by Tamuira Reid
The last time I see Sam she’s sitting at the vanity in her bedroom, carefully examining her 16 year-old face in its lighted mirror.
Ugh, she sighs, wiping away the lip pencil I just watched her carefully apply for over the better part of an hour. This color, what is it? Hot-rod red? More like hotdog orange. Fuck you, MAC.
Grabbing a lighter shade from her stash of pencils, Sam regroups, starts over.
Music plays from an open laptop in the corner, haphazardly balanced on a milkcrate-turned-nightstand, The Weekend telling us to save our tears for another day. A beam of late afternoon sun finds its way through the cracked blinds, illuminating the side of Sam’s pale face.
You’d think I’d be better at this by now, she laughs, shaking her head, chestnut curls bobbing up and down at her shoulders.
The first lip pencil she used was stolen, straight out of mama’s make-up drawer, when Sam was just seven. She hurriedly ran into the bathroom and locked the door, giddy and nervous af. A small compact mirror in her lap. Cold tiled floor beneath her. There was a freedom in that moment for Sam, the kind of freedom that comes with spectacular acts of defiance. A girl doing girl things, because to the rest of the world, including her own family, Sam was very much a boy.
I was scared. Had a lot of shame back then. It was paralyzing. I knew my gender didn’t match my biological sex. I knew I was a girl. But I didn’t have the words to explain this to my mom and my brother. To anyone. It was a secret I held onto for a long time and it hurt. A lot.
***
I met Sam and her mother, Joanne in 2022, at a wellness workshop for NYC public school parents. The focus was on identifying the “red flags” in our kids’ behavior, the little hiccups and inconsistencies that might suggest their mental health was declining, that more was going on beneath the surface. Sam joined us on zoom as guest speaker, a high school freshman who could offer insights via her own “lived experience as a suicide survivor”. I remember my first thought was but she’s just a baby.
Sam courageously described for us, in horrific detail, how she’d endured constant teasing, bullying, and harassment in middle school. By other kids. By adults. By strangers thinking their stares didn’t land, that their little faggot’s and cock-sucker’s didn’t cut as deep as the razor she would use on her small wrists the last day of 8th grade.
It’s a hard life, she told me over coffee a week after the workshop. I decided to reach out to Joanne through email, and Sam decided to come along, curious who her mom’s new mom friend was. I didn’t choose this for myself but it is what it is. I am who I am. And so I just keep going. But yeah, I’m scared everyday to walk out the door. Every time I get on the train. But pretending to be a man would be worse. Pretending to be okay with that.…that is a terrifying life. One I tried to end before. I’m not going back there.
The night Sam first tried to leave this world, Joanne had come home early from her bartending shift in the village, after a migraine rendered her useless. She went into her daughter’s room, hoping to kiss her goodnight, only to find her limp body on the floor, blood streaming in red ribbons from both wrists.
How do you come back as a parent from something like that? How do you ever forgive yourself? You don’t. You move on but you don’t ever get over seeing your child like that and connecting the dots to all that you missed, to all that you didn’t see because you simply didn’t want to. I knew Sam was different. Maybe not transgender, but definitely different. I could have done more. I should have tried to connect with her, to support her, but I pushed it out of my mind instead. I was scared I wouldn’t know what to do, would mess it all up somehow. So I convinced myself that she would come to me when she was ready. I’d wait until she was ready to talk instead of prying into her business.
***
Sam was eleven when she decided to go to school as Sam the girl instead of Sam the boy.
I knew I was most definitely not a boy by the time I was seven. I didn’t know the term for it, had no idea what gender even was, really. I just knew something fucked-up must’ve happened at the hospital because my outside did not match my inside. So from seven to eleven, you know, there was just a lot of hiding, in the bathroom with my little mirror.
Then on my eleventh birthday I said fuck it. I can’t do this anymore. I’m going to be me. And I was. I really felt amazing for about a week. Like yeah, motherfuckers, this is the real Sam! Man, I was high on my own supply. Shit got real ugly real fast.
After saving her allowance for almost a month, Sam bought a rip-off Juicy sweat-suit from a used clothing store on St. Marks, near her apartment on the Lower East Side. Pink and white with a cherry on top, she tells me. That thing screamed hot girl to me. And that’s how I felt. Hot. Empowered.
How do you feel now, I ask her, knowing somehow that I can. That it’s alright.
I’m human. Shit still hurts. People can be really mean…like cruel. I won’t ever understand why certain people hate me so much just for being trans. Like who cares? Move on. Nothing to see here. Honestly, I have good days and bad days. But, I keep telling myself that everybody has ups and downs, you know? If life was supposed to be easy, God wouldn’t have put me in a male body. He never gives you more than you can handle. I believe that. I really do.
Sam says her faith was strong as an axe post-suicide attempt. I was like, well hell, guess God doesn’t think I’m done yet. Okay, then, here we go, round two.
A second chance, I tell her but she already knows.
I stayed home a lot in the first year. My own shadow freaked me out. My anxiety was off the charts, like a constant electric shock running through my veins. I was never comfortable no matter what I was doing. Even when I was asleep. Crazy nightmares.
I found my people. I found community. And I thank my mom for that. She found me a group that met every week, other trans and gender fluid kids just trying to find someone else who they could relate to. And for the first time in my life I didn’t feel alone in the world. I wasn’t a freak or a disease or an abomination. I was just Sam. Sam is who I am! Like Dr. Seuss, baby.
We both laugh, not knowing until then we’d been holding our breath. Sam-is-who-I-fucking-am.
(In loving memory of Sam Michael, 2007-2023.)