Scars of the Past
About my most popular post on Tumblr and the story behind it.
“Remembering the time in college when I had thought the girl I was hooking up with was aware of my trans status”
Tumblr post I made in September 2022.
Many bloggers have asked for the follow-up of this.
It’s true; I did end up in this exact scenario. It was a warm fall afternoon and our weekday classes were done for the day. We were on my twin mattress on the floor of my first college apartment. A gas station just outside my bedroom window where 18-wheelers fueled up next to a road that could be described the same as the deadly one in Stephen King’s Pet Sematary really added to the ambiance of being young and broke in a farm-town suburb while gettin’ it on.
Now in 2025, over a decade later from the events of the comic above, I think it’s finally time I brought some closure, with full context and conclusion.
Back in high school, I never had the chance to be in the closet. I transitioned during sophomore year and was fairly well known. I played on school sports teams, so my circle of peers cast a wide net. When I returned next year with a drastically different haircut and wardrobe, despite how subdued my fashion choices were, I stood out like a sore thumb. I wasn’t a stranger, I wasn’t the new kid, I was she-who-is-now-he. I couldn’t use either bathroom- the girls would scream and the boys would jump me. I used the nurse’s bathroom for the rest of my high school career after a shameful plea of desperation. I quit sports altogether and my grades took a nosedive. I don’t exist in my class yearbook among the seniors in formalwear. The only proof that I existed was the section voted “most changed”, resplendent with my deadname, documented and sealed in time.
When I started college, I didn’t know HOW to come out to people. It was always something that happened outside of my control and against my will. A legal name change, top surgery, and HRT did wonders to distant me from my minor years, but I still carried the fear and shame under my skin.
I started going to community college right out of high school because I was too poor to go to a University and had barely graduated high school with my abysmal grades. A cluster of nerdy strangers and I formed a roaming pack of camaraderie in one of my drawing classes over the first few weeks of the semester.
It started off with jokes. I would test the waters of people’s knowledge of me by making a trans-related comment about myself humorously. I couldn’t tell if people were learning about me for the first time or were simply laughing along to something they already knew. I never actually talked about it because I had been deeply conditioned to believe that sincerely coming out to someone made people uncomfortable and put-off by you. I was making friends for the first time on a blank slate, and I didn’t want to lose this budding community I had with a fresh start. However, I knew it was only a matter of time before the topic would come up. Every now and then a friend would ask for confirmation, and I would provide it, but there was never any in-depth discussion with all of us present.
Among my gaggle of friends with an unconfirmed number of those in the know about me being trans, a swoopy-haired sarcastic girl with a cherry smirk caught my eye. We’ll call her Amy.
Amy didn’t know I was a transman. And, looking back, I don’t blame her. I hadn’t told her directly, and my assumptions of it being disclosed to her were a result of my passive game of telephone with our mutual friends. I had even made a point to make sure her best friend knew, a surefire way for the bread-crumbs I left to reach her and the coward’s way out of having that terrifying conversation.
Eventually, I came to learn that college wasn’t like high school at all, at least in my experience. Once you’re out of the grade school institution and free as a legal adult, the bubble bursts and everyone dissolves into the vast sea of adulthood with their own paths. People stop caring about your personal business and, even better, stop talking about it.
Unfortunately, it took me being half-naked and straddled by Amy to learn this, a point where I was certain she had been told or picked up on the context clues of many social outings together. I wouldn’t have put us in that position if I hadn’t been completely confident at the time that she knew about me.
A couple hours after we parted ways, I texted her, apologizing, and telling her that those scars on my chest were because I was trans and they were the result of top surgery. I was too scared to tell her in person with both of us in vulnerable, compromising positions. It was the first time I had to tell someone directly without hinting at it or joking my way around it.
Fortunately, she took it in stride. Considering how the whole situation could have gone very wrong for both of us, it was a blessing. Amy any I spent a majority of our time in community college dating and, after the drama of on-again-off-again seeing each other through our twenties, ended on good terms and occasionally catch up for nostalgia’s sake.
I never found myself in a situation like ours again, and it was a valuable lesson about communication. Amy will always have a special place in my heart for being all that she was to me, and my first glimpse of a life where I was free from the scorn of already being known, and could finally be someone to get to know.
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If you found this interesting or enjoyable at all, I plan on posting more stories/comic autobios on here. This just happens to be my first post on this platform. Thanks for reading!