Yesterday was Trans Day of Visibility. If I was being poetic, I would tell you that the reason I'm sending this out today is because our visibility is important everyday, not just one day of the year, which is true.

In fact, though, I was at home on the couch nursing a cold and just feeling a general sense of ennui.

Trans people are oh so lucky to have two holidays a year for ourselves:

• Trans Day of Remembrance: The day we honor our dead.
• Trans Day of Visibility: The day where we assert our right to live.

These are our days.

We just want to live.

A lot of us will often say things like, "If I'd have knowingly met just one trans person as a kid, it would have saved me from a life of so much pain. Even if I wouldn't have been allowed to live as myself as a kid, I'd have at least had hope for the future."

Instead, we're forced to live in survival mode.

I pretended to be someone I wasn't because I didn't have a choice. I tried to craft a persona, a character, that was tolerable to exist as, but would still allow me to survive without being abused or killed– that would allow me to just exist in the world in some way, to find joy in what ways I could, even if I was dissociated both from my body and my emotions.

There came a time, though, that it wasn't enough. I could no longer survive under these conditions. I couldn't survive because I hadn't ever been allowed to live.

People could see the character I'd constructed, but I was mostly invisible. I'm incredibly grateful for those who saw aspects of me underneath it all and were able to recognize and appreciate me when I did finally dropped the costume and came out. Any of them could see, though, that the spark of who I was had become so dim under it all, and it took time to grow that spark.

Look, it wasn't just because it was dangerous, though, that I didn't come out. On top of the ever-present feeling of danger, I just didn't know it was possible.

If I'd have knowingly met just one trans person as a kid...

Y'all.

It was visibility that saved my life.

It was the internet allowing me to find what I needed, the knowledge I was missing that I actually could exist as myself, and more than anything, finding my siblings. It was seeing trans people in real life, especially younger ones, so full of joy and hope. The fight not only to survive but to live hadn't been drained from them like it had been for me. Furthermore, trans people aren't allowed our elders. Most of them never got to survive, and the ones that did were forced to go stealth.

For the cisgender people reading this, you're likely familiar with what it means to be in the closet and also to be out– to be visible. When trans people come out, we often have to make choices about whether or not we will choose to live visibly or to be stealth. To be stealth means choosing to transition, but to live secretly, as if you are not trans. It's another sort of closet.

Truth be told, this decision is often made for us. Some of us don't pass well enough to live stealth, which is to say that we don't meet the expectations for looking the way that society believes we should look. In the past, if a doctor did not think you would pass well enough, you weren't allowed to transition– let me rephrase that so that you understand more fully: If your old white male doctor did not think you would be fuckable enough, then you were not allowed to transition. It's only recently that much of this has changed. On the other side of things, that meant that people who transitioned were often forced to be stealth. They were forced to move across the country, to sever ties with everyone they knew from before, and if they didn't, it would "prove" that they didn't want it bad enough, which meant that they weren't really trans after all.

I haven't even begun to scratch the surface, but I'm illustrating a couple things to make a point.

There is safety in being stealth, but it's also terrifying not knowing every single day if someone will find out and what it will do to your life. There are many reasons people go stealth, sometimes it's shame or internalized transphobia, the desire to not be trans at all, but often people are stealth not because they want to be but because they have to be in order to survive, because it's too dangerous in so many places, here and across the world.

I think there's likely a world in most trans people's minds where we don't have to choose between being visible or being stealth. We just get to exist, and there's no issue of safety, and it's such a mundane topic that it's not a big deal. In this world, it wouldn't matter whether or not you look the way that society says that we should because people aren't assholes to us about who we are and they respect that we are who we say we are– who we know we are.

The thing is, I can't be stealth, and it has nothing to do with my looks. I mean no disrespect to my siblings who choose or are forced to be stealth, but I can't. I'm just too goddamned loud. I'm incapable of not speaking my mind, of not speaking the stories that spring from my experience and my heart. Going stealth may be far better than going back in the closet, but I still just can't hide anymore. I can't do it, regardless of the risks.

So many of my siblings are being forced to consider going stealth right now, others are considering the closet again, ones who have been visible for quite some time. It's dangerous out here. It's cold. I can't condemn them for doing what they need in order to survive. We need us, collectively, to survive. Our youth deserve to live in a world where they get to come out, to live, and they deserve to live in a world where they get to meet and know their elders, their stories, their histories, their legends, and myths.

But damn, I want to do more than survive. I have to. I'm done surviving– I'm too tired for that. I only have energy for living.

Being visible isn't about how we look, it's about asserting our right to exist. More than doing that, it's about asserting the fact of our existence in the first place. It's about shining a light on our existence in a world that has for millennia sought for us to die in darkness and obscurity. It's about being a beacon for all of our siblings, so that they may find us and therefore find themselves, and to finally find peace and acceptance. It's about letting these siblings know that we see the beauty in their existence, so that our collective light can ward off the darkness of shame.

In this year, in a world intent on genocide, it's more important than it's been in our entire lives to assert our existence.

We deserve to live in a world where we don't have to once again hide in the shadows.

We deserve to live in a world where we are allowed to be visible, and in order for this world to exist, those of us that can must be visible.

We deserve to survive.

We deserve to be visible.

We must be visible.

We deserve to live.

We must live.

no ends, only means