Hey Pharynx.
I don’t know if you’ll ever get this. Sunset promised me she’d ensure the journal on your side of the mirror found you after I spoke my piece. But I honestly don’t trust her too much on that just yet and the only reason I’m even writing this right now is because she begged me and because she proved she wasn’t lying about the magic world of horses (etc.).
I hope to Faust you don’t have someone like my (possible) future cousin in your world (and I’m not usually religious so that’s big).
Anyway… you’ve probably realized this by now, but…
My name is Pharynx Ray Elytron, pronouns he/him, sexuality: Bi.
But, uh… well… dammit, can you tell I’m not good at this? Simplest way to put it… I wasn’t always the man writing this now. As all my legal paperwork once said…
My name is Trachea Rei Elytra, pronouns she/her
Ugh, just writing it makes me gag… well, I better get this over with…
Sunset told me that in your world, you were always a boy. You were a Cisgender male. And when I heard that, it took all my emo phase practice to keep myself from tearing up, both from joy and jealousy, to be honest. I honestly thought you were way luckier than I ever am, because you were born into the gender you felt comfortable in, and clearly still feel comfortable to be in, considering Sunset told me you mostly stick to male pronouns..
Up until I was seven, I didn’t mind being Trachea. I would hang out with a group who are now my best friends, but I would specifically spend most of my time with Ember Jiheshi, Tempest Shadow, and my brother Thorax Glyder. I was used to living the life of a tomboy, and I never saw anything different about my body that made me uncomfortable.
But I began to realize I was more than a girl who didn’t mind a little dirt and didn’t play with dolls. I’m still not sure exactly how I ended up figuring it out, I just had an epiphany one day that I didn’t feel as comfortable. It was like a downward spiral. I felt like I was trapped in my own body, and, well… it was one of the worst times of my life.
I didn’t like my name anymore. I didn’t like the talks about the changes my body would go through. I didn’t like how long my hair was. I didn’t like the dresses and outfits that everyone told me I was supposed to wear to fit in.
For a long time, I had something called Gender Dysphoria. I’m not sure if you know what that is, and Sunset warned me not to “go valedictorian” here and give you a giant paragraph of what it means. Basically, it’s the distress someone feels due to a mismatch between what they believe their gender identity is and the gender assigned at birth.
For me, it caused severe depression and suicidal thoughts. It especially didn’t help that I had always hung around the two biggest tomboys in my group of friends. Even though I was confident I had decided who I was, I was still scared.
When I was seven, I stood in the bathroom, locked myself in, and cut off all my hair until it looked like Thorax’s hair. A boy’s hair.
My mother was luckily passed out drunk on the couch at the time (she’s not Chrysalis, it’s a long story), but my dad drove us to school. I was scared to say anything to him, but our father had always been someone I knew I could trust, so after Thorax got out of the car, I told him. He just smiled and told me he loved me no matter what, and if I wanted to fully transition when I got older, to just let him know.
The hardest part was telling my friends, though. (I don’t know how many friends you have in your world, Sunset told me it was about three close friends?) They were all gathered together outside the school, waiting for me. I think Thorax had told them I’d cut my hair, because none of them looked that surprised. I walked up to them, and just blurted it out. I made my voice as authoritative and deep as possible, too. I told them “this is who I am, I don’t care what you say. I’m a boy.”
They were silent… for about five seconds. Tempest and Ember hugged me, and Thorax hugged me (predictable for that huge dork). Then Ocellus, Silverstream, and Yona grabbed my hand and dragged me into the school, where they huddled in a corner around me and began fixing the “mess” on my head. I’m glad they did, at least. They made my hair look more natural, like it had always been short.
When I look back on that day, I can’t help but feel like I’m about to laugh and cry all at once (I don’t though, that’s way too mushy for me). And it wasn’t just my friends who were there for me during my transition.
I will admit, nothing was perfect. I was bullied a lot, and most of my teachers and classmates still believed I was Trachea, and I was just going through a phase. That’s where the depression came from, and the Gender Dysphoria. Almost everyone around me was telling me I was a girl, and I was just going through a weird phase. I’ll admit, a couple times I fought back in ways I’m not proud of. I don’t regret it, at least.
In my mind, Trachea had vanished a long time ago. But no one else saw it that way, and I hated it. Since I hadn’t come up with a boy name that I liked, I asked my friends to just call me by my nickname, Trache, since it felt slightly more natural than my full name.
I fully came out to everyone when I was thirteen years old, at a school talent show in the park. I was learning how to play guitar, and when Thorax and Ocellus told me I should sign up, they convinced me to write a song that would come out for me, since they realized I was nervous about it (I don’t know about their counterparts but those two can read me like an open book). So I did it; I got up there and sang about wanting to be free to be myself, and at the end, I asked my friends to call me Pharynx Ray Elytron from then on. They were overly happy for me, obviously, and through that, I was happy.
When I came out, the backlash was… mixed. My closest friends and family supported me fully, and my Aunt Chrysalis did what my father had been unable to before he left. She took me to get testosterone shots and begin the transition to boyhood. But I was bullied more than ever, especially when I was transitioning. Honestly though, I couldn’t care less what they had to say.
That’s why I’m here today. I know you have the same amount of support I did when I was still changing. I wanted to tell you that you’re not alone, okay? No one in your family, however hard they tried, probably knew exactly what you were going through, even if they were a part of our community too.
That’s because no matter what, every single story is different.
This right here? This is my story.
And what you went through? That’s your story.
But that doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter that our stories aren’t even close to being identical, there’s always that one difference. But I don’t want to hide it, I want to celebrate it.
My story’s not over yet. For personal reasons, I’m still wearing a binder. I went through puberty around the time I was getting the testosterone shots, so while my voice got deeper, my breasts didn’t stop developing, and my father believes it’s best we wait a little longer to get the surgery to fix that. I don’t mind the binder, especially since it helps me feel like who I really am. But I do hope one day, I won’t need to wear it.
All in all, I just want you to know that you’re not alone in your world. The love and support you found isn’t only in the ones closest to you. It’s all over, in creatures with stories just like yours, who found their true selves too.
It can even come from a you in another world. You’re perfect, Pharynx. I know that because I’m perfect too, and we’re both proud of who we are. If this ends up getting to you like Sunset promised… just… know that I’m here. If you ever want to talk with someone who won’t spill any secrets you don’t want the rest of your family to know about, or if you just want to vent to someone who has an unbiased and out-of-context opinion, I’m here for you.
Sincerely, your fellow Pride member,
Pharynx Ray Elytron.