By Cedar Czyscon, Kea‘au High School

There are truths that you are born with, whether you want to or not. My truths start with being born a girl. They start with the responsibility and intention that a female body garners catching up to me before I properly understood the intricacies of gender. They start with the tentative, terrifying idea of being totally and unreachably different. 

Being transgender is a subject shrouded in shame. In school, it’s what sets you apart from everyone else. It’s cold dread hearing slurs float through the air during class. It’s standing in front of teachers after they split the class between boys and girls, not knowing if that really means “males and females.” It’s the question “what are you” coming before “what’s your name.” It’s standing in front of bathrooms and locker rooms, the odd one out of an easily confident swarm of people. 

Bridging the gaps that nonconformity can cause is hard, especially when you don’t see anyone else like you trying and succeeding to do it. When your role models are, as far as you can tell, “normal,” it’s daunting to even try and be like them.

I’m visibly queer. Between the feminine habits and interests I didn’t drop and the brightly colored hair I adopted when I came out, it’s a common thing for people to assume. Dying my hair was a way to control my appearance. As I put bright blue to my starkly shaved hair at nine, I thought to myself: this will distract them. When I was 11 and my fingers and hair were stained the purple of blueberries in pancakes, I thought “maybe I’ll like myself like this.” Now, at 17, with a mix of pink and black hair, I think “this feels right.” What started as a way for me to distract from me being transgender detached and became its own part of me, enduring past the shame I have finally outgrown. 

When I volunteered to be a guide for the new ninth graders at Kea‘au High School, I thought about what it was like to be that insecure 14-year-old that hadn’t seen anyone else be boldly queer. I thought about when I first walked onto campus where even the buildings seemed daunting, and how much I had wanted to approach one of the senior guides. I thought about how I had arrived to class late that day because I was too intimidated by the normalcy of the seniors to ask for help. 

Volunteering let me be that needed example of a transgender person incorporated within the community, within the teachers, seniors, and underclassmen. When I was asked where certain classes are and when I approached the confused stragglers peering at bright orange schedules, I could answer questions easily. When a freshman pointed at me sneering, I could brush it off. When I was a stand-in for a teacher during a scavenger hunt activity and was playing rock-paper-scissors with my friend across the hall, I was proof we can exist happily here– no matter the patchwork moments of dread, of awkward confusion in the bathrooms, of being pulled into two directions by a seemingly simple concept. 

I want to be someone that helps other people find their place in the community. I start by being someone that the underclassmen can look up to, and an example that being yourself isn’t a social death sentence. Volunteering taught me that even just showing up and helping where you can bring unlikely people together. Being that example inspires others to bridge the gaps, over and over, until there are no gaps left. It taught me that volunteering is a hundred different doorways leading to the same room of community.