than once. I got good at sneaking out through windows and patio slider doors.
I slept outside.
Because it was safer most of the time. Silly, right? But I could choose my own terms, pick a spot out of sight and safe based on a set of criteria like having a solid wall against my back or enough tree and brush cover to hide the fact that I was there at all.
Side note – as an adult many years later, I had a girlfriend who suggested we go camping. I never told her any of this, and it was utterly jolting to buy a tent and sleep outside *for fun.*
Sleeping on the ground is wet. It doesn’t matter how warm or dry it feels outside, you wake up damp every time. And to stay mobile and agile, you can’t carry around a lot of gear like tents or cots. This is why cardboard is popular. It creates a moisture barrier, it’s readily available in dumpsters and behind stores, and you can leave it behind without caring.
I missed sheets. Clean bed sheets. I woke up every time and thought about that. Which meant I was constantly weighing my emotional needs against my physical needs. Let me emphasize, I did this at the age of 16. No 16-year-old, no matter how emotionally mature, should have to face these types of thoughts and decisions.
I discovered my independence.
Of all the bad things I experienced, the one good thing to come of it was the independence I gained. I knew after a short period of time how to take care of my basic needs, and I was building the capacity for resilience. When I look back on that stage of my life, I am grateful for developing those qualities early in life.
I was also safe from the harm of living in a house with my parents, which showed in my improving confidence. Taking care of myself was my priority, and it was about damn time that was first somewhere. I knew what I needed, and I went out and got it. Sure, I’m lucky I didn’t get lice while I was at it.
But after all of the time I spent figuring out how to be an independent teen on the streets, a growing unease settled deep within me. It was my parents’ legal responsibility to raise me, to pay for me, and to provide for me. And of all the problems I could not solve, money was the biggest one. Working at 16 wasn’t easy, and I didn’t want to do anything illegal if I could avoid it. No money meant food was tough to source, and no amount of resilience was filling my stomach.
I decided to go home.
I was punished severely for it.
Running away had shamed my parents, and no matter how much blame they cast upon me, I had cost them something they couldn’t recover from. They were the parents of a runaway.
Most of the punishments appeared to be quiet and calm when they happened, just little things.
My mom told my brother I was gay so that I didn’t have the opportunity to come out to him myself. I was crushed by that.
When all of my peers were getting driver’s permits, my parents remained silent. I was too afraid to ask, and I knew they didn’t trust me anyway.
Like lots of kids my age, I dreamt of college. I sent off for information about the colleges I was most interested in, encouraged by my high school counselor. I pored over those catalogs for months. My parents never said a word.
Seniors in high school also look forward to senior pictures. My brother had gotten them, despite the expense, and so I assumed I would, too. But again, when the time came, my parents were silent.
Some impacts last a lifetime.
The relationship between myself and my brother took decades to repair. We lived on opposite sides of the country, and my parents had driven a wedge between us. He was the good kid, I was the bad kid.
Learning to drive eventually became a necessity. I got my license at the age of 19, but I had no access to a car to drive until I bought my own three years later.
College was tough. In the fall after high school graduation, I tried to attend community college. I was also working full time at two jobs and trying to pay rent and all of my bills. For all my independence, I was drowning, and I had no help to keep my head above water. I gave up school so that I could survive. This item – above all others – has held me back personally and professionally, and has been perhaps the most impactful harm I’ve ever experienced. While it’s hard for teenagers to pick a major and a career path at such a young age, going to college does so much more for helping them find community and build support networks for their whole lives. I missed those opportunities.
As for the photos, there are almost none of me from the age of 12 until I was living on my own at 19. My high school graduation came and went with no fanfare. My parents were not proud of me, and the absence of any record of that year is proof.
Transgender people as a group often experience a lot of dysphoria, or at least disconnect, with photos of themselves from before they transition. But not having any photos taken is a much deeper rejection of who you are as a human. There is no record of those years, no birthday photos, no pictures of me at the beach or on a road trip. When I occasionally stumble across pictures other people have of me, it’s hard to reconcile that I existed at all.
What do we take from this?
My story is unique to me, but it is not unique in the wider lens of transgender stories. Lots of kids experience trauma from their families when they come out as queer. Lots of us ran away from home to find something safer. And for those of us deeply impacted by those forms of rejection, there are long-held wounds that can take a lifetime to heal.
Emotional wounds aside, when teens are forced to fend for themselves, the probability of them being physically assaulted, raped, trafficked, or killed are terrifyingly high. Drug use, alcohol consumption, cigarettes, and sexualized behavior in queer teens is higher than in their cis-het peers.
Transgender and nonbinary youth report more than four times greater rates of suicide attempts compared with their cisgender peers, including those who are LGBQ. A 2020 study, published by The Trevor Project’s researchers in the Journal of Adolescent Health, found that transgender and nonbinary youth were 2 to 2.5 times as likely to experience depressive symptoms, seriously consider suicide, and attempt suicide compared to their cisgender LGBQ peers. Further, Trevor’s 2021 National Survey on LGBTQ Youth Mental Health found that more than half (52%) of transgender and nonbinary youth seriously considered suicide in the past year, and 1 in 5 reported attempting suicide. (Josh Weaver, 11/3/2021)
Trans teens who are rejected by their families often don’t have further support networks to fall back on. Cities and urban spaces might offer some queer-affirming facilities, but kids stuck out in rural areas are even more at risk with no way out.
As of the writing of this post, 15 states have, and are enforcing, the worst laws against transgender people. Many of these laws directly target trans youth and teens by banning gender affirming care and, in some cases, telling doctors how to medically detransition the youth in their care. While there are a lot of vocal, supportive parents in those states doing what they can to protect and safeguard their children, there are also plenty of non-supportive parents and organizations pushing anti-trans propaganda.
Their words hurt.
Their laws hurt.
Gender affirming care is associated with a 73% reduction in your suicidality and a 40% reduction in suicide attempts.
But for those transgender and nonbinary kids who cannot access gender affirming care (and even for those who can), simply having a single accepting family member can reduce the odds of suicide attempts by 33%.
This is a challenging time in American history for transgender people as a whole. Our communities are under constant threat of attack, our rights are being stripped from us, and our voices are silenced. When conservative politicians and pundits threaten to “eradicate transgenderism,” we know they intend to eradicate us as human beings.
And no population is more vulnerable than children.
My story is not unique when compared to the average queer teenager. But I am in the minority of those who survived to adulthood. Lots of kids like me won’t be that lucky. And that’s why it is so important to listen to the stories of transgender people, to know the choices we made to carve out space for ourselves in this world, and to do better for those growing up now.
Please consider donating or volunteering with the Trevor Project, whose mission is to end suicide among LGBTQ young people. They offer 24/7 crisis counseling via phone, text, and chat. Their research, education, and advocacy are helping to make a difference, and they are worthy of your support.
Your trans friend,
Robin
In 1996, for my senior prom, I was prohibited from buying a couple’s ticket to take my girlfriend (who was at the time still partly closeted).
But really, isn’t that what plenty of teens do?
Seems as though you haven't had the best life, Robin. You have given me an insight into what people who don't conform to society's ideas of what we are supposed to be go through. I am extremely tired of these know-it-alls who think they can boss the rest of us around. They would not be too fond of me since I hold many unpopular views.