Letter from Alana, my adult queer self, to Alex, my gender bender kid self

Dear Alex,

I see you look pretty in your first day of school photo. I know this is not how it was. When I asked you, a few months ago, not to dwell on the pain and sadness of your unlived trans childhood, but to imagine what you would have liked to live, you had no doubts. You didn't have to think twice. You took the picture of the first day of school, and you drew yourself over the child you were forced to be. And with this you also made it so that I, Alana, for the first time could see myself in this picture, and not an unknown child.

I know your life was not easy. You had to endure to survive. To hide. Pretending to be a child. I wish you had known the song Hold On, You Belong by Ryan Cassata, a trans man, to help you hold on. I imagine you often felt that way too:

Hold on, hold on

I don’t belong, I don’t belong

I’m so scared, and I’m so blue

And I’m holding on so tightly, I’ll tell them off politely

And the going gets more rough the longer I stay true

Sometimes you just gotta push through

I guess it’s something to get used to

Ryan Cassata: Hold On, You Belong (People Like Us), https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nZNqA6lM3wA

I know you felt like you didn't belong to anything or anyone. You felt alone many times, you felt that no one saw you, that no one loved you. But, even if it meant hiding, you managed to be you. You couldn't live openly as you were, but you didn't give up either. You endured. You just kept going, as Ryan Cassata sings. Because of you, because you stuck it out, now and many, many years later, I feel that I, Alana, belong to my non-binary queer community.

To sustain yourself, to survive, you relied on your dreams. You escaped from the real world, you went many times to another world, to a better world, where you could be you. I believe that thanks to you I still know how to dream. I believe in the need for utopias, I can imagine a better world, without transphobia, without exploitation, without destruction of our planet - a fairer world. And I can fight for this world, so that other children like you don't have to hide, don't have to endure as much as you had to endure.

Your dreams remained dreams. Broken dreams. But, as Ezra Furman, another trans musician, sings in the song Temple Of Broken Dreams:

I can feel all of your dreams mingling with mine

Just because those dreams are shattered

Doesn't mean they can't matter

We'll arrange them in mosaic over time

Your broken dreams are mine too. And to me, those dreams matter too. And to you, these dreams allowed you to survive. Together, we made them into that mosaic Ezra Furman talks about, and together, we will continue to dream:

So let's organize our lives around love and care

Let's write each other letters and call it prayer

Let's meet up in a place that isn't anywhere

At the temple of broken dreams

Oh, at the temple of broken dreams

Yes, at the temple of broken dreams

Ezra Furman: Temple of Broken Dreams. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WgUkXs4ZAAc

Dear Alex, I am who I am because of you. It was worth it to endure, to hold on as best you could. I hope that today children like you no longer have to hold on for so long, that you can live being who you are and can feel part of our trans*, queer, non-binary community, that you can feel that we are able to organise our lives around love and care.

Alana, 13 February 2024

Published (in Spanish) in: Me insultan y yo les tiro un beso
Infancias y adolescencias LGTBIQA+
Editor/a Lucas R. Platero, José Antonio Langarita, Irene Blanco Fuente

Bellaterra Edicions, 2025, https://www.bellaterra.coop/es/libros/me-insultan-y-yo-les-tiro-un-beso