Hello! My name is Taylor [middle name to be decided] Warpool! This is my story about coming out, figuring out who I am…

My earliest memory of me realizing I wasn’t quite like everyone else was in my 6th period class. I worked in the library back in middle school and it gave me time to work on homework or alternatively goof off on the internet. I went with goofing off on the internet, I was on the old Yahoo Avatars website, where you could create a representation of yourself digitally! It was a cool feature. When I designed my avatar… I couldn’t bring myself to make a male version. I thought it would be way cooler to be a girl. In the next few weeks, I spent 6th period fine tuning my little Yahoo Avatar to be the most accurate representation of me as a girl. It didn’t dawn on me until one day my media center partner looked over at my monitor and gave me this confused look and I was immediately embarrassed. That was what started me on my current trajectory.

This was clearly a sign of my gender dysphoria showing at a young age, but I didn’t know that. I was way too embarrassed to talk about this to anyone outside of random internet strangers. The church I was part of had a hard anti-LGBTQ stance. This was something I was keenly aware of, and on top of that growing up my parents were avid ox news enjoyers. Every night we would all sit together as a family and watch it and listen to my dad spout his political beliefs on everything---especially gay people. Obviously, there is no way that could have been me. For the next six years or so, I took those feelings and put them in a nice little box in the back of my brain. I didn’t just do that for me. I did it for my parents and for the church. I knew displeasing god meant death for me, in both a figurative and literal sense. Jehovah’s Witnesses believe that if you aren’t doing everything in your power to live by “bible standards” you will die at Armageddon, on top of that, your entire support structure, friends, family and including immediate family would shun you. I knew if I told my parents I would immediately be cast out, as a chronic people pleaser I couldn’t do that to them.

Over those next six years, I continued to have these feelings run rampant in my brain. I would tell myself it was just an issue with puberty or a weird kink that I have. (Just to be clear this is very false and anyone who tells you it is a sexual thing, is lying to you) I would do anything but confront the idea that I might be transgender. Jehovah’s Witnesses tell you that if you “Struggle with being homosexual” you should put all your energy into being busy, so you have less time to think about it. Which is exactly what I did, I gave up a good high school career to be homeschooled, pioneer, and work full time. I rarely had time to do anything outside of door to door, schoolwork, or homework, and never had any time to indulge my own thoughts. However, every so often they would leak out. It has been best described by someone who helped me leave the religion, Shawn Smith, in a chat with mentally diseased; likened locking up a “gay beast” as he called it. "The beast" may still be dormant---but not for long. Every so often it would get angry, rattle the cage, and you’d have to take it out on a walk.

For me, I found a few outlets to let that energy out. Anonymous chats helped me pretend online and gave me a feeling. I would cross-dress on occasion, and in general my online persona would be much more feminine. Opting for the name Jessica early on in my life. This pattern of putting on the face of a "totally okay straight man in person" and a super feminine girl online continued for years. Even after I moved out of my parent’s house and started on my own. Disappointed in myself that puberty hadn’t magically resolved these feelings, I turned elsewhere to try and find any way to rid myself of these feelings. The expectations of getting married, ministry, and work continued to keep me distracted and avoid considering my own feelings

Then, COVID brought my life to a standstill. Suddenly all of the things that kept me busy disappeared. The door-to-door work had been cancelled, I moved to a new hall and had very few friends and I worked from home so I spent a year in almost total isolation. The only people I really talked to were the people in my congregation at zoom meetings and various discord friends. It was at this time that I sunk into a very deep depression. A life-threatening depression. COVID, for all its negatives, gave me the time I needed to reflect on my life, and I realized I was seriously unhappy with who I was becoming. So, I did what everyone tells you to do. I got a therapist. Believe it or not, therapy also didn’t make me realize I was transgender. It helped free my mind more but I went into it with a very hard stance of “my religion is very important to me so these feelings I have will have to wait”. It wasn’t until Abigal Thorn released her video on coming out and her story of being transgender that my egg (egg being what trans people call other trans people who have yet to realize they are trans) cracked. That video left me in tears and in a literal fetal position on the ground. What followed next was a highly emotional call to my elders about how I felt, in which he encouraged me to “Hold strong onto Jehovah” and that there was nothing he couldn’t “Fix”. In time I learned that the religion was all bullshit and that it wasn't my brain that needed fixing but my body. Everything fell into place.

Since then, I started transitioning, I left the Jehovah’s Witnesses, and am currently enjoying my life. I look in the mirror and smile at what I see looking back at me. Every day, I see more and more of myself in the mirror. Annoying my friends with the endless amounts of pictures I post online because I genuinely enjoy the look of my own face each day. I am truly happy. I may not be right where I want to be yet, but progress comes every day. If any of you are struggling with feelings around your sexuality or identity, I implore you to explore them. It’s a scary process. But it's worth it. 

You are worth it.