I don’t know about “hardest”, but my relationship with my own queerness has been the longest constant that I’ve struggled with during the length of my transition.

Initially, I struggled to embrace a side of myself that I’d been denied. I was trans, but “not queer” because queer community and queer folk were so far removed from my life until that point, that it felt like I was claiming something I hadn’t earned. (Interestingly, I didn’t struggle with my gender identity in a similar fashion)

I eventually got more exposure to queer folks and queer community and realised that they were “my people”. And I learned to embrace my queerness and love it, but no sooner did I do so, than I started to lose it. I was dating men, and people were no longer identifying me as trans when they saw me. Even people I work with sort of “forget” that I’m trans. And that’s the ideal that so many of us long for right? But what it felt like to me, was that I had just found the courage and self love to step out of a closet and accept my queerness, and achieved the goals I thought I wanted, only to find myself involuntarily in another closet.

These days, I’m in a poly relationship with a woman and a non binary bean, so it’s less of an issue, but I still feel it at work, and around strangers, where my queerness is something I have to constantly talk about, or otherwise it’s simply not seen. Even when I wear queer stuff people kinda just “forget” and they assume that I want them to forget, as if blending in with the society that teaches me I have to hide is something I desire for more than pragmatic reasons.

Just yesterday, a woman I have worked with for years asked me why my necklace and lanyard were matching (they both have the trans flag on them). I pointed out that I also have a matching wrist band and shoe laces, and that they’re the trans flag, and she was like “Oh yeah, that’s right, I guess that makes sense”. I hate it…