EDITOR’S NOTE: Sophia Featherwind will attend her 30th high school class reunion in Azle on Sept. 21. She will share her experiences in an upcoming edition of Dallas Voice.
I’m coming home — or rather, I am returning home — for my 30th high school class reunion in the sleepy town of Azle, Texas. I’m not even planning to stay more than three days this time, long enough to visit with my ex, my youngest daughter and my mother, before making my appearance at the reunion at the local VFW and flying back to Salt Lake City.
Most of my friends and I agreed three decades ago that this rural town without even a movie theater to its name (unless you count the X-rated drive-in that shut down before I was old enough to attend) was a place it was better to be from — as in leaving in lieu of claiming.
I really don’t know what to expect from the denizens of this town, classmates who I left behind in more ways than one. The last reunion I attended was a band reunion, and I felt so utterly outcast and alone that I had to leave before people could see me cry. My 20-year reunion was no picnic, either. While I was friends with the cheerleaders in high school, I really couldn’t identify with slide shows depicting their first years with the jocks after high school.
My friends, the outcasts, were never depicted in any of the footage; but then again we left when we could. Of the class of 252, only a couple of people I knew were there.
One of them was so incredibly inspired by my faith in high school that he became a Baptist missionary. I didn’t dare tell him that my religion had let me down, that it was one of the forces that trapped me into living as a man, when I craved daily for just a taste of what it was to be a woman.
Again, I felt outcast, the outsider, as I always had, since I moved to that town when I was 12 years old, and my mind and body started getting into a heated debate. I vowed that there was nothing there for me, only a sense of non-belonging, and I decided I would never return.
Are they going to make me wear my senior yearbook photo with my name emblazoned on it? I looked 12 in that photo, and I have changed a lot since then. I laugh.
I am probably the most changed person of the class of ‘83, having completely changed my gender. How’s that for a category to win?
At least I retained my hair, and kept the fat from taking over my belly and thighs. Long locks of strawberry-blonde hair down to my breasts, and almost three years of hundreds of hours of belly-dancing to stay in shape.
At 5’ 11”, I will not be able to hide. Will they approach me to ask me questions, or will I have the cold shoulder typically reserved for outsiders? How welcoming is my homecoming going to be?
Already, friends I have reconnected with through Facebook without explanation have started to ask, “Did I know you as insert-male-name-here?” And I usually reply with yes, you did.
I only know of a couple of people who have come out of the closet besides me, and they came out as gay some years ago, when they could safely get away, including my friend John. I am worried that I will have lost some of my church friends for doing the unthinkable, changing what God gave me.
And how could I feel such anxiety? I came out to the entire Salt Lake City belly dance community on stage to a piece of poetry that I wrote.
I sacrificed being stealth on the altar of education, and instead of losing friends, they cried, and demanded that I return to the stage again and again to tell my story poetically.
Maybe I can leave them crying instead of judgmental. I simply want to reconnect with my friends, to see them again, to let them know me as the person I was meant to be.
Revealing my past is hard. It colors conversations in ways that a normal woman doesn’t have to deal with, and I am automatically pre-labeled and pre-judged. I suddenly am asked which pronoun I prefer and become the local transgender expert to turn to for all issues.
Coming out is hard, and I find myself doing it over and over again. But coming out can also be an art, finding ways to break stereotypes so the next generation never has to be prejudged by them.
I am always praying and hoping that I will get a chance for someone to love me as the woman I am, before they find out about the man I was. I won’t have that chance with the Azle High School Class of ‘83.
Sofia Featherwind, author of Freeing Hummingbirds: How I Learned to Embrace Myself, is a veteran, software engineer, aspiring belly dancer and performing poet. She is also an advocate for LGBT rights and trans-awareness, as well as the founder of an online support network for those who have or are transitioning between genders. She can be reached via email at sofia@sofiafeatherwind.com.
This article appeared in the Dallas Voice print edition September 13, 2013.