A scene in the animated movie Madagascar hit me like a ton of bricks. The lion’s best friends from the zoo were a hippo, a zebra, and a giraffe. They escaped their posh prison only to find themselves shipwrecked on the island of Madagascar. After a few days of finding…

Confirmation often comes in unexpected places — “Imagine a room where all of your worries are gone,” breathed the yoga instructor. “It may be a public place of business, or a private retreat, or somewhere else. This is a place you enjoy to be, where you don’t have to even think about what normally bothers you, where…

… like a woman scorned — People often regurgitate maxims simply because they have heard them so many times that they believe there must be truth within. But one never fully understands such a philosophical truth until one has lived it. About a year ago I cracked. Gender dysphoria had made itself known to me and…

If you have ever been to church you have probably heard a little joke come from the pastor before the sermon starts. They use it mostly to break their own ice. Public speaking is easier when you make the crowd laugh before you say anything else. This morning I was…

As I feel my flat chest the depression deepens. I ask myself, “can’t this feeling just go away? Can’t I get rid of it through therapy?” Then the reasoning creeps in, “isn’t this just like someone who is anorexic or bulimic?” I have actually heard this argument before when trying…

I exist, a sack of meat, no purpose but to be consumed. Failure blankets me. It pulls me to the grave. There is no rest. There is no life. No escape. Is it enough just to be? The colts face one another, arranged in a circle. In unison they snap…

A handful of dreams in my life have felt truly important. I’m sure there’s some sort of psychological term for it. One of them keeps coming to mind as I wade through gender dysphoria. My wife and I are holding hands, standing on the open deck of a large ship…

The ground was supple. Thin brown cylinders jutted out, arcing together like tall grass blown by a soft wind. An anomaly rested in their midst; a large column rising far above. Its smooth black surface was cut in a spiral with engineered precision. Where it pressed into the ground the object tapered to a shallow point. The column screamed as it began to rotate at lightning speed. Both a savior and an assassin, it ripped out any cylinders within its reach while the others spread outward, blown by the fierce wind.

I am sitting with my eyes closed, being with the pain in my chest. I know now that the pain is directly related to the gender dysphoria. I’ve been trying to sooth it, find its source, be with it, comfort it, release it. …