Personal Narrative-The Girl Who Wasn T

The Girl Who Wasn’t

The last time I saw my son was the first time learned who he really was. As my eldest daughter, Mary[1], walked in the door from school, I looked up from where I was busy washing dishes, taking note of her worried expression and baggy clothes.[4] Over the past few weeks, or even months now that I thought about it, I’d been noticing that she had been dressing and behaving rather oddly, as though she didn’t care about her life anymore. “Is everything alright, dear?” I asked. I’d asked her the same question every day since I started noticing a difference in her demeanor, but in the past, she had only repeated that she was fine and had to go do her homework, proceeding to shut herself in her room until I called her to dinner. Today, however, was different. “Mom, I – I have to talk to you,” she stuttered. I wiped my hands off on my apron. “Sure, anything.” I walked

I read through her diary too, and found pages upon pages of writing about what she didn’t feel she could tell anyone else. I learned that she had decided she wanted to be called Max and be referred to as he/him. I found a new therapist, whom Greg and I went to meet with twice a week, and we collectively agreed that it would be best to use the name and pronouns written in the diary from then on. “It’s what he would have wanted,” the doctor said.

I wrote a poem entitled “I’m Not Your Daughter” chronicling my experience, which eventually made it to the front page of The New York Times. I later compiled the contents of Max’s diary into a book with much the same purpose as the poem: to tell his much-too-short story. Following these publishes, his old high school invited me in as a guest speaker. I spoke to the whole school about issues concerning both trans teenagers and suicide in general, urging them to talk to an adult if they ever felt like taking their own