At the time, I was looking for something fun to do after school. And I found, I remember like on one of the first days of registration, there was a Middle Eastern dance club. And like I said, at the time, I was still outwardly socializing as male. So I asked them, am I able to join? And they were like, we accept everybody. This is dance. Dance has no gender.

But those girls were very, very accepting. And that's where I honestly was able to start identifying more as my authentic self. Because yes, I had the clubs to go out to like the gay bars here in Corpus. But with those girls too, they accepted me, you know, like, being able to further, like, identify as female outwardly. And let's face it, like, most of us who start out, you don't know what you're doing. You don’t know how to do makeup right. You don't know how to do your hair. Like, I look back at videos and photos and I'm like, I was a hot mess. Like, holy crap. What? Nobody told me? But these girls like, allowed space for me to be in.

An incident that really, like, caught attention, the unwanted attention, is, you know, growing up I had what's called gynecomastia. So that's when like the fatty tissue in the chest area of anybody who's, like born male or assigned male at birth, it grows. For whatever reason. It's, you know, hormonal things. You know? Some people have it taken out. You know, mine, I lost a lot of weight. So I lost, like, some of the fatty tissue. So, but they were still, it was still, like, enough to look like breasts.

So one time we were at the beach. I was at the beach with my girls, my belly dancing girls. And I was, you know, in a skimpy, kind of like Speedo. Nothing on top. Walking around. And people reported me walking topless. And like I said, I was still socializing as male. My ID said “M,” you know? I hadn't changed my name yet. Like, I was still male-identifying.

So this person from one of the hotels or one of the areas, like, comes running up to me. Is I guess trying to stop me. And she recognizes me and she's like, oh, it's you from school, from college. And I was like, yeah, what's going on? She's like, oh my gosh. She goes, there was a lot of people that complained that there was this girl with her top off, and she has her tits out. And I'm like, me? And she's like, yeah. So even more so that reinforced like, you know, I'm a product of society now. Like, literally have to cover myself up.

But through that, like I said, those girls, I was able to really create myself and have myself like, reemerge as my authentic self. I blossomed into this woman